“Hawthorne” is essentially and fundamentally a joke. It is a fusion of several “supernatural” episodes from Hawthorne’s short stories, including particularly that of the “Celestial Railroad.” In this story, passengers book a cheap ticket to Heaven on a train, where much celebrating and drinking is going on; the passengers laugh at the slow-moving pilgrims outside the window, singing their hymns; but of course, their cheap ticket does not exactly take them to Heaven. This is the “theme” of the movement perhaps, this dialectic, the constant interplay of the profane and sacred. Famously, a board is used to depress very soft clusters of notes, high in the keyboard, like “distant bells over the graveyard.” The opening of the movement is the fanciful frost, growing on a window in winter; some moments later, demons dance around the bowl of a pipe; scarecrows look down at gypsy bands; at a much later juncture, a marching band is stopped short by a drum corps. When “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean” arrives, experienced Ivesians will know they are in for it; all hell will break loose. And indeed the ending is a chaotic pile-up, faster and faster, in which the themes swirl; one last quiet hymn is followed by a naughty dissonant “so there” conclusion. Hawthorne was performed live at Bard College, May 2, 2007.