Charles Ives

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Ives
This photo from around 1913 shows Ives in his "day job": he was the director of a successful insurance agency.
Origin	Connecticut
Country	United States
Years active	1888 – 1927
Genres	Classical music, modernist classical

Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American composer of classical music. He is widely regarded as one of the first American classical composers of international significance. Ives's music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives would come to be regarded as one of the "American Originals," a composer working in a uniquely American style, with American tunes woven through his music, and a reaching sense of the possibilities in music.

1 Biography
2 Ives's early music
3 Mature Period from 1910-1920
4 Reception
5 Influence on twentieth-century music
6 List of selected works
7 Notes
8 Further reading
9 External links

[edit] Biography

Charles Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut, the son of George Ives, a U.S. Army bandleader in the American Civil War, and his wife Mollie. A strong influence of Charles's may have been sitting in the Danbury town square, listening to his father's marching band and other bands on other sides of the square simultaneously. George Ives's unique music lessons were also a strong influence on Charles; George Ives took an open-minded approach to musical theory, encouraging his son to experiment in bitonal and polytonal harmonizations. Charles would often sing a song in one key, while his father accompanied in another key. It was from his father that Charles Ives also learned the music of Stephen Foster.^[1] Ives became a church organist at the age of 13 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .^[2]

Ives moved to New Haven in 1893, graduating from the Hopkins School. Then, in September 1894, Ives entered Yale University, studying under Horatio Parker. Here he composed in a choral style similar to his mentor, writing church music and even an 1896 campaign song for William McKinley.^[3] On November 4, 1894 Charles's father died, a crushing blow to the young composer, who idealized his father, and to a large degree continued the musical experimentation begun by him.^[2] Ives undertook the standard course of study at Yale, studying a broad array of subjects, including Greek, Latin, mathematics and literature. He was a member of HeBoule, Delta Kappa Epsilon and Wolf's Head, and sat as chairman of the Ivy Committee.^[3] His works Calcium Light Night and Yale-Princeton Football Game show the influence of college on Ives's composition. He wrote his Symphony No. 1 as his senior thesis under Parker's supervision.^[3]

Ives around 1889.

In 1898, after his graduation from Yale, he accepted a $15/week^{[citation needed]} position as an actuarial clerk at Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and moved into a bachelor apartment in New York shared with several other men. He continued his work as a church organist until May 1902. In 1899 he moved to employment with the agency Charles H. Raymond & Co., where he stayed until 1906. In 1907, upon the failure of Raymond & Co., he and his friend Julian W. Myrick formed their own insurance agency Ives & Co., which later became Ives & Myrick, where he remained until he retired.^[4] In his spare time he composed music and, until his marriage, worked as an organist in Danbury and New Haven as well as Bloomfield, New Jersey and New York City.^[3] In 1907, Ives suffered the first of several "heart attacks" (as he and his family called them) that he had through out his lifetime. These attacks may have been psychological in origin rather than physical. Following his recovery from the 1907 attack, Ives entered into one of the most creative periods of his life as a composer.

After marrying Harmony Twitchell in 1908,^[4] they moved into their own apartment in New York. He had a remarkably successful career in insurance, and continued to be a prolific composer until he suffered another of several heart attacks in 1918, after which he composed very little, writing his very last piece, the song Sunrise, in August 1926.^[4] In 1922, Ives published his 114 Songs which represents the breadth of his work as a composer-- it includes art songs, songs he wrote as a teenager and young man, and highly dissonant songs such as "The Majority."^[4]

According to his wife, one day in early 1927 he came downstairs with tears in his eyes: he could compose no more, he said, "nothing sounds right." There have been numerous theories advanced to explain the silence of his late years, which seems as mysterious as the last several decades of the life of Jean Sibelius, who also stopped composing at almost the same time. While Ives had stopped composing, and was increasingly plagued by health problems, he did continue to revise and refine his earlier work, as well as oversee premieres of his music.^[4] After continuing health problems, including diabetes, in 1930 he retired from his insurance business, which gave him more time to devote to his musical work, but he was unable to write any new music. During the 1940s he revised his Concord Sonata, publishing it in 1947 (an earlier version of the sonata and the accompanying prose volume, Essays Before a Sonata were privately printed in 1920).^[5]

Ives died in 1954 in New York City.

