| Abstract |
Often called 'the father of American music,' Charles Ives, who died in May 1954, left a heritage of music which will in all probability be as widely known and loved from now on as it was neglected in the past generation. The authors have written a warm, moving story of Ives's life and art. Born in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1874, Charles Ives was long regarded by many as a musical eccentric. Today, he is more and more thought of as a creator as truly and triumphantly American as were Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. As a youth, he was the restless pupil of his father (also a musician), and loved to try new things in musical idiom. Ives was a Connecticut Yankee to his roots, at home with the world of nature, militantly idealistic, relentless in his integrity, diligent in his appointed duties, and proud of resulting achievements. He was a better baseball player than organist when he entered Yale and, afterward, more successful as a businessman than as a composer. He believed that artists could bear their economic burden without endangering their art. Consequently, he applied himself to building one of the great insurance sales agencies of America. His composition was done in the hours he could spare from his vocation. As he prospered, much of his money went to print and publish his music, to hire performances so that he might hear what he wrote, and to make his music available. But, at first, performers and conductors scorned as unplayable music far beyond their talents and imaginations. The burden of vocation and the frustration of avocation brought on an early physical collapse, and Ives spent the last half of his life in retirement and partial invalidism. With financial means to devote himself wholly to composition, he now lacked the strength, and his will to continue composing was damaged by long artistic isolation. The music of Charles Ives is a cultural sourcebook of America at the turn of the century. Ives took the evangelical hymns, the melodies of the dance hall, the military band marches, the sounds of village life, college and fraternity songs, the music of the world of nature, and set them faithfully. He then shaped, interwove, and integrated them so that a fresh musical work might emerge - familiar in substance but of startling drive, perception, and vigor. 'The fierce complexity of reality' was Ives's conception of the nature of things and music. |
