Charles Edward Ives (1874-1954); USA

Ives, Charles (Edward) (b Danbury, Conn., 1874; d NY, 1954). Amer. composer, one of the most extraordinary and individual figures in the history of Western music. In his works, many of the innovatory and radical procedures adopted by younger avant-garde composers are anticipated or foreshadowed in some degree. His father was a town bandmaster who experimented with tone clusters, polytonality, quartertones, and acoustics, inspiring similar interests in his son. What fascinated George Ives, and later his son, was the clash of rhythm and tone resulting from two bands playing different tunes at a parade, or from his wife whistling at her housework and a boy elsewhere practising the pf. He would make Charles sing in a key different from the acc. ‘to stretch our ears’.

At 14 Charles became organist at Danbury Baptist Church, composing in 1891 his Variations on ‘America’. He entered Yale Univ. in 1894, studying org. with Dudley Buck and comp. with Horatio Parker (with whose conventional outlook Ives soon grew weary). Ives wrote his first sym. while at Yale, played the org. at Centre Church on the Green, and tried out some of his comps. on the local th. orch. In 1898 he graduated and moved to NY as a clerk in an insurance co., taking up several organist posts. In 1907 he and a friend formed their own insurance agency, which became very successful. Ives divided his time between business and mus., working long hours and damaging his health. He worked on a 2nd Sym. from 1900 to 1902 and a 3rd from 1904-11. Mahler was interested in this latter work but died before he could conduct it. From 1910 to 1918 Ives was at his most prolific, working on several comps. simultaneously. In 1918 he was seriously ill, sustaining cardiac damage; he gradually reduced his business activities, retiring in 1930, and he comp. little new after 1917, devoting the rest of his life to revising his comps. and thereby contributing to the chaotic state of his MSS, which led to untold difficulties in perf. He planned a Universe Symphony in which several different orchs., with huge choirs, were to be stationed in valleys, and on top of mountains.

In 1919 Ives decided to publish some of his mus., without copyright or performing rights. The vast Concord Sonata and 114 songs were issued in this way. The first perf. in NY of orch. mus. by Ives was in Jan. 1927 when Eugene Goossens cond. the 2nd movt. of the 4th Sym. It was a failure. However, Ives's mus. was beginning to attract champions, among them the lecturer Henry Bellamann, the French pianist Robert Schmitz, and the composers and conds. Henry Cowell, Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles, Nicolas Slonimsky and, later, Bernard Herrmann and Lou Harrison. Slonimsky bravely cond. perfs. of Three Places in New England in Boston, NY, and Los Angeles between 1930 and 1932 and later cond. Ives works in Europe. Slonimsky also made the first Ives recording (1934) and Herrmann cond. the first Ives broadcast (1933). The pianist John Kirkpatrick devoted nearly 10 years to mastering the complexities of the Concord Sonata in consultation with Ives and played it in NY and elsewhere in 1939, arousing considerable enthusiasm. (It was f.p. in New Orleans in 1920.) In 1947 the 3rd Sym., perf. in NY that year, won the Pulitzer Prize, to Ives's dismay (he gave the prize money away). The 4th Sym. was not heard in its entirety until 11 years after Ives's death, when Stokowski cond. it in NY on 26 Apr. 1965.

Ives's mus. is sometimes called primitive but is in fact highly sophisticated. It is, like it or not, entirely honest mus., the outpouring of its stubborn and unusual creator, who delighted in pointing out that he had written most of his works before those by Stravinsky and Hindemith which some critics claimed had influenced him. The juxtaposition of incongruous elements, derived from the Danbury bands, occurs even in his earliest works. His Psalm 67 of 1893 is in 2 keys throughout. Even in the Dvořákian 1st Sym. the use of tonality is remarkably free and unconventional. Jazz is drawn upon in his first pf. sonata; in the psalm settings for choir of 1896-1900 occur whole-tone scales, a 12-note row, tone clusters, polytonality, and polyrhythms. Aleatory procedures are anticipated in The Unanswered Question where the cond. is told to cue in various parts at will. In several of the orch. works the memory of the 2 bands playing different marches in different keys and tempi is vividly re-created. He ‘borrowed’ consistently from popular sources such as songs and hymns, or from other composers—over 170 such sources have been positively identified by scholars. Prin. works:

ORCH.: sym., No.1 in D minor (1895-8), No.2 (1900-2, some sketches earlier), No.3 (The Camp Meeting) (1904-11), No.4 (1910-16, with ch. in finale); Variations on ‘America’ (orch. arr. by W. Schuman) (dates of comp. of the syms. are approximate, since Ives himself said he was not sure when he wrote them); New England Holidays (sometimes called Holidays Symphony): 1. Washington's Birthday. 2. Decoration Day. 3. Fourth of July. 4. Thanksgiving and/or Forefathers' Day (with ch.) (1904-13); The Unanswered Question (1906, rev. c.1932); Over the Pavements (1906); Central Park in the Dark in the Good Old Summertime (1906); Set for th. or chamber orch. (1906-11); Robert Browning Overture (1908-12); Orchestral Set No.1 (Three Places in New England) (1908-14); Orchestral Set No.2 (1909-15); The Gong on the Hook and Ladder (or Firemen's Parade on Main Street) (1911); Tone Roads No.1 (1911), No.3 (1915); Universe Symphony (incomplete, 1911-16); Rainbow (1914, as song 1921); Hymn (arr. for orch. 1921); Orchestral Set. No.3 (1919-27); Largo Cantabile (1921).

CHORAL: Easter Carol, ch., orch. (1892); The Circus Band, bass, ch., orch. (1894); Psalm 54 (c.1896), Psalm 150, unacc. ch., orch., and org. or orch. (1896), Psalm 90, sop., ten., ch., orch. (1896-1901, 1923-4); Psalm 14 (c.1897), Psalm 25 (c.1897), Psalm 67 (1898), Psalm 100 (c.1898), Psalm 135 (c.1899), 3 Harvest Home Chorales, ch., orch. or ch., brass, org. (c.1898-1912); The Celestial Country, cantata (1899); On The Antipodes (1904), ch., orch. 1915, v., pf. 1923; Serenity, ch., orch. (1909), v., pf. (1919); The New River, ch., orch. (1911, rev. 1913 and ?1921); Duty, ch., orch. (c.1912); Lincoln The Great Commoner, ch., orch. (1912), v., pf. (1914); Vita, ch., orch. or org. (1912), v., pf. (1921); December, ch., orch. (1912-13); Walt Whitman, ch., orch. (1913), v., pf. (1921); General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, bass, ch., orch. (also v., pf.) (1914); Majority, ch., orch. (1914-15), v., pf. (1921); An Election, or Nov.2, 1920, male vv. or unison ch., orch. (1920), v., pf. (1921).

CHAMBER MUSIC (incl. v. and chamber ens.): Song for Harvest Season, mez., brass quintet (c.1893); str. qt. No.1 (A Revival Service) (1896), No.2 (1907-13); The Children's Hour, mez., ch., orch. (1901); From the Steeples and the Mountains, brass quintet (1901); Largo, vn., cl., pf. (1901); vn. sonata No.1 (1903-8), No.2 (1903-10), No.3 (1902-14), No.4 (1892-1906, 1914-15); pf. trio (1904-11); Chromatimelodtune, brass qt., pf. (1909, 1913, 1919); The Indians, mez., chamber orch. (1912), v., pf. (1921).

PIANO: over 20 Studies for pf., incl. Nos. 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (The Anti-Abolitionist Riots), Nos. 15, 18, 20, 21 (Some South-Paw Pitching), No.22 (Twenty-Two), and No.23 (Baseball Take-off) (1907-9); 5 Take-Offs (Seen and Unseen, Rough and Ready, Song without (good) Words, Scene Episode, Bad Resolutions and Good) (1906-7); sonata No.1 (1901-9), No.2 (Concord, Mass. 1840-1860) with solos for va. and fl. (1911-15); 3-Page Sonata (1905); 6 Protests (Varied Air and Variations) (1916); 3 Quarter-Tone Piano Pieces for 2 pf. (1923-4); Celestial Railroad, arr. from 2nd movt. of 4th Sym. (c.1924).

ORGAN: Variations on a National Hymn, ‘America’ (c.1891, also arr. for orch. by W. Schuman); Prelude, Adeste Fideles (1897).

SONGS: pubd. in the following colls.: 3 Songs; 4 Songs; 7 Songs; 9 Songs; 10 Songs; 11 Songs and 2 Harmonizations; 12 Songs; 13 Songs; 14 Songs; 19 Songs; 34 Songs; Sacred Songs.

Copyright © 1996 Oxford University Press - By permission of Oxford University Press

Recommended Oxford books

###

Read biography at allmusic.com.