[edit] Ives's early music

Ives was trained at Yale, and his First Symphony shows a grasp of the academic skills required to write in the Sonata Form of the late 19th century, as well as an iconoclastic streak, with a second theme that implies different harmonic direction. His father was a band leader, and as with Hector Berlioz, Ives had a fascination with outdoor music and with instrumentation. His attempts to fuse these two musical pillars, and his devotion to Beethoven, would set the direction for his musical life.

Ives published a large collection of his songs, many of which had piano parts which paralleled modern movements in Europe, including bitonality and pantonality. He was an accomplished pianist, capable of improvising in a variety of styles, including those which were then quite new. Although he is now best known for his orchestral music, he composed two string quartets and other works of chamber music. His work as an organist led him to write Variations on "America" in 1891, which he premiered at a recital celebrating the Fourth of July. The piece takes the tune (which is the same one as is used for the national anthem of the United Kingdom) through a series of fairly standard but witty variations. One of the variations is in the style of a polonaise while the interludes, possibly added some years after the piece had originally been composed, are probably Ives's first use of bitonality. William Schuman arranged this for orchestra in 1964.

Around the turn of twentieth century Ives was composing his Second Symphony which would begin a departure from the conservative teachings of Horatio Parker, his composition professor at Yale. His first symphony (composed while at Yale) was not unconventional since Parker had insisted he stick to the older European style. However, the second symphony (composed after he graduated) would include such new techniques as musical quotes, unusual phrasing and orchestration, and even a blatantly dissonant 11 note chord ending the work. The 2nd would foreshadow his later compositional style even though the piece is relatively conservative by Ives's standards.

In 1906 Ives would compose what some have argued was the first radical musical work^{[citation needed]} of the twentieth century, "Central Park in the Dark". The piece simulates an evening comparing sounds from nearby nightclubs in Manhattan (playing the popular music of the day, ragtime, quoting "Hello My Baby") with the mysterious dark and misty qualities of the Central Park woods (played by the strings). The string harmony uses shifting chord structures that, for the first time in musical history, are not solely based on thirds but a combination of thirds, fourths, and fifths. Near the end of the piece the remainder of the orchestra builds up to a grand chaos ending on a dissonant chord, leaving the string section to end the piece save for a brief violin duo superimposed over the unusual chord structures.

Ives had composed two symphonies, but it is with The Unanswered Question (1908), written for the highly unusual combination of trumpet, four flutes, and string quartet, that he established the mature sonic world which would be his signature style. The strings (located offstage) play very slow, chorale-like music throughout the piece while on several occasions the trumpet (positioned behind the audience) plays a short motif that Ives described as "the eternal question of existence". Each time the trumpet is answered with increasingly shrill outbursts from the flutes (onstage) — apart from the last: The Unanswered Question. The piece is typical Ives — it juxtaposes various disparate elements, it appears to be driven by a narrative that we are never made fully aware of, and it is tremendously mysterious. It has become one of his more popular works.^[6]

[edit] Mature Period from 1910-1920

Starting around 1910 Ives would begin composing his most accomplished works including the "Holidays Symphony" and arguably his best-known piece "Three Places in New England". Ives's mature works of this era would eventually compare with the two other great musical innovators at the time (Schoenberg and Stravinsky) making the case that Ives was the 3rd great innovator of early 20th century composition. Arnold Schoenberg himself would compose a brief poem near the end of his life honoring Ives.

Pieces such as The Unanswered Question were almost certainly influenced by the New England transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.^[4] These were important influences to Ives, as he acknowledged in his Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840–60 (1909–15), which he described as an "impression of the spirit of transcendentalism that is associated in the minds of many with Concord, Mass., of over a half century ago...undertaken in impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne."

