When we’re through this cursed war,
All started by a sneaking gouger,
making slaves of men.
They let all the people rise,
and stand together in brave, kind Humanity.
Most wars are made by small stupid
selfish bossing groups
while the people have no say.
But there’ll come a day
Hip hip hooray
when they’ll smash all dictators to the wall. (…)

Fragement from They are there – song of Charles Ives

Hope-Glory-Victory-Amerika, country of individualist consumption and group thinking par excellence, sharply contrasts with the patiently solitary, stubbornly inventive approach of the American composer Charles Ives. Ives has written 150 songs, 114 were published by himself in 1922. Together, the songs formed a chronicle, an autobiographical voyage. Ives inspired his harmonic and rhythmic discoveries (polytonality, atonality, polyrhythms, the use of quarter tones and clusters, even before Stravinsky and Schönberg) on the concrete world of sounds. In his time, Ives’ work was widely respected. Today he is considered the father of modern American music.

One two three is a recalcitrant “show” in which WALPURGIS tries to run, waltz, sing, think things against the grain of the ubiquitous two-four time.