Popular American composers like Richard Rodgers, Aaron Copeland and Charles Gerswhin are familiar names to most Americans. We hear their music played in many settings; musical theatre productions, symphony concerts, recordings and film scores. But their distinct genre of music, labeled American sound, owes a great debt to a composer who was a millionaire insurance businessman, Charles Ives.
If you have never heard of him, don’t feel badly, most Americans who weren’t music majors in college haven’t. But once you have listened to Charles Ives brand of American musical compositions, you will want to hear and learn more about the man behind this uniquely American sounding classical music.
Listening to a Charles Ives symphony or movement, song or sonata is like the Fourth of July, summer cornfields, bustling city streets of Chicago, camp town meetings, and southern gospel churches combined with the lofty cathedrals of Europe. It’s a blended melody of being human and spiritual and modern grounded in the nitty gritty of everyday realism. Listen to Charles Ives Fourth Symphony while sprawled on a picnic blanket or listen to his Universe Symphony under a warm starry night in your backyard. His music if for an American life.
Americans have been music makers since the days of the early colonists. We made music in the fields, in wagon trains heading west, on fishing boats, in the coal mines of Virginia and in our vast array of churches. But it took us 200 years to decide that American sounds and American music could hold its own against the European masters who dominated symphonies and concert halls around the world.
And it was Charles Ives who led the way for that American musical sound to be captured in concert worthy pieces that could compete with Mozart and Beethoven, but held the sounds of America in their chords. His music was America; idealistic, independent, hopeful, and distinctly American. He took the sounds of America, a quiet and spiritual New England church hymn, workers whistling in the field, the patriotic tunes of our Fourth of July celebrations, the melodies sung in front room parlors and blended these simple humble ingredients into soaring visions of an America that could compete with the European classics. His music told us we were as good as the masters we’d rebelled against. We no longer needed to rely on their music, their art, their culture. We could create our own that was as strong and magnificient as any Beethoven symphony and yet uniquely American.
Even the story of Charles Ives and how he became the foundation for future American composers, is uniquely American. He was born in 1874 in the humble manufacturing town of Danbury, Connecticut. His father, George Ives, was a bandmaster who had served as the Unions youngest bandmaster during the Civil War. In the town of Danbury, he continued his life as a musician however he could manage it.
Remember this is a small manufacturing community with no symphony, little “culture” at a time, the 19th century, when music wasn’t considered a real job or profession, but a hobby. And yet, the man who was the father of the boy who would grow up to lead America’s musical future persevered in his chosen trade. He led choirs, conducted bands, taught music, led theatre orchestras and led Danbury to become known as the “most musical town in Conneticut”.
We can thank George Ives for the love of music he shared with his son. He taught his son what all great composers have at the core; the ability to take the experiences of ordinary people, men and women and turn it into music. Music allows us to feel, relive the battle, the love affair, the loss of life, the pain of living, the agony of defeat, the hope of victory.
For George Ives and eventually his son, they turned to those American experiences to drive their music. It was the Civil war battle song, the Stephen Foster love song, the workers ballad, the gospel wail of the slave in the field and the baseball diamond’s hero that led Charles Ives to become an American composer of American music.
He was a genius, a childhood prodigy, who composed his first pieces of music at age 13 and those early works give us a glimpse of his musical future. Listen to Variations on “America” to hear America from his perspective. In March No. 2, and The Circus Band, the classic marches of the small town patriotic bandmaster are blended with Ives own whimsical rhythms.
His father had trained him well on keyboard, drum, horns; every musical instrument within their grasp was mastered by Charles Ives although the organ with its soaring sound appealed to him the most. His father had hoped that he would become a concert pianist or organist, but Charles Ives never earned a living as a musician, although creating music would become his lifework.
George Ives gave his son many gifts, but the most important might have been the permission to be different, to see music in everything, not just the traditional instruments. He pounded piano keys, mixed sounds, experimented with keys and rhythms that were non traditional and even downright “quirky” .
Today we called those experiments modernist music with its distinctly modern musical techniques of polytonality, tone clusters, aleatoric elements and quarters tones. Every major musical movement of the 20th century is seen in the musical compositions of Charles Ives. He challenged tradition and made his own “music”, forming a foundation that later composers like Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin would embrace and expand upon.
At age 19, entering Yale University to acquire a music degree, Charles Ives was fortunate to find someone who could take his natural musical genius and add to it the musical expertise and knowledge that would allow him to become America’s first true composer. That person was Horatio Parker, a demanding, conservative music teacher at Yale University, who forced him to learn the basics needed to become a true composer. But then after mastering them, he promptly challenged conventional composition to embark upon his own flights of musical fancy.
It was at Yale that he composed his First Symphony and it was indeed a grand piece of music, precocious and patterned after the European masters, but retaining an American flair that was highly original. And yet, the music of fife and field still called to him and in works like First String Quartet we hear the echoes of American gospel blended with European classics, the modernistic theme that would permeate Charles Ives work throughout his life.
Despite his love for music and his success at Yale, in 1898, Charles Ives made a decision that might also be distinctly American. He decided to forego a music degree and the slow path to musical fame of teaching in an University, study in Europe and work on the continent. Instead he left Yale to become a $15.00 a week insurance salesman.
