This photo from around 1913 shows Ives in his "day job". He was the director of a successful insurance agency.

Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American composer of modernist classical music. He is widely regarded as one of the first American classical composers of international significance. Ives' 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 an "American Original";^[1] Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music, and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, tone clusters, and quarter tones.^[2] Sources of Charles Ives’ tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster. His works have dissonance, which comes from untrained voices singing a hymn together^{[original research?]}: some voices straining and sharpening the pitch, others just missing and flattening the pitch, creating a cluster of tones instead of a single tone. In addition, Charles Ives' music has polyrhythm, which comes from untrained voices singing a hymn together^{[original research?]}: some voices were slightly ahead of the beat while others lagged behind. Finally, Charles Ives' music has polytonality which comes from two bands in a parade, each playing a different tune in a different key^{[original research?]}. Image File history File links CharlesEdwardIves1913. ... Image File history File links CharlesEdwardIves1913. ... Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... is the 293rd day of the year (294th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1874 (MDCCCLXXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link with display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... is the 139th day of the year (140th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar). ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with tradition or common practice. ... This article is about Western art music from 1000 AD to the present. ... For experimental rock music, see experimental rock. ... A musical technique is a technique used in the composition, precomposition, or performance of music, including extended techniques. ... The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality. ... Example of piano tone clusters. ... A quarter tone is an interval half as wide (aurally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which is half a whole tone. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Hymn. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... For other persons named Stephen Foster, see Stephen Foster (disambiguation). ... Dissonance has several meanings, all related to conflict or incongruity. ... Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. ... The musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality. ...

Biography

Charles Ives, ca. 1889

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 Mary Parmelee. 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' 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^{[citation needed]}. It was from his father that Charles Ives also learned the music of Stephen Foster.^[3] Ives became a church organist at the age of 14^[4] and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .^[5] Ives moved to New Haven in 1893, enrolling in the Hopkins School where he captained the baseball team. 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.^[6] 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. He was a member of HeBoule, Delta Kappa Epsilon and Wolf's Head, and sat as chairman of the Ivy Committee.^[6] He enjoyed sports at Yale and played on the varsity football team. Michael C. Murphy, his coach, once remarked that it was a crying shame that Charles Ives spent so much time at music as otherwise he could have been a champion sprinter.^[7] His works Calcium Light Night and Yale-Princeton Football Game show the influence of college and sports on Ives' composition. He wrote his Symphony No. 1 as his senior thesis under Parker's supervision.^[6] Charles Edward Ives, around 1889 Source: [1] Copyright expired due to age of photo. ... Charles Edward Ives, around 1889 Source: [1] Copyright expired due to age of photo. ... Nickname: Located in Fairfield County, Connecticut Coordinates: , NECTA Region Incorporated (town) 1702 Incorporated (city) 1889 Consolidated 1965 Government  - Type Mayor-council  - Mayor Mark D. Boughton (R) Area  - City 114. ... Official language(s) none (de facto English) Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[2] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[3] Area  Ranked 48th in the US  - Total 5,543[4] sq mi (14,356 km²)  - Width 70 miles (113 km)  - Length 110 miles (177 km)  - % water 12. ... The United States Army is the largest and oldest branch of the armed forces of the United States. ... Combatants United States of America (Union) Confederate States of America (Confederacy) Commanders Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee Strength 2,200,000 1,064,000 Casualties 110,000 killed in action, 360,000 total dead, 275,200 wounded 93,000 killed in action, 258,000 total... In music, a simultaneity is more than one complete musical texture occurring at the same time, rather than in succession. ... Music theory is a set of systems for analyzing, classifying, and composing music and the elements of music. ... For other persons named Stephen Foster, see Stephen Foster (disambiguation). ... New Haven redirects here. ... For the Minnesota school, see Hopkins Senior High School; for the university, see Johns Hopkins University. ... Yale redirects here. ... Horatio Parker (September 15, 1863–December 18, 1919) was an American composer and teacher. ... This article is about the 25th President of the United States; for other people named William McKinley, see William McKinley (disambiguation). ... is the 308th day of the year (309th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1894 (MDCCCXCIV) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Delta Kappa Epsilon (ΔΚΕ; also pronounced D-K-E or Deke) was founded at Yale College in 1844 by 15 men of the sophomore class who, upon hearing that some but not all of them had been invited to join the two existing societies (Alpha Delta Phi and Psi Upsilon), instead... Wolfs Head Society (W.H.S.), incorporated in 1883 as The Third Society by the Phelps Trust Association, is the third oldest secret society at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. ... For other uses, see Ivy League (disambiguation). ...