The sonata is possibly Ives's best-known piece for solo piano (although it should be noted that there are optional parts for viola and flute). Rhythmically and harmonically, it is typically adventurous, and it demonstrates Ives's fondness for quotation — on several occasions the opening motto from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is quoted. It also contains one of the most striking examples of Ives's experimentalism: in the second movement, he instructs the pianist to use a 14¾ in (37.5 cm) piece of wood to produce a dense but generally very soft cluster chord.

Perhaps the most remarkable piece of orchestral music Ives completed was his Fourth Symphony (1910–16). The list of forces required to perform the work alone is extraordinary. The work closely mirrors The Unanswered Question. There is no shortage of novel effects. (A tremolando is heard throughout the second movement. A fight between discordance and traditional tonal music is heard in the final movement. The piece ends quietly with just the percussion playing at a distance.) A complete performance was not given until 1965, almost half a century after the symphony was completed, and more than a decade after Ives's death.

Ives left behind material for an unfinished Universe Symphony, which he was unable to assemble in his lifetime despite two decades of work. This was due to his health problems as well as his shifting conception of the work. There have been several attempts at completion or performing version. However, none has found its way into general performance.^[7] The symphony takes the ideas in the Symphony No. 4 to an even higher level, with complex cross rhythms and difficult layered dissonance along with unusual instrumental combinations.

Ives's chamber works include the String Quartet No. 2, where the parts are often written at extremes of counterpoint, ranging from spiky dissonance in the movement labeled "Arguments" to transcendentally slow. This range of extremes is frequent in Ives's music — crushing blare and dissonance contrasted with lyrical quiet — and carried out by the relationship of the parts slipping in and out of phase with each other. Ives's idiom, like Mahler's, employed highly independent melodic lines. It is regarded as difficult to play because many of the typical signposts for performers are not present. This work had a clear influence on Elliott Carter's Second String Quartet, which is similarly a four-way theatrical conversation.

[edit] Reception

Ives's music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. His tendency to experimentation and his increasing use of dissonance were not well taken by the musical establishment of the time. The difficulties in performing the rhythmic complexities in his major orchestral works made them daunting challenges even decades after they were composed. One of the more damning words one could use to describe music in Ives's view was "nice", and his famous remark "use your ears like men!" seemed to indicate that he did not care about his reception. On the contrary, Ives was interested in popular reception, but on his own terms.

Early supporters of his music included Henry Cowell and Elliott Carter. Invited by Cowell to participate in his periodical New Music, a substantial number of Ives's scores were published in the journal, but for almost 40 years he had few performances that he did not arrange or back, generally with Nicolas Slonimsky as the conductor.^[5]

His obscurity began to lift a little in the 1940s, when he met Lou Harrison, a fan of his music who began to edit and promote it. Most notably Harrison conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 3 (1904) in 1946.^[8] The next year, this piece won Ives the Pulitzer Prize for Music. However, Ives gave the prize money away (half of it to Harrison), saying "prizes are for boys, and I'm all grown up".

At this time, Ives was also promoted by Bernard Herrmann, who worked as a conductor at CBS and in 1940 became principal conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra. While there he was a champion of Charles Ives's music.

Recognition of Ives's music has improved. He would find praise from Arnold Schoenberg, who regarded him as a monument to artistic integrity, and from the New York School of William Schuman.

In 1951, Leonard Bernstein conducted the world premiere of Ives' second symphony in a broadcast concert by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra; the Ives heard the performance on their cook's radio and were amazed at the audience's warm reception to the music. Bernstein continued to conduct Ives' music and made a number of recordings with the Philharmonic for Columbia Records; he even honored Ives on one of his televised youth concerts and in a special disc included with the reissue of the 1960 recording of the second symphony and the Fourth of July movement from Ives' holidays symphony.

Leopold Stokowski took on the Symphony No. 4 in 1965, regarding the work as "the heart of the Ives problem"; the Carnegie Hall world premiere by the American Symphony Orchestra led to the first recording of the music.