Charles Ives did not choose to follow the traditional path to musical fame. He wanted to be free to create his music, when he wanted and how he wanted. It was this American steak of individualism that set Charles Ives apart from the traditional. And it allowed him to create and compose the equally fiercely independent American music that became his gift to us.
For the next twenty years he worked, slowly and steadily. He worked at selling insurance and becoming wealthy. And he never quit making music. He worked as a church organist and choir director. And he worked at composing.
During these years, his work was eclectic. He wrote Second Symphony where he continued to combine elements of classic European music styles with more contemporary American music strands. He wrote music that would not be played until many years later. It was too original and controversial for mainstream orchestras. He labored with little musical recognition, continuing to compile a portfolio that was far reaching in its scope and grandeur, like America itself.
Labels like the Greatest American Composer or the First Great American Composer would mean little to Charles Ives. He scorned those musicians who labored to win awards and fame with their compositions, instead like The New England Transcendentalists of his childhood, he believed in personal action for one’s own enjoyment and a fiercely held self reliance. He composed the music that Walt Whitman proclaimed in poetry and Emerson wrote in powerful essay.
Charles Ives gave away his music, refused to copyright it and shared it with anyone who wanted to use it. He was the first open source musical freeware in a field where competition to be the best is always fierce. He withdrew from seeking musical fame, stating, “I work better if I keep to my own music and let others keep to their’s.” Statements like, “The more a composer accepts from his patrons, the less he will accept from himself”, demonstrate his fierce desire to remain true to the music within him.
If you have never heard Charles Ives music and chances are you haven’t, you should begin with Ives Plays Ives. Because his work was so rarely recorded or even played in America’s concert halls, there are few examples from his lifetime. Between the years of 1934 and 1943, however, Charles Ives decided to record his own works, just so he could hear them. Remember all those years of selling insurance and becoming known as the common man’s insurance man with estate planning? Charles Ives could afford to produce his own music after his retirement from “work”. His decision many years before to fund his own work by his insurance career gave him the musical freedom he so enjoyed.
Ives entered the recording studio to work on those pieces that fascinated him. Will they fascinate the listener as well? It remains to be seen, but in the CD, Ives Plays Ives,you can hear not only the music he composed but the performer. Charles Ives wasn’t a singer and that is evident in the sound of his voice as he belts out the patriotic song, They Are There. Parts of this CD of his own recordings will leave you wondering if those of us who love his work are crazy and parts of it will leave you breathless. And that is the effect Charles Ives would have wanted.
In his own words,
“If it feels like kicking over an ash can, a poet’s castle, or a prosodic law, will you stop it? … If it happens to feel like trying to fly where humans cannot fly, to sing what cannot be sung, to walk in a cave on all fours, or to tighten up its girth in blind hope and faith and try to scale mountains that are not, who shall stop it? In short, must a song always be a song!”
Charles Ives, American Composer died at age 80 in 1954, having lived an uniquely American life, fiercely independent, resolved to be his own man, and make his music, the way he heard it in the world. He is known as the Father of American Music, creating and experimenting with musical elements and techniques that are the foundation of all modern music. While he never attained critical acclaim during his lifetime, a loyal cadre of followers and fans continued to espouse the genius of Charles Ives. Like many geniuses and prodigies time will show if Charles Ives enters the hallowed halls of Brahams, Beethoven, and Mozart, but for many Americans, he is their composer.
If you have never listened to the music of Charles Ives, begin with Ives Plays Ives, and then continue on to some of these to discover the madcap musical brain of Charles Ives, an American original. Don’t expect pretty music, but expect to be challenged.
Music of Charles Ives online
Ives play Ives: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXHjeSamzno
His Concord Sonata: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKzf4CQP3cM
Holidays Symphony: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559370
Variations on America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2S_5y0eOAA&feature;=related
Bellagio Fountains: Hoe Down:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2S_5y0eOAA&feature;=related
Two Little Flowers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_YBpocM4Yw
Music you should buy!
The Complete Songs Of Charles Ives: Volume 3 http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Songs-Charles-Ives-Vol/dp/B0000049MM
Universe Symphony: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/reinhard
Symphony Number Two: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000001GC4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf;_rd_t=201&pf;_rd_i=B0000062D1&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0RZ6RTRW8YVWPB33M7CR
Ives Play Ives: http://www.amazon.com/Plays-Complete-Recordings-Charles-1933-1943/dp/B000ETRM9E
Four Violins Sonata:http://www.amazon.com/Ives-Violin-Sonatas-Nos-1-4/dp/B00008MLVJ
Children’s Day at The Camp Meeting: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QWTDTQ/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf;_rd_t=201&pf;_rd_i=B00008MLVJ&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0ES91J8WA425TJGPEATE
Ives: An American Journey: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005UED6/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf;_rd_t=201&pf;_rd_i=0393317196&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0468DMBR555NXZ6V75KB
Resources used:
Charles Ives: A Life with Music by Jan Swafford
Essays Before a Sonata, The Majority and Other Writings by Charles Ives. Edited by Howard Boatwright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ives
http://www.charlesives.org/
The author, Betty Malone’s, personal experience as a fan and listener of Charles Ives