Charles Ives, left, captain of the baseball team and pitcher for Hopkins Grammar School

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.^[8] During his career as an insurance executive, Ives devised creative ways to structure life-insurance packages for people of means, which laid the foundation of the modern practice of estate planning^{[citation needed]}. As a result of this he achieved considerable fame in the insurance industry of his time, many of whose members were surprised to learn that he was also a composer. 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.^[6] 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,^[8] 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.^[8] 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."^[8] 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.^[8] 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).^[9] Ives died in 1954 in New York City. For the Minnesota school, see Hopkins Senior High School; for the university, see Johns Hopkins University. ... Agency is an area of law dealing with a contractual or quasi-contractual relationship between at least two parties in which one, the principal, authorizes the other, the agent, to represent her or his legal interests and to perform legal acts that bind the principal. ... Estate planning is the process of accumulating and disposing of an estate to maximize the goals of the estate owner. ... New Haven redirects here. ... Map of Bloomfield Township in Essex County Bloomfield is a Township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Johan Julius Christian Jean / Janne Sibelius ( ; December 8, 1865 – September 20, 1957) was a Finnish composer of classical music and one of the most notable composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ... The Piano Sonata No. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

Ives' early music

Ives was formally trained in music at Yale. His First Symphony shows a grasp of the academic skills needed to write in the traditional sonata form of the late 19th century, as well as a tendency to display an individual and iconoclastic harmonic style. His father was a band leader, and like Hector Berlioz, Ives was fascinated with both outdoor music and instrumentation. His attempts to fuse these interests coupled with his devotion to Beethoven, set the direction for the remainder of his musical life. This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... Painting of Berlioz by Gustave Courbet, 1850. ...

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; it was not published until 1949. The variations differ sharply: a running line, a set of close harmonies, a march, a polonaise, and a ragtime allegro; the interludes are one of the first uses of bitonality;^[10] William Schuman arranged this for orchestra in 1964. The use of more than two keys simultaneously is known in music as polytonality. ... Atonality in a general sense describes music that departs from the system of tonal hierarchies that are said to characterized the sound of classical European music from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. ... Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. ... The United States Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies in North America were Free and Independent States and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to... Typical rhythm of a Polonaise For a robe à la polonaise, see Polonaise (clothing). ... The use of more than two keys simultaneously is known in music as polytonality. ... William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910–February 15, 1992) was an American composer and music administrator. ...

Around the turn of twentieth century Ives composed his Second Symphony signifying a departure from the conservative approach of his composition teacher at Yale, Horatio Parker. His first symphony is a more conventional piece since Parker had insisted that he stick to the older European style. However, the second symphony, composed after he had graduated, adopted new techniques that included musical quotes, unusual phrasing and orchestration, and even a blatantly dissonant 11 note chord ending the work. The second symphony foreshadows his later compositional style even though the piece is relatively conservative by Ives' standards.

In 1906 Ives would compose what some have argued was the first radical musical work of the twentieth century, "Central Park in the Dark".^[11] The piece evokes 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 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 orchestra, that he established the mature sonic world that would become 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 never fully revealed to the audience, and it is tremendously mysterious. It has become one of his more popular works.^[12] Leonard Bernstein even borrowed its title for his Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1973, noting that he always thought of the piece as a musical question, not a metaphysical one. // The Unanswered Question American composer, Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) composed many classical pieces. ... Trumpeter redirects here. ... â™  This article is about the family of musical instruments. ... A string orchestra is an orchestra composed solely of stringed instruments. ... A chorale was originally a hymn of the Lutheran church sung by the entire congregation. ... // The Unanswered Question American composer, Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) composed many classical pieces. ... Leonard Bernstein in 1971 Leonard Bernstein (IPA pronunciation: )[1] (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, and pianist. ... Lectures held at Harvard University by distinguished academics. ...

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' 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. The Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. ...

Pieces such as The Unanswered Question were almost certainly influenced by the New England transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.^[8] 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 Unanswered Question American composer, Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) composed many classical pieces. ... Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early-to mid-19th century. ... Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century. ... Thoreau redirects here. ... The Piano Sonata No. ... Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist. ... A scherzo (plural scherzi) is a name given to a piece of music or a movement from a larger piece such as a symphony. ... Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer. ...

The sonata is possibly Ives' 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' 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' 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. All these effects are combined to create one of the towering masterworks of 20th century piano literature, an unprecedented masterpiece of American music. For other uses, see Viola (disambiguation). ... “Beethoven” redirects here. ... The coversheet to Beethovens 5th Symphony. ... A tone cluster, in music and in Western tuning, is a chord or simultaneity comprised of consecutive tones separated chromatically. ...

