FREE ESSAY ON CHARLES IVES

CHARLES IVES

Born in Danbury, Connecticut on October 20, 1874, Charles Ives pursued what is perhaps one
of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. Businessman
by day and composer by night, Ives's vast output has gradually brought him recognition as
the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, Ives sought a highly personalized
musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible. A
fascination with bi-tonal forms, polyrhythms, and quotation was nurtured by his father
who Ives would later acknowledge as the primary creative influence on his musical style.

Ironically, much of Ives's work would not be heard until his virtual retirement from
music and business in 1930 due to severe health problems. The conductor Nicolas
Slonimsky, music critic Henry Bellamann, pianist John Kirkpatrick, and the composer Lou
Harrison (who conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 3) played a key role in
introducing Ives's music to a wider audience. Henry Cowell was perhaps the most
significant figure in fostering public and critical attention for Ives's music,
publishing several of the composer's works in his New Music Quarterly. 
The American composer Charles Ives learned a great deal from his bandmaster father,
George Ives, and a love of the music of Bach. At the same time he was exposed to a
variety of very 
American musical influences, later reflected in his own idiosyncratic compositions. Ives
was educated at Yale and made a career in insurance, reserving his activities as a
composer for his leisure hours. Ironically, by the time that his music had begun to
arouse interest, his own inspiration and energy as a composer had waned, so that for the
last thirty years of his life he wrote little, while his reputation grew. 
The symphonies of Ives include music essentially American in inspiration and adventurous
in structure and texture, collages of America, expressed in a musical idiom that makes
use of complex polytonality (the use of more than one key or tonality at the same time)
and rhythm. Symphony No. 3, reflects much of Ives's own background, carrying the
explanatory title Camp Meeting and movement titles Old Folks Gatherin', Children's Day
and Communion. Symphony No. 4 includes a number of hymns and Gospel songs, and his
so-called First Orchestral Set, otherwise known as New England Symphony, depicts three
places in New England. 
Much of the earlier organ music written by Ives from the time of his student years, when
he served as organist in a number of churches, found its way into later compositions. The
second of 
his two piano sonatas, Concord, Mass. 1840 - 60, has the characteristic movement titles
Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts and Thoreau, a very American literary celebration. 
The first of the two string quartets of Ives has the characteristic title From the
Salvation Army and is based on earlier organ compositions, while the fourth of his four
violin sonatas depicts Children's Day at the Camp Meeting. 
Ives wrote a number of psalm settings, part-songs and verse settings for unison voices
and orchestra. In his many solo songs he set verses ranging from Shakespeare, Goethe and
Heine to Whitman and Kipling, with a number of texts of his own creation. Relatively well
known songs by Ives include Shall We Gather at the River, The Cage and The Side-Show. 
In 1947, Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 3, according him a much
deserved international renown. Soon after, his works were taken up and championed by such
leading conductors as Leonard Bernstein. At his death in 1954, he had witnessed a rise
from obscurity to a position of unsurpassed eminence among the world's leading performers
and musical institutions. 
Bibliography
Swaffork, Jan. The Vintage Guide to Classical Music. Charles 
Ives New York: Random House Inc. 1992.