Charles Ives (1874-1954) was a remarkable American who made his distinctive mark in two unrelated fields. A major force in the US insurance business he is one of the founders of financial planning. At the same time he was making a fortune as a businessman he was also a pioneering composer of genius. It is this latter occupation that is the subject of this article.
Ives was born in Danbury Connecticut to a father who was a director of bands, choirs, and orchestras. He taught his son composition, harmony, and counterpoint. He encouraged his son to experiment with bitonal and polytonal harmonization. The young Ives also became a proficient organist. Upon entering Yale he continued his musical studies under the noted pedagogue Horatio Parker. He wrote his Symphony #1 as a thesis for Parker. He also played on the varsity football team.
Following graduation, he entered the insurance business while simultaneously pursuing a second, though less successful, career as a composer. Most of his business associates were surprised to learn of his musical activity. He was among the first composers to use musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythms, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations later widely adopted during the 20th century.
Though it took decades before his music achieved recognition he had early champions who recognized the worth of his compositions. Among these are Henry Cowell, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann (the composer of many of Hitchcock’s film scores), and Lou Harrison. In 1947 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Symphony #3. He attracted the admiration of Gustav Mahler who died before he could perform Ives’s third symphony. Composers William Schuman and Arnold Schoenberg were also greatly impressed by Ives’s work.
During the 1920 Ives found himself unable to compose any new music, though he was able to revise that which he had previously written. This creative dead-end is similar to that which afflicted Sibelius during the last decades of his long life.
Despite the complicated musical language employed in many of Ives’s works, they are still approachable and can give pleasure to an audience that usually rejects “experimental” music. Not all of Ives’s music is challenging; a lot of it is just plain fun.
Consider his Variations on America. Written for organ when Ives was 17, it is commonly performed in an orchestral or band arrangement. Intended for a 4th of July celebration, it’s a rousing piece in perfect tune with the holiday.
The Fourth of July is the third movement of Ives’s A New England Holiday Symphony. He wrote it to depict the excitement a young man feels during the celebration of the country’s birthday. It’s full of quotations and depicts the overlapping sounds of different bands playing simultaneously. It’s also full of quotations among which are “Yankee Doodle”, “Dixie”, “Battle Cry of Freedom”, Henry Clay Work’s “Marching Through Georgia”, “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, “Sailor’s Hornpipe”, “Battle Cry of Freedom”, “The White Cockade”, “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!”, “The Girl I Left Behind Me”, “Hail, Columbia”, “Garryowen”, “The Irish Washerwoman”, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, John Stafford Smith’s “The Star-Spangled Banner” Vincenzo Bellini’s “Katy Darling” and Henry Clay Work’s “Kingdom Coming”.
Ives’s Symphony #2 was written between 1897 and 1902. It did not receive its first performance until 1951. It too is full of brief quotations. The third movement makes effective use of the Longing for Death theme from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Marked Adagio cantabile, the music is very lovely.
Ives’s fourth and final symphony is considered the composer’s climactic masterpiece. It requires 131 musicians and two conductors. The final movement has the orchestra divided such that two tempi are played simultaneously. The work also makes use of quarter tones. Ives thought the movement was the best thing he’d ever done. Near the end of the movement, several tunes are contrapuntally juxtaposed around another statement of the hymn “Bethany,” after which trumpets and voices (textless) enter with the second half of the same hymn. Following the last held note of “Bethany,” the music fades into a distant-sounding bass drum stroke. Ives Symphony # 4 IV. Finale Very slowly – Largo maestoso
Ives is a great American master who occupies a unique position in musical art. There is no one to compare him to. Though still considered “advanced” byy contemporary listeners his music is worth the effort it may take to assimilate it. There’s a beauty and order inherent in it.
