Besides a myriad of shorter vocal and instrumental works, Charles Ives composed magnificent large pieces-for example, the Fourth Symphony and the "Concord" Piano Sonata-that grew from advanced sketches and improvisations generated over several years. He also constructed brief works-such as Over the Pavements, the Tone Roads, All the Way Around and Back, Calcium Night Light, In Re Con Moto Et Al, the two Fugues in Four Parts-that were deliberate and well-defined, although never intellectually dry, experiments in compositional structure.

The rarely performed work, The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Fireman's Parade on Main Street, composed sometime before 1912, for a chamber orchestra (including a gong the size of that used on the old hook and ladder fire trucks) is such a piece with well-drawn imagery and fascinating musical and acoustic characteristics. Ives described his life experience that inspired the work: " [The Gong ...] is another nice joke which most everybody can see except a nice, routine conductor... The Annual Parade of the neighborhood Volunteer Fire Company was a slow marching affair-for the Hook and Ladder was heavy, and the Gong on the hind wheel 'must ring steady like'-and coming downhill and holding backward fast, and going uphill out of step, fast and slow, the Gong seemed sometimes out of step with the Band, and sometimes the Band out of step with the Gong-but the Gong usually got the best of it. Nobody always seemed to 'keep step', but they got there just the same ..."

Several distinct musical elements occur simultaneously in the three-minute score. During the first twenty-one measures:

(1) A gong may strike at the beginning of each 7/8 measure throughout, the snare drum plays the same rhythm (two double-dotted quarter-notes), the tympani (in place of the gong) executes a roll from f decreasing to pp for each measure,

(2) the bassoon, cello (bowed) and bass (pizzicato) in rhythmic sync with the triangle, slowly develop marcato patterns in expanding and contracting rhythms-two events in a measure, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4.

(3) the piano sustains two massive whole-tone chords, one in the left hand built on a C tonic, and one in the right hand built on a C sharp tonic (plus a mid-point F sharp tone). C and C sharp are also the first two melody tones of the cello-bass-bassoon line. The heterodyning of these two chords is similar to the motion of waves within a gong sound. Additionally, there are double octaves (played as the second event within each measure) in which the top note is kept the same while one or more of the other three notes is raised or lowered a half step, further adding to the "wave motion" effect.

And lastly, (4) a trumpet-like theme is gradually developed in four different keys in the trombone, clarinet, first trumpet, and flute.

At rehearsal number E, the tempo is thrown into Allegro vivace, and a full-blown, wildly angular, lopsided march played "over the barline" emerges with tremolo strings and fluttertongued bassoon producing a kind of rumbling as the machine rolls by. In addition the trombone slides, and the piano pops rhythmically with high chords in snare drum-like rhythms. The image is stretched to the limits in two high-energy 7/4 measures. A decrescendo and ritardando takes us back to the beginning tempo where echoes of the march theme and the gong slowly fade as the machine halts.

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