CHARLES EDWARD IVES. October 20, 1874 - May 19, 1954. bor

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Charles Ives
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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• born in Danbury, Connecticut
• attended schools in Danbury and then Yale
• first professional position at age 14 - organist
  at Second Congregational Church in Danbury
• while at Yale, was organist at Center Church
• studied with Horatio Parker
• after graduation moved to NYC
• worked as an insurance clerk for 5 per week
• met Julian S. Myrick
• for 20 years worked in the insurance business
• continued as church organist and choir director

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• 1902 met Harmony Twichell
• 1908 - married and settled in NYC

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• 1912 - built home in West Redding, Conn.
• summers in West Redding, winters in NYC

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• 1914 - adopted a daughter, Edith
• friends knew he wrote music, but never thought
  much about it
• 1902 The Celestial Country to 1920 - no
  performances produced by anyone other than Ives
• 1920 - Ives Myrick Co. leader in estate
  insurance
• . . .pretty little tune? . . .old ladies of both
  sexes.

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• stopped composing in 1920 following a heart
  attack
• from 1920 a slow growth of interest
• early supporters pianist E. Robert Schmidt and
  composers Herrmann, Moross, Carter, Slonimsky and
  Cowell
• Ives met his group - Ruggles, Becker,
  Weiss, Riegger from 1927 Cowell
  became a champion

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Charles Ives

• In the Autumn of 1924, Charles Ives and his wife
  moved into this building at 164 East 74th Street.
  
• Ives's commented watching a woman violinist enter
  the Mannes School of Music (then located across
  the street), and how she will be less intelligent
  once she walks out of the building. Despite that
  comment, Ives presented a copy of his 114 Songs
  (published at his own expense) to the school
  library.

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• bound by a common cause for modern music
• determined to extend beyond the rigidity of
  tradition
• free American music from European domination
• recognition began with a performance in 1939 of
  the Concord Sonata by John Kirkpatrick in Town
  Hall

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESOctober 20, 1874 - May 19,
1954

• performances are now given by the great
  orchestras of the world
• Ives believed that man and nature together could
  transcend the pettiness of the materialists and
  the politicians of the world

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMemos

• father appeared in public with some of his
  contraptions
• I remember the great waves of sound used to come
  through the trees
• Dont pay too much attention to the sounds - for
  if you do, you may miss the music
• I played in my fathers brass band
• . . .in testing the divisions of the tone, father
  tried the slide cornet, glasses for very small
  intervals. . .
• George Ives

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMusic up to 1899

• Song for Harvest Season (1893) - shows
  polytonal basis for later dissonance
• fugues in four keys(1897) - two in C-D-G-A and
  one in C-F-B flat-E flat
• Organ Variations on America (1891)
• Slow March(1887) - his earliest known piece -
  uses quotations
• re-working of psalms - (150th - parallel triads
  in close dissonance and pandiatonic fugato),
  (67th - polytonality), (54th - whole-tone triads
  and dissonant chordal canon), (24th - free
  mirrors radiating from a stable center)

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMusic up to 1899

• First Symphony (1895 - 8) shows a controlled
  mastery (due to his study with Parker)
• First String Quartet (1896) - continued his use
  of quotations and polytonal dissonance
• graduated from Yale in June 1898 with 40 songs,
  various marches, overtures, anthems, organ
  pieces, a string quartet, a symphony, and an
  academic average of D
• went to work in the actuarial department of the
  Mutual Insurance Co. and lived at 317 West 58th
  Street, New York.

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Symphony No. 1 in D minor1896-1898

• begun in 1896
• began scoring in 1897
• completed in 1898, the year he graduated
• written to please his teacher, Horatio Parker
• never performed during Ives lifetime
• first performance by a major orchestra in Chicago
  in 1965
• March, 1910 - an attempt by Walter Damrosch to
  read the First Symphony - 2nd mvt. considered too
  difficult (2 against 3 make up your mind)

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1899-1910

• 1898-1900 organist at the First Presbyterian
  Church, Bloomfield, NJ then Central Presb. NYC
• 1901 moved to 65 Central Park West where he
  finished Second Symphony, the Pre-First Violin
  Sonata, the lost clarinet trio, From the
  Steeples and the Mountains
• Ives said Ive never written anything I couldnt
  hear
• April 18, 1902 performance of his cantata The
  Celestial Country
• June, 1902 - resigned, leaving all his best
  anthems and organ music
• the church moved in 1915 - thrown out

