Fanfare for the Common Man

Over the course of five sweltering months spanning the summer of 1787, delegates assembled in Philadelphia to establish one of the most revolutionary documents in human history—the Constitution of the United States. Enshrined in the document is the dignity of the individual. The Constitution’s Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual, including freedom of speech, press, and religion. These rights, not granted by law but instead …

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Decoration Day

Listen closely to Charles Ives’ Decoration Day and you may hear the lament of the dead.* The piece evokes ghosts of the battlefield and the distant echoes of small town New England observances of Decoration Day, the solemn American holiday of remembrance, started in the aftermath of the Civil War. It’s the holiday we now know as Memorial Day. Decoration Day is the second movement of Ives’ four movement Holidays Symphony, written between 1897 …

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