In the present, Michael Tilson Thomas is an enthusiastic exponent of Ives's symphonies as is composer and biographer Jan Swafford. Ives's work is regularly programmed in Europe. Ives has also inspired pictorial artists, notably Eduardo Paolozzi who entitled one of his 1970s suites of prints Calcium Light Night, each print being named for an Ives piece, (including Central Park in the Dark). In 1991, Connecticut's legislature designated Ives as that state's official composer.^[9]

At the same time Ives is not without his critics. Many people still find his music bombastic, pompous. Others find it, strangely enough, timid in that the fundamental sound of European traditional music is still present in his works. His onetime supporter Elliot Carter has called his work incomplete.

[edit] Influence on twentieth-century music

Ives was a great supporter of twentieth century music. This he did in secret, telling his beneficiaries it was really his wife who wanted him to do so^[10]. Nicolas Slonimsky said in 1971, "He financed my entire career."^[11]

[edit] List of selected works

Note: Because Ives often made several different versions of the same piece, and because his work was generally ignored during his lifetime, it is often difficult to put exact dates on his compositions. The dates given here are sometimes best guesses. There have even been speculations that Ives purposely misdated his own pieces earlier or later than actually written.

Variations on America for organ (1891)
String Quartet No. 1, From the Salvation Army (1897-1900)
Symphony No. 1 in D minor (1898-1901)
Symphony No. 2 (1907-09)
Symphony No. 3, The Camp Meeting (1908-10)
Central Park in the Dark for chamber orchestra (1906, 1909)
The Unanswered Question for chamber group (1908)
Piano Sonata No. 1 (1909-16)
Piano Trio (c1909-10, rev. c1914-15)
Violin Sonata No. 1 (1910-14)
Violin Sonata No. 4, Children's Day at the Camp Meeting (1911–16)
A Symphony: New England Holidays (1911–19)
Robert Browning Overture (1912-14)
Symphony No. 4 (1912-18)
String Quartet No. 2 (1913-15)
Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) (1912-17)
Violin Sonata No. 2 (1914-17)
Violin Sonata No. 3 (1914-17)
Orchestral Set No. 2 (1915-19)
Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60 (1916-19) (revised many times by Ives)
Universe symphony (uncompleted, 1915-28, worked on symphony until his death in 1954)
114 Songs (composed various years 1887–1921, published 1922.)
Three Quarter Tone Piano Pieces (1923–24)

[edit] Notes

^ J. Peter Burkholder. "Charles Ives", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed March 20, 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
^ ^a ^b Grove, "Youth, 1874–94"
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Grove, "Apprenticeship, 1894–1902"
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Grove, "Maturity, 1908–18"
^ ^a ^b Grove, "Revisions and premières, 1927–54"
^ Grove, "Innovation and synthesis, 1902–8"
^ Grove, "Last works, 1918–1927"
^ Leta E. Miller. "Lou Harrison", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed March 21, 2006), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
^ STATE OF CONNECTICUT, Sites º Seals º Symbols; Connecticut State Register & Manual; retrieved on January 4, 2007
^ "Nicolas Slonimsky Eats Dinner"
^ "Nicolas Slonimsky Eats Dinner" (part 2, after 28:50)

[edit] Further reading

Geoffrey Block, Charles Ives: a bio-bibliography (New York, Greenwood Press, 1988) — comprehensive bibliography
J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995) — a study of Charles Ives's use of borrowed musical material and modeling
J. Peter Burkholder (editor), Charles Ives and His World (Princeton University Press, 1996) — a selection of new essays, Ives's letters and contemporary reviews
Henry & Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives and His Music (Oxford University Press, 1969) — the first serious study of Ives's life and works by his friend and fellow composer Cowell
John Kirkpatrick (editor), Charles E. Ives: Memos (Calder & Boyars, 1973) — a collection of Ives's writings
James B. Sinclair, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives (Yale University Press, 1999) — comprehensive catalogue of works
Jan Swafford, Charles Ives: A Life with Music (New York, W. W. Norton, 1996) — standard biography and examination of Ives's work
Multitasking, an episode of The Infinite Mind public radio program (Cambridge, MA, Lichtenstein Creative Media, 2005), a report on Charles Ives and his integration of multitasking into his compositions.