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.) In it Ives finally resolves all of his compositional issues and the full force of his considerable genius is heard. The final movement can be seen as an apotheosis of his work and a culmination of his musical achievement. A complete performance was not given until 1965, almost half a century after the symphony was completed, and more than a decade after Ives' death. The Symphony No. ... Tremolo is a musical term with two meanings: A rapid repetition of the same note, a rapid variation in the amplitude of a single note, or an alternation between two or more notes. ...

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.^[13] 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. The Universe Symphony is an unfinished work by American classical music composer Charles Ives. ...

Ives' 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' 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' 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. Mahler redirects here. ... Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. ...

Reception

Ives' music was largely ignored during his lifetime as an active composer, but since then his reputation has greatly increased. (For example, Juilliard commemorated the 50th anniversary of Ives' death by performing his music over six days in 2004.) Many of his works went unperformed for many years. His tendency to experiment 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' 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. The Juilliard School is one of the worlds premier performing arts conservatories, in New York City. ...

Early supporters of his music included Henry Cowell, Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland. Cowell's periodical New Music published a substantial number of Ives' scores (with the composer's approval), but for almost 40 years Ives had few performances that he did not arrange or back, generally with Nicolas Slonimsky as the conductor.^[9] After seeing a copy of Ives' self-published 114 Songs during the 1930s, Copland published a newspaper article praising the collection. Henry Cowell (March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, musical theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. ... Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. ... Nicolas Slonimsky (April 27, 1894 - December 25, 1995) was a Russian-American composer, conductor, music critic, musician, and author. ...

Ives began to acquire more public recognition during the 1930s, with performances of a chamber orchestra version of his Three Places in New England both in the U.S. and on tour in Europe by conductor Nicholas Slonimsky and the New York Town Hall premiere of his Piano Sonata No. 2 (The Concord Sonata) by John Kirkpatrick in 1939, which led to favorable commentary in the major New York newspapers. Later, around the time of the composer's death in 1954, Kirkpatrick teamed with soprano Helen Boatwright for the first extended recorded recital of Ives' songs for the obscure Overtone label (Overtone Records catalog number 7). (Boatwright and Kirkpatrick recorded a new selection of songs for the Ives Centennial Collection that Columbia Records published in 1974.)

His obscurity lifted 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.^[14] 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". Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 - February 2, 2003) was an American composer. ... The Pulitzer Prize for Music was first awarded in 1943. ...

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' music. When meeting Ives, Hermann confessed that he had tried his hand at performing Ives' Concord Sonata. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Piano Sonata No. ...

Remarkably, Ives, who actually avoided the radio and the phonograph, agreed to make a series of piano recordings from 1933 to 1943 that were later issued by Columbia Records on a special LP set issued for Ives' centenary in 1974. New World Records issued 42 tracks of Ives' recordings on CD on April 1, 2006.^[15] Columbia Records is the oldest brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888, and was the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. ... Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc. ...

Recognition of Ives' 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. Arnold Schoenberg, Los Angeles, 1948 Arnold Schoenberg (pronounced [ˈaːrnɔlt ˈʃøːnbɛrk]) (13 September 1874 – 13 July 1951) was an Austrian and later American composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School. ... William Howard Schuman (August 4, 1910–February 15, 1992) was an American composer and music administrator. ...

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. Leonard Bernstein in 1971 Leonard Bernstein (IPA pronunciation: )[1] (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, and pianist. ... The New York Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in New York City. ... Columbia Records is the oldest brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888, and was the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. ...

Another pioneering Ives recording, undertaken during the 1950's, was the first complete set of the four violin sonatas, performed by Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Rafael Druian and John Simms.

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. Leopold Stokowski (born Antoni Stanisław Bolesławowicz April 18, 1882 in London, England, died September 13, 1977 in Nether Wallop, England) was the conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and the Symphony of the Air. ... In 1962, at the age of 80, Leopold Stokowski founded the American Symphony Orchestra. ...

Another major promotor of Ives was choral conductor Gregg Smith, who made a series of recordings of the composer's shorter works during the 1960s, including first stereo recordings of the psalm settings and arrangements of many short pieces for theater orchestra. During the 1960s, the Juilliard String Quartet recorded the two string quartets.

In the present, Michael Tilson Thomas is an enthusiastic exponent of Ives' symphonies as is composer and biographer Jan Swafford. Ives' work is regularly programmed in Europe. Ives has also inspired pictorial artists, most notably Eduardo Paolozzi who entitled one of his 1970s sets 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.^[16] Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944), nicknamed MTT, is an American conductor, pianist and composer. ... Jan Swafford (b. ... Paolozzis Newton, bronze (1995) in the courtyard of the British Library Paolozzi follows William Blakes 1795 print Newton in illustrating how Isaac Newtons equations changed our view of the world to being one determined by mathematical laws. ... Screen-printing, also known as silkscreening or serigraphy, is a printmaking technique that creates a sharp-edged single-color image using a stencil and a porous fabric. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar. ... Official language(s) none (de facto English) Capital Hartford Largest city Bridgeport[2] Largest metro area Hartford Metro Area[3] Area  Ranked 48th in the US  - Total 5,543[4] sq mi (14,356 km²)  - Width 70 miles (113 km)  - Length 110 miles (177 km)  - % water 12. ...

