Charles Ives (1874-1954): 14-18/10/24

[oliver sudden]

Harry Partch presents a similar situation in some respects. If anyone tells you a composer comes from nowhere and breaks completely with the (recent) past, get out the salt.

[LMcD]

Quite so. I don't want to be picky, and I realise that with limited time points have to be made quickly, but I did feel Kate caricatured Horatio Parker unfairly, and I detected a trace of that old-fashioned view of Ives as a happy-go-lucky iconoclastic hillbilly, where in fact he had a phenomenally acute ear and knew exactly what he was doing.

That's true of a lot of broadcasts these days. On the other hand, there were complaints when the whole of the BBC1 6.00 p.m. news was devoted to the Middle East the other day, and I'm sure the appointment of the new England soccer manager will also be covered in depth (and ad nauseam).

[Serial_Apologist]

That's true of a lot of broadcasts these days. On the other hand, there were complaints when the whole of the BBC1 6.00 p.m. news was devoted to the Middle East the other day, and I'm sure the appointment of the new England soccer manager will also be covered in depth (and ad nauseam).

If a better analogy could be found, I might have to agree!

[Serial_Apologist]

A lot of assertions were made about Ives during the week, for which I would have liked to have heard the sourcings. The allegations that Ives edited compositions to render them more "avant garde" was one such, which I hadn't heard before. One which surprised me was that Henry Cowell in effect changed the direction of his music after coming across the second movement of the fourth symphony; to the best of my knowledge Ives did not complete this symphony until 1921; Cowell's most radical works, such as "Banshee", had been written much earlier than that, during the first world war; by the 1930s his own music had become more conservative.

I was also surprised that no Ives experts were brought on to comment, which one would have thought a composer with Ives's reputation as an innovator and influence warranted.

[Padraig]

I was also surprised that no Ives experts were brought on to comment, which one would have thought a composer with Ives's reputation as an innovator and influence warranted.

No expert I, but I have always felt a refreshment from listening to the music of Charles Ives whether in the clash of opposing marching bands or in the stunning almost ordinariness of a Christmas carol setting.

[Padraig]

I was also surprised that no Ives experts were brought on to comment, which one would have thought a composer with Ives's reputation as an innovator and influence warranted.

I
No expert I, but I have always felt a refreshment from listening to the music of Charles Ives whether in the clash of opposing marching bands or in the stunning almost ordinariness of a Christmas carol setting.

[Ian Thumwood]

When I had piano lessons I sight read some Ives piano music with my teacher but we were both underwhelmed..He has always been someone I wanted to be able to like yet just found Ives unnecessarily eccentric.

I find American classical music really mixed. It seems either to be eccentric like Ives or conservative like Hovehanes who I did not think critic's took seriously. I love the energy of Steve Reich but just feel that the real strives in American composition have been in jazz. It annoys me that some critics seem to cite Gershwin as the prime jazz influenced composer yet I feel he was more of a rather exposed songwriter and not serious like Ellington, Monk, Nichols, Mingus, Brookmeyer, etc. It seems like critics are looking in the wrong place for American musical greatness or are reluctant to acknowledge that the true greatness was created by black Americans. Black artists have defined American musical identity in 20th century whether we are talking about James Reece Europe, James P Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Duke, Bird, Coltrane , Michael Jackson or Prince. This is Classic American music as opposed to Classical. There has never been an American Bach, Beethoven or Bartok. Ives is interesting in the same way a duck billed platypus is interesting .

There seems to be a lot of effort lauding Anerican classical composers and bending over backwards to accommodate the likes of the very bland Amy Beech when there is so much more interesting jazz under people's noses.

I have never read of just how Ives viewed jazz. It strikes me as an interesting question and a bit like the nation about Gottachalk catching the precursor of jazz in his music.

I find that Ives almost defines the American desire to assert their identity in classical music but, as in the same with American literature , the results are off putting and underwhelming. I wish I could like his music more but he is just too odd.

[LMcD]

When I had piano lessons I sight read some Ives piano music with my teacher but we were both underwhelmed..He has always been someone I wanted to be able to like yet just found Ives unnecessarily eccentric.

I find American classical music really mixed. It seems either to be eccentric like Ives or conservative like Hovehanes who I did not think critic's took seriously. I love the energy of Steve Reich but just feel that the real strives in American composition have been in jazz. It annoys me that some critics seem to cite Gershwin as the prime jazz influenced composer yet I feel he was more of a rather exposed songwriter and not serious like Ellington, Monk, Nichols, Mingus, Brookmeyer, etc. It seems like critics are looking in the wrong place for American musical greatness or are reluctant to acknowledge that the true greatness was created by black Americans. Black artists have defined American musical identity in 20th century whether we are talking about James Reece Europe, James P Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Duke, Bird, Coltrane , Michael Jackson or Prince. This is Classic American music as opposed to Classical. There has never been an American Bach, Beethoven or Bartok. Ives is interesting in the same way a duck billed platypus is interesting .

