Charles Ives

Charles Ives , 1874-1954, American composer and organist, b. Danbury, Conn., grad. Yale, 1898; pupil of Dudley Buck and Horatio Parker. He was an organist (1893-1904) in churches in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. In the insurance business from 1898 to 1930, Ives was concurrently composing music that was extremely original, iconoclastic, and advanced in style, anticipating some of the innovations of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, but not influencing musical trends because most of his works were not published as they were written. They were little known until 1939, when performance of his second piano sonata, Concord (1911-15), won him wide recognition. In 1947 his Third Symphony was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Ives's compositions include four numbered symphonies, orchestral suites, sonatas, organ pieces, choral works, a great deal of chamber music, and about 150 songs. His works are frequently dissonant, harmonically dense, and lushly scored with complexly layered themes, textures, and rhythms. In addition, he often uses vernacular American music, e.g., folk music, hymns and spirituals, marches, dances, rags, blues, and parlor songs, in his compositions, evoking the spirit of such aspects of American life as revival meetings and brass-band parades.

Bibliography: See his Essays before a Sonata (new ed. 1962) and his Memos, ed. by J. E. Kirkpatrick (1972); biography by H. and S. Cowell (rev. ed. 1969); V. Perlis, Charles Ives Remembered (1974); R. S. Perry, Charles Ives and the American Mind (1974); H. W. Hitchcock, Ives (1977).

Ives, Charles (1874–1954), composer.Born in Danbury, Connecticut, to George E. Ives, a former Civil War bandleader and music teacher, and Mary Elizabeth Parmelee, Ives grew up in a rich musical environment. He excelled as a pianist, became a church organist at age fourteen, and later attended Yale (1894–1898), studying composition with Horatio Parker. From age twelve, Ives composed works that reflected his father's iconoclastic views about dissonant harmony and his own love of musical borrowing from patriotic and popular songs and hymns. Parker discouraged his experimentation, and Ives kept his innovations to himself while composing in the evenings and on weekends.

Following the wishes of his father, who had died unexpectedly in 1894, Ives chose a career in insurance over music. In 1908, he married Harmony Twichell, the daughter of the Reverend Joseph Twichell of Hartford, a close friend of Samuel L. Clemens. In his Memos (1932), Ives identified Harmony as the greatest influence on his musical development other than his father. The couple settled in West Redding, Connecticut.

After a heart attack in 1918 left him unable to work, Ives revised and self‐published his Second Piano Sonata, the Concord Sonata, his aesthetic statement Essays before a Sonata (both 1920), and later his 114 Songs (1922). He wrote for solo piano, chamber ensembles, chorus, band, and orchestra, including multimovement symphonies and more than 140 solo songs. By 1925, he ceased composing new works and instead revised his existing oeuvre. Although working in seclusion, he won a following among young composers through occasional public performance of his music.

Ives's rugged musical language, with its unexpected harmonies, quotations of popular American music, and conscious ties to transcendentalism, grew in influence after his death. By the end of the twentieth century, he was widely regarded as America's most important composer of concert music. His Third Symphony won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize.
See also Music: Classical Music; Music: Popular Music; New England.

Bibliography

Stuart Feder, and Charles Ives , “My Father's Song”: A Psychoanalytic Biography, 1992.
J. Peter Burkholder, ed., Charles Ives and His World, 1996.

Susan C. Cook

Ives, Charles (1874–1954) US composer. He often used American folk music as his thematic basis, as in Variations on America for organ (1891) and the Symphony No. 2 (1902). His works vary greatly in style, some are atonal, some quote from hymns or band music and some are quite conventional. He wrote four symphonies, chamber music and many songs. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for music.