ABSTRACT
The title Men and Mountains refers to Blake's "Great things are done when men and mountains meet". By the time of Men and Mountains for chamber orchestra Carl Ruggles's characteristic manner, which has remained unchanged since, is defined. Ruggles's Evocations for solo piano, written between 1937 and 1945, are his work and his only work for a solo instrument. Ruggles's chromaticism starts from the isolated consciousness, from which he seeks lyrical release in the "inhumanism" of the natural world. With Ruggles people may compare and contrast a composer of the next generation, Roy Harris. Harris starts from the primitive identity between man and nature and imaginatively re-enacts man's apparent conquest of nature and his achievement of civilization. The full emergence of Harris as a musical personality coincides with his realization that his kind of "religious" affirmation must be lyrical of its essence, as well as polyphonic.