The Scottish baritone Henry Herford began a survey of Ives' songs in 1990, but this remains incomplete, owing to the collapse of the record company involved (Unicorn-Kanchana). This article is about the Scottish people as an ethnic group. ... For other uses, see Baritone (disambiguation). ... Henry Herford (born 24 February 1947, Edinburgh, Scotland) is a Scottish baritone singer. ... Unicorn-Kanchana[1] was an independent record label. ...

Pianist-composer and Wesleyan University professor Neely Bruce has made a life's study of Ives. To date, he has staged seven parts of a concert series devoted to the complete songs of Ives. Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. ...

Musicologist D. G. Porter reconstructed a piano concerto, the "Emerson Concerto", from Ives' sketches. A recording of the work was released by Naxos Records.-1...

However, Ives is not without his critics. Some find his music bombastic and 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 Elliott Carter has called his work incomplete, but has since revised his stance. Despite the persistence of such views, Ives is generally recognized as one of the greatest composers of the first part of the 20th century.

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^[17]. Nicolas Slonimsky said in 1971, "He financed my entire career."^[18] Nicolas Slonimsky (April 27, 1894 - December 25, 1995) was a Russian-American composer, conductor, music critic, musician, and author. ...

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, but these have been largely debunked by Ives scholars such as Jan Swafford.^{[citation needed]}

• Variations on America for organ (1891)
• The Circus Band (a march describing the Circus coming to town)
• String Quartet No. 1, From the Salvation Army (1897–1900)
• Symphony No. 1 in D minor (1898–1901)
• Symphony No. 2 (Ives gave dates of 1899-1902; analysis of handwriting and manuscript paper suggests 1907-1909)^[19]
• 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)

J. Peter Burkholder (one of the leading Ives scholars) claims that the main themes of this piece are paraphrased from familiar Protestant hymns such as Beulah Land, Shining Shore, Missionary Hymn and Nettleton to name a few. ... This piece is a good example of how Ives learned from composers before him. ... The Second Symphony was written by Charles Ives between 1897 and 1901. ... The Symphony No. ... // The Unanswered Question American composer, Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) composed many classical pieces. ... Trio (c1909–10, rev. ... The Symphony No. ... The Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. ... The Piano Sonata No. ... The Universe Symphony is an unfinished work by American classical music composer Charles Ives. ...

See also

1997 US postage stamp design based on an oil on canvas portrait by Burton Silverman

• List of compositions by Charles Ives

Burton Silverman (1928-- ) is a noteworthy and prolific American painter. ...

Notes

Second Edition, shelved The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians and is regarded as the most authoritative reference source on the subject in the English language. ... is the 79th day of the year (80th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Second Edition, shelved The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians and is regarded as the most authoritative reference source on the subject in the English language. ... is the 80th day of the year (81st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 4th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... Second Edition, shelved The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians and is regarded as the most authoritative reference source on the subject in the English language. ...

Further reading

• Block, Geoffrey (1988). Charles Ives: a bio-bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313254044. 

• Burkholder, J. Peter (1995). All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300056427. 

• Burkholder, J. Peter (1996). Charles Ives and His World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691011648. 

• Cowell, Henry; Cowell, Sidney (1969). Charles Ives and His Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OCLC 56865028. 

• Kirkpatrick, John (1973). Charles E. Ives: Memos. London: Calder & Boyars. ISBN 0714509531. 

• Perlis, Vivian (1974). Charles Ives Remembered: an Oral History. New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306805766. 

• Sinclair, James B. (1999). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300076010. 

• Swafford, Jan (1996). Charles Ives: A Life with Music The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0393038939. 

• Johnson, Timothy (2004). Baseball and the Music of Charles Ives: A Proving Ground. Maryland: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810849992. 

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) was founded in 1967 and originally named the Ohio College Library Center. ...

External links

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More spoken articles

• Works by Charles Ives at Project Gutenberg
• The Charles Ives Society
• Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra Tippett rehearses Putnam's Camp. A short video from 1969.
• A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives, online edition
• The Charles Ives Center for the Arts. Inc
• Art of the States: Charles Ives two works by the composer
• Charles Ives at Find A Grave
• A Charles Ives Website
• Works by or about Charles Ives in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• 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.
• Ives Vocal Marathon - performances and programs of Ives's vocal work.