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1899-1910

• his music becomes more experimental
• 1904 - Walking, Third Symphony, Thanksgiving,
  Orchard House Overture
• 1905 - Three Page Sonata
• 1906 - Set for Theatre Orchestra Over the
  Pavements Set No. 1 Halloween Largo risoluto
  (2) All the Way Around and Back I. A
  Contemplation of a Serious Matter or The
  Unanswered Perennial Question. II. A
  Contemplation of Nothing Serious or Central Park
  in the Dark in the Good Old Summertime

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1899-1910

• a series of songs
• 1906 - heart problems
• 1907 - Emerson Overture
• June 9, 1908 - married Harmony Twichell
• 1909 - Washingtons Birthday First Piano Sonata
• no performances since his church years
• March, 1910 - an attempt by Walter Damrosch to
  read the First Symphony - 2nd mvt. considered too
  difficult (2 against 3 make up your mind) slide
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• April, 1910 - an old friend of the Twichells,
  Mark Twain, died the night after the funeral
  Mrs. Twitchell died
• Mar, 1910 - Halleys comet at its peak and evoked
  in Ives the hymn Watchman (1913) which Ives had
  quoted in the First Violin Sonata. This also
  became the origin of the Fourth Symphony, which
  he began in August.

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1899-1910

• Watchman, tell us of the night, What its signs of
  promise are Traveler, oer yon mountains
  height, See that glory beaming star! Watchman,
  aught of joy or hope? Traveler, Yes! Traveler,
  Yes!Traveler, Yes!It brings the day, Promised
  day of Israel. Dost thou see its beauteous ray?
  Traveler, See!- (John Browning)

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1911 - 1920

• 1911 - moved to Hartsdale and started The Fourth
  of July
• August, 1911 - began putting ideas together for
  the Concord Sonata
• Third Movement - The Alcotts
• 1912 - played the Concord Sonata for a friend
• 1912 - finished Robert Browning Overture First
  Orchestral Set Three Places in New England
  Old Black Joe Decoration Day Holidays Two
  Slants
• summer, 1912 - farm in West Redding, Conn.
• September 1912 - The Fourth of July, Second
  String Quartet, Westminster Chimes

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1911 - 1920

• 1914 - 1915 Third Violin Sonata, Sneak Thief,
  Majority, On the Antipodes, Second Orchestral
  Set, began work on The Earth and the Firmament
  or Universe Symphony - it remains unfinished
  and half the sketches are lost
• 1916 - Symphony No. 4
• 1916 - 4th Violin Sonata
• 1917 - In Flanders Field, He is There!
• 1918 - began a Third Orchestral Set (unfinished)
• 1919 - book of 114 Songs (privately printed in
  1922)

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1911 - 1920 Three
Places in New England

• Orchestral Set No. 1 also called New England
  Symphony
• The Saint-Gaudens in Boston Common
• Putnams Camp, Redding, Connecticut
• The Housatonic at Stockbridge
• full score completed in 1914
• Nicholas Slonimsky asked Ives in 1929
• premiered by the Boston Chamber Orchestra 1/10/31
  at Town Hall in New York
• Slonimskys orchestra was very small with only 13
  strings
• Ives was in attendance

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1911 - 1920 Three
Places in New England

• The Saint-Gaudens in Boston Common
• a bas-relief sculpture by Agustus Saint-Gaudens
  from the 1890s as a monument to Colonel Robert
  Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts
  Volunteer Infantry - the first black regiment in
  the Union Army.
• the monument is on the Boston Common across from
  the State House
• Ives expresses his deep feeling for the
  oppression faced by the men of the regiment
• Ives wrote a verse in tribute

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1. The Saint Gaudens in Boston Common

• Moving - Marching - Faces of Souls!Marked with a
  generation of pain,Part freers of a
  Destiny,Slowly, restlessly swaying us on with
  youTowards other Freedom! . . .

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2. Putnams Camp. Redding, Connecticut

• A portrait in sound of a child attending a Fourth
  of July picnic on a site marking the winter
  quarters of General Israel Putnams soldiers
  during the Revolution, hearing military bands,
  and dreaming of Putnams men marching to the fife
  and drum music of the 1770s. In a celebrated
  passage, two bands are heard playing in different
  tempos.