There seems to be a lot of effort lauding Anerican classical composers and bending over backwards to accommodate the likes of the very bland Amy Beech when there is so much more interesting jazz under people's noses.

I have never read of just how Ives viewed jazz. It strikes me as an interesting question and a bit like the nation about Gottachalk catching the precursor of jazz in his music.

I find that Ives almost defines the American desire to assert their identity in classical music but, as in the same with American literature , the results are off putting and underwhelming. I wish I could like his music more but he is just too odd.

There's also quite a lot of Amy Beach (sic) around these days.

[Serial_Apologist]

There's also quite a lot of Amy Beach (sic) around these days.

Stranger on the Shore.

[Ian Thumwood]

The American Brahms ?

[smittims]

I agree that Gershwin is wrongly linked to jazz, in the same way that English critics who didn't really know what 'jazz' was tended to detect it in any music which had syncopation. Rhapsody in Blue, for instance, owes a good deal to Klezmer music and Hebrew tradional melody.

But I think Ives is much more than an eccentric or a curiosity. At a time when the Wagner influence was so strong that length and weight were felt to be essential qualities in new music, it must have taken considerable imagination to show that a completely different approach to composition was equally valid. This was the achievement of Ives and Satie.

[richardfinegold]

I just don’t like jazz. I respect the talent of the musicians and a few minutes of it in a club is ok but once the half hour point hits I want to go home. I like Scott Joplin rags but that’s as far as it goes for me. The jazz that I can tolerate owes a lot to Classical, such as Dave Brubeck, who trained with Milhaud. So telling me that jazz is the true American Music is like telling me that Hip Hop is our true cultural contribution. Maybe it is, but I could care less.
As usual I find Ian’s sweeping generalizations, such as that all American Music and Literature is worthless, to be breathtaking in its scope. I will continue to listen to Ives, Gershwin, Copland, Ruggles, Diamond,Bernstein ,Ornstein and others. I may be reading Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Heller, Mailer,Larry McMurtry , Kristin Hannah, and any dozens of authors as I do so.

[Ian Thumwood]

Ives is probably the first name that springs to mind when it comes to American classical composers. In my imagination he has really shaped an identity for American composers to go against the grain and is a kind of forefather to the likes of Nancarrow, Partch and Cage. There have probably been more American composers who have followed the various styles of classical music over the course on 19th century onwards yet Ives is always the first name that comes to mind.

It is an interesting idea to consider how significant American classical music has been. There has been no one of the stature of Bach, Chopin or Debussy and all the significant composers outside of jazz in 20th century have been European even if there have been originals like Villa Lobos or Takemitsu from elsewhere . Personally, I think jazz has been America's greatest cultural achievement and certainly even more so than cinema. There are composers like Reich, Adams and Gottschalk who I enjoy yet I do not personally feel their greatness is as significant as jazz.

I think it was Mark Anthiny Turnage who commented that contemporary classical music cannot ignore the influence of jazz and remain credible.

Seeing than Ives lived until 1954, I would be interested to learn how he felt about jazz.

[smittims]

I think that the American 'independent spirits' would still have done what they did without Ives. Wallingford Riegger, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell and the others were all different and all stemmed from a 'pioneer' concept which is also found in American literature and art.

If you've quoted Turnage correctly (and not too out of context) I have to say I think that a rather shallow, not to say foolish, thing to say. Surely any composer can be 'credible' without displaying an influence someone else wishes him to display?

[Maclintick]

A lot of assertions were made about Ives during the week, for which I would have liked to have heard the sourcings. The allegations that Ives edited compositions to render them more "avant garde" was one such, which I hadn't heard before.

Charles Ives Remembered contains an interview with Elliott Carter given to the author Vivian Perlis in 1969 in which Carter references a visit to Ives' home in East 74th St. in around 1929. The younger composer is somewhat non-plussed to find Ives revising the score of Three Places in New England "adding & changing, turning octaves into 7ths and 9th, and adding dissonant notes" and he goes on "I got the impression that he might have frequently jacked up the level of dissonance of many works as his tastes changed".

What Carter doesn't mention in his interview is that Ives' revisions were in preparation for the première of Three Places by the Boston Chamber Orchestra under Slonimsky in 1931. This would have involved a considerable reduction from the full symphonic original in which dissonant notes from missing parts would perhaps have to be re-assigned to different instruments in order to balance out the aural effect.