Ives Charles Edward was an American composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though his music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years.
Background
Charles Edward was born on October 20, 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, United Staets, the son of Mary Elizabeth Parmelee and George Edward Ives.
Charles Ives always ascribed his major formative influence to his father, who was bandmaster of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery Brigade during and after the Civil War. George Ives did not put his entire trust in academic education, believing that much could be better learned from the "natural" musical environment. At the same time, he gave his son methodical instruction in practical musicianship, and let him play the drums in his band.
Charles Ives was thirteen years old when he wrote Holiday Quickstep, which his father played with his band in Danbury on Christmas Day, 1887.
Education
In 1894 Ives enrolled in Yale University. He was not a brilliant student, and averaged the barely passing grade of D-plus, but in 1896 he entered the music classes of the composer Horatio Parker; in these he earned excellent grades. About the same time he also took lessons in organ from Harry Rowe Shelley and Dudley Buck. It was during these student years that Ives wrote his First Symphony, the cantata Celestial Country, the First String Quartet, and numerous other pieces. In his last years in college, 1897-1898, he embarked on the composition of his Second Symphony.
Career
At the age of fifteen, Charles Ives became a regular organist in a Danbury church. He also tried his hand at composition. Free from academic inhibitions, rigid rules, and traditional educational restraints, he engaged in all manner of keyboard improvisation, which became the foundation of his future development as a composer. But above all, he absorbed the music of his immediate surroundings; patriotic songs, church hymns, popular ballads, and folk tunes became an integral part of his musical vocabulary. On August 31, 1889, his overture entitled The American Woods was featured at one of his father's band concerts.
Ives's penchant for biting satire found its expression in a number of "take-offs, " which he categorized as "academic, athletic, anthropolitic, economic and tragic. " In this spirit, at the age of seventeen, he arranged the tune of My Country 'tis of Thee in several different keys. In 1893 Ives went to New Haven, where he played the organ at the Baptist Church and at St. Thomas Church.
Upon leaving college, Ives sought some gainful employment, since music was not then regarded as a fitting career for a young American gentleman; he lacked, moreover, the requisite proficiency to engage in a concert career as a pianist or an organist. He moved to New York and served from 1898 to 1906 as a clerk with the Mutual Insurance Company. The following year he established the Ives and Company insurance business, which was discontinued the following year.
In 1909, January 1, with Julian Myrick, he formed the Ives and Myrick Insurance Company, which was destined to prosper and which secured for Ives a position of financial independence. During all this time Ives continued to write music of such astonishing originality and power that it is difficult to imagine it as the product of a busy insurance executive.
The variety of pieces Ives wrote during these years of dual activities is astonishing. Some of these pieces were folksy, for example, Some Southpaw Pitching for piano, Central Park in the Dark Some 40 Years Ago for orchestra, and the Firemen's Parade on Main Street for band. Others were mock-formal, as Three-Page Sonata for piano; and some were deeply philosophical - particularly The Unanswered Question of 1908. The Unanswered Question is further remarkable for its anticipation of Ives's later techniques. To justify these insights Ives wrote a further group of pieces under the generic title Tone-Roads.
The precise chronology of Ives's works is difficult to establish, for he was in the habit of relinquishing one composition and starting on another, and he often transferred parts of a work written for one set of instruments to another score with different orchestration. Fortunately, Ives himself prepared an annotated list of his works, with approximate dates of composition.
Between 1900 and 1915 Ives wrote his second piano sonata, entitled Concord: 1840-60, in which he strove "to present one person's impression of the spirit of the literature, the philosophy, and the men of Concord, Massachussets of over a half century ago. " About the same time he completed his Fourth Symphony.
In 1911 he undertook his most ambitious project, Universe Symphony, "the underlying plan of which was a presentation and contemplation in tones, rather than in music, of the mysterious creation of the earth and firmament, the evolution of all life in nature, in humanity, to the Divine. " He abandoned this project in 1916, but some sketches are extant.
Ives suffered a serious heart attack, which was later complicated by a diabetic condition. These illnesses forced him to abandon composition; among other impediments, he had difficulty holding a pen because of a hand tremor. Thus for all intents and purposes his entire musical production was over before 1920.