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3. The Housatonic at Stockbridge

• The colors one sees, sounds one hears, feelings
  one has, of a summer day near a wide river - the
  leaves, waters, mists, etc. all interweaving in
  the picture and a hymn singing in church away
  across the river.

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1920 - 1954

• the 1920 elections angered Ives (An Election )
• 1926 - moved in a house at 164 East 74th Street
• couldnt compose anymore - exhausted from his
  double life and never recovered
• Ivess music began to awaken
• 1925 - performances of the quarter - tone pieces
• 1927 - parts of the Fourth Symphony
• retired from business on January 1, 1930
• Slonimsky performed Three Places in New England
  in USA, Paris and Havana in 1931
• 1932 - performances of The Fourth of July in
  Paris, Berlin and Budapest

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1920 - 1954

• 1932 - 1933 spent a year in Europe
• 1932 - performances of seven songs by Linscott
  and Copland sparked many other performances
• Ives became patron saint of many young composers
• 1939 - Kirkpatricks performance of the Concord
  Sonata termed the greatest music by an American
  composer

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Pulitzer Prize

• 1947 - received the Pulitzer Prize for the Third
  Symphony (performed in 1946) (not)
• The work was actually first performed on May 5,
  1947 in New York City by the New York Little
  Symphony, conducted by Lou Harrison
• This was 36 years after it was composed
• The themes are mostly based around hymns and
  from organ pieces played in Central Presbyterian
  Church around 1901. Lead pencil score was
  finished about 1901.
• This symphony is probably one of Ives' least
  innovative works, yet it retains a kind of naive
  charm. No doubt, the board saw Ives as an
  important force, wanted to honor "lifetime
  achievement," but didn't want to scare the old
  ladies.

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Symphony No. 3 The Camp Meeting Recording is
by the Academy of St Martin-in-the Fields,
conducted by Neville Marriner

• Old Folks Gatherin 1st movement
• People traveled long and hard to gather for camp
  meetings. To capture this spirit, Ives begins
  solemnly and ponderously, using three well-known
  hymn tunes to portray the old Christian folks
  arriving at camp. We hear a fragment of the tune
  Azmon (O For a Thousand Tongues We Sing). As the
  first section builds, we hear fragments of Erie
  (What a Friend We Have in Jesus) and Woodworth
  (Just as I Am Without a Plea). The first
  movement captures the campers initial gathering,
  their growing excitement and chatter while
  greating old friends, and finally their
  peacefulness and reflection as they settle down
  to worship. There are passages of great
  tenderness. Near the end the flute begins playing
  Erie and then morphs mid-phrase into Azmon.

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Symphony No. 3 The Camp Meeting Recording is
by the Academy of St Martin-in-the Fields,
conducted by Neville Marriner

• Childrens Day 2nd movement
• The second movement, Childrens Day, uses the
  hymn tunes Fountain (There is a Fountain Filled
  with Blood) and Happy Land (There is a Happy
  Land), and other hymn fragments, especially Erie.
  The movement begins by depicting children waking
  up excitedly to what will surely be an wonderful
  day. Ives creates all manner of jubilance and
  high jinx, especially with a jaunty version of
  Happy Land midway through.

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Symphony No. 3 The Camp Meeting Recording is
by the Academy of St Martin-in-the Fields,
conducted by Neville Marriner

• Communion 3rd movement
• The third movements main theme, Woodworth, evokes
  the campers during the most important part of the
  services, communion and the altar call for souls.
  The climax speaks of intense gratefulness. As the
  final camp prayer is said in quiet reverence,
  discordant church bells ring out softly and
  randomly in the distance.

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESMUSIC 1920 - 1954

• Ives rarely attended performances of his own
  works
• May 1954 - recovering from a minor operation but
  suddenly suffered a stroke and died in New York
  on May 19, 1954

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CHARLES EDWARD IVESSTYLES

• manuscripts given to the Library of the Yale
  School of Music in 1956 by Mrs. Ives
• continually altered sketches, adding dissonances
• had a genius for melodic variation
• quoted over 150 tunes
• regarded the cultivation of personal idioms as a
  limitation
• the lasting worth of his music may still lie in
  the future
• sonatas and symphonies are part of the European -
  American mainstream