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Musicology:
Scarcely 11 measures long, this is a brief sketch about the last golden leaves on a maple tree. The words are by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
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Maple Leaves, S.295Year: 1920
Genre: Solo Song / Lied / Chanson
Pr. Instruments: Voice & Piano
Although this seems to be a late Ives song, and its harmonies are shifting and unusual, this is not a radical piece, but is a good example of the sort of very brief, pretty compositions that Ives often wrote throughout his career.
Ives uses a variety of textures in the brief span of this song: Wide arpeggios at the beginning and end, a measure of strange chords, and then some quick staccato chords, all in strange, visionary harmonies. At the end, as the piano arpeggios move by wide leaps from the bottom of the staff to the top of the piano, Ives depicts the fate of the few remaining leaves ("Soon, these will slip from out the twigs' weak hold, like coins between a dying miser's fingers.") in the singer's quiet, staccato notes on a descending chromatic scale.
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