Charles Ives - Biography
Charles Ives a great revolutionary who was the first great America composer was born in Danbury Connecticut on October 20th 1874 and died on May 19th 1954 in New York City. His father George was a Civil War bandleader and continued to lead local bands upon his return to Danbury. According to Ives a seminal influence on his concept of music making was in his boyhood listening during national holidays to the sound of multiple bands playing different tunes and converging on the town square. He eventually was to become musically trained by his father and played drums in his band. Ives during his teen years became a church organist in Danbury. He entered Yale in 1894 studied music under Horatio Parker a minor but significant figure in late nineteenth century American music. Ives who in later life would become reclusive was at Yale a standout athlete and was a leader in his fraternity and something of collegiate politician. Under Parker’s tutelage he wrote his First Symphony in 1897 a perfectly acceptable and often charming work influenced by Dvorak that had to wait nearly seventy years for its first performance. Upon graduation he went into the insurance business in New York and played the organ at the Central Presbyterian Church. The insurance company he worked for dissolved in 1907 and along with a friend Julian Myrick he formed the life insurance company Ives and Myrick. They were innovators in insurance who trained their agents in an academic fashion and helped develop the concept of estate planning and structured annuities.
Ives continued to compose during the years of his business career. A wild Second Symphony that used many iconic American tunes secular and religious and ends on crushing dissonant chords quoting Revile. He also during the early years of the century wrote Two String Quartets, a Piano Trio, a cantata the Celestial Song and the first of his many songs. The primary reason for remaining a part time composer was that by being financially independent he could write the music he wanted to. Also Ives was a rather old fashion and conservative man who felt being a full time musician was not a proper profession for a man and thought that most music professionals were “sissies”. Ives in 1908 was to marry Harmony Twitchell a nurse from a well to do family. Ives was to write two very radical works between 1906 and 1907; Central Park in the Dark and the Unanswered Question that are polytonal wherein a quiet basic theme is woven through with snatches of music coming from far away creating a intensely poetic effect this anticipated by a few years similar works by Austrian modernist Anton Webern. He also wrote during this period a subdued Third Symphony for chamber orchestra based a good part on Protestant church hymns.
Ives starting in 1910 and for another ten years was to write his finest works, Three Pieces in New England , Browning Overture, Holiday Symphony that includes Decoration Day, Washington’s Birthday, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving(Fourth of July creates the effect noted in his childhood where multiple bands playing different music meet to overwhelming effect). Ives was also to write his great Second Sonata Piano Concord Mass whose movements are meditations of the great transcendentalist writers Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott and Hawthorne. A Second Orchestral Set concludes with a piece that only Ives could have written Hanover Square at the End of a Tragic Day, the Peoples Voice Arose. Ives was standing on the platform of long gone Second Avenue El Hanover Square Station downtown Manhattan in May of 1915 when word of the sinking of the Lusitania spread through the crowd who stated to spontaneously sing the hymn Nearer my God to Thee. Ives most ambitious was the Fourth Symphony composed in 1916 for multiple orchestras and choir. This work of enormous complexity was not performed until 1965 by Leopold Stokowski. He was to attempt write a Universe Symphony of even more staggering complexity which exist as only a series of sketched realized by conductor Gerhard Samuel a half a century later.
Ives stopped composing around 1920. He developed a number of health problems including diabetes, heart irregularities and a tendency to have periodic nervous collapses. Ives health problems by the late 1920’s forced him to retire from business. Ives according to those who knew him was deeply disturbed by the First World War and though conservative by nature was violently anti war, he was also repulsed by the pace and values of modern life. His music was unknown outside of a group of intimates. He published his works on his own and gave them to anyone free of charge who asked for them. Around 1930’s a group of acolytes started to surround Ives including musicologist conductor Nicholas Slominsky, pianist John Kirkpatrick and most importantly famed modernist composer Henry Cowell. A seminal moment in the recognition of Ives was the concert in 1939 where Kirkpatrick presented the Concord Sonata for its public premiere at Town Hall New York to great acclaim. In the Forties famed film composer Bernard Herrmann was leading the CBS Symphony and introduced Ives works on the radio. Composer Lou Harrison after the war edited the Third Symphony among other works. The Third Symphony was to be premiered in 1947 and was to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Ives was to become more reclusive in old age, he didn’t have a radio or a phonograph and didn’t follow the happenings of the modern musical world. Amusingly he made a private recording during the Second World War of him singing his anti war song They’ll be There where he is shouting in a hoarse old man voice about “the god damn politicians”. Leonard Bernstein premiered his Second Symphony in 1951 which was broadcast nationwide, Ives was too ill to attend but his wife did and when they cheered the work at the end she turned in astonishment to a companion “they liked it”. Ives health was to continue to decline and he died in May of 1954.
Ives is not for everyone, he demands a lot from a listener. The music at first hearing may seem to be disorienting noise. Some critics even believe the Ives cult to be something of a hoax. Somehow all the 19th Century Americana from ragtime, to patriotic songs and hymns juxtaposed in a complex musical web is moving and invigorating at the same time. The best place to start is with his more than 100 songs some no more than a minute or two that are often touching and nostalgic. Ives has had magnificent pioneering recordings by Bernstein, Stokowski and Kirkpatrick. Michael Tilson- Thomas has also made excellent Ives recordings.