In 1930 he retired from the Ives and Myrick firm. The enforced hiatus made him think of publishing some of his music, at his own expense, since he did not believe that a commercial publisher would accept the risk of printing music of such an unusual nature. The first of his own works that Ives published privately was the Concord Sonata, unquestionably the most formidable and difficult piano composition ever written. Its four movements are named after the Concord writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, and Thoreau; in the Hawthorne movement Ives makes use of so-called tone-clusters, sounded by pressing a strip of wood to cover two octaves on the black keys of the piano. Ives brought the work out in 1920, and distributed the edition gratis to anyone who would write to him for a copy.
As a literary companion to the Concord Sonata, Ives also published a small volume entitled Essays Before a Sonata, with an introductory note: "These prefatory essays were written by the composer for those who can't stand his music, and the music for those who can't stand his essays; to those who can't stand either, the whole is respectfully dedicated. " A year later he published a collection of 114 songs written between 1888 and 1921.
Conductors of major symphony orchestras, concert pianists, and professional singers - even the more adventurous ones - were frightened away by the tremendous technical difficulties presented by most of Ives's music. Nonetheless, general interest in the works of Ives grew, and a growing number of professional musicians became convinced that in Ives America had found its true national musical genius.
On January 20, 1939, John Kirkpatrick gave the first complete performance of the Concord Sonata in New York. Lawrence Gilman wrote unequivocally in his review of the concert in the New York Herald Tribune: "This sonata is exceptionally great music - it is, indeed, the greatest music composed by an American, and the most deeply and essentially American in impulse and implication. "
He owned a brownstone in New York City, and a house in West Redding, Connecticut, near his birthplace, and spent most of his time at these two places. He adamantly refused to have his picture taken, and as a result only a few surreptitiously taken snapshots and a passport photograph (he did make several brief European trips) are extant.
The earliest recordings of any music by Ives were made in 1935 by an ad hoc company, New Music Recordings. A recording of his own playing of a movement from the Concord Sonata and a brief interview, privately recorded in 1942, have been incorporated in an album, The Ives Centennial, issued in 1974 by Columbia Records.
Ives never regarded his business as a necessarily degrading occupation. Quite the contrary, he maintained that his contacts as an insurance man brought him in touch with people in all classes of society, and that he derived his musical inspiration from them.
He was a deeply religious man, but his religion was a mode of conduct rather than a rigid doctrine. Ives was also a patriotic American who believed that America was destined to lead the world in the path of righteousness; virtually all of his compositions relate to America, as often testified to by their titles.
Quotations:
"Prizes are for schoolboys, " Ives said. "I am no longer a schoolboy. "
Ives was disgusted by the commercialism of the music business. When recording companies refused to record modern American music he wrote to a friend: "Art and business, all hitched up together. 91 3/10% (I like to be precise) of all radio and phonograph records are 'sebaceous cysts, ' and soft ones at that, though if a three-year-old is always fed candy for breakfast he will always be a three-year-old, and the oatmeal market will die. The letter from the Victor Co. - 'all commitments are made by themselves' is an unnecessary statement! Just look at their g__d - (Ives never spelled out swear words, nor uttered them) softheaded lists - 94% ta-ta stuff!"
Personality
Ives preferred that his good deeds remain unknown. Because of chronic illness and personal disposition, Ives rarely, if ever, attended concerts or the theater. When his own works were played he usually elected to stay at home. He never owned a radio or a record player. He did not subscribe to a newspaper. He was a man of exceptional nobility of soul, but he was capable of righteous wrath when encountering iniquity. When he was apprised of the misdeeds of Hitler, he drew erect and nearly shouted, "Then why does not somebody do something about this man?!"
He firmly believed in the power of moral suasion. He was the last American transcendentalist, in the manner of Emerson and Thoreau.
Quotes from others about the person
The extent to which Ives was ignored by the musical community can be judged from the fact that an article by Henry Cowell, published in the ephemeral magazine Aesthete in 1928, was entitled "Four Little Known Modern Composers: Charlez, Ives, Slonimsky, Weiss. "
Arnold Schoenberg paid fitting tribute to him (in English) in one of his American notebooks: "There is a great man living in this country, a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one's self and to learn. He responds to neglect by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives. "
Connections
On June 9, 1908, Ives married Harmony Twichell; they adopted one daughter.