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.
