Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874–May 19, 1954) was an American composer of classical music. He is widely regarded as one of the first American classical composers of international significance. Ives's music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives would come to be regarded as one of the "American Originals", a composer working in a uniquely American style, with American folk tunes woven through his music, and a reaching sense of the possibilities in music.

Biography

Charles was born in Danbury, Connecticut, the son of George Ives, a U.S. Army bandleader in the American Civil War, and his wife Mollie. A strong influence of Charles' may have been sitting in the Danbury town square, listening to his father's marching band and other bands on other sides of the square simultaneously. George Ives' unique music lessons were also a strong influence on Charles; George Ives took an open-minded approach to musical theory, encouraging his son to experiment in bitonal and polytonal harmonizations. Charles would often sing a song in one key, while his father accompanied in another key. It was from his father that Charles Ives also learned the music of Stephen Foster. Ives became a church organist at the age of 14 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .

Related Topics:
Danbury - Connecticut - U.S. Army - American Civil War - Musical theory - Stephen Foster

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In September 1894, Ives went to Yale University, studying under Horatio Parker. Here he composed in a choral style similar to his mentor, writing church music and even an 1896 campaign song for William McKinley. Not intending to make a career of music, Ives studied a broad array of subjects at Yale, including Greek, Latin, mathematics and literature. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and Wolf's Head, and sat as chariman of the Ivy Committee. His works Calcium Light Night and Yale-Princeton Football Game show the influence of college on Ives' composition. It was at this time that Ives also wrote his Symphony No. 1.

Related Topics:
1894 - Yale University - Horatio Parker - 1896 - William McKinley - Delta Kappa Epsilon - Wolf's Head - Ivy Committee

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After graduating in 1898, he decided to pursue a non-musical career, believing that he would be forced to compromise his musical ideals in a musical career. That same year he accepted a $5/week position as an actuarial clerk at Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and moved into a bachelor apartment in New York shared with several other men. In 1899 he moved to employment with the agency Charles H. Raymond & Co., where he stayed until 1906. In 1907, upon the failure of Raymond & Co., he and his friend Julian W. Myrick formed their own insurance agency Ives & Co., which later became Ives & Myrick, where he remained until he retired. In his spare time he composed music and, until his marriage, worked as an organist in Danbury and New Haven as well as Bloomfield, New Jersey and New York City.

Related Topics:
1898 - Insurance agency - New Haven - Bloomfield - New Jersey

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After marrying Harmony Twitchell in 1908, they moved into their own apartment in New York. He had a remarkably successful career in insurance, and continued to be a prolific composer until he suffered the first of several heart attacks in 1918, after which he composed very little, writing his very last piece, the song Sunrise, in August 1926.

Related Topics:
1908 - 1918 - 1926

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According to his wife, one day in early 1927 he came downstairs with tears in his eyes: he could compose no more, he said, "nothing sounds right." There have been numerous theories advanced to explain the silence of his late years, which seems as mysterious as the last several decades of the life of Jean Sibelius, who also stopped composing at almost the same time. While Ives had stopped composing, and was increasingly plagued by health problems, he did continue to revise and refine his earlier work, as well as oversee premieres of his music. In 1930 he retired from his insurance business, which gave him more time to devote to his musical work; but yet he was able to write no more new music. During the 1940s revised his Concord Sonata, publishing it in 1947.

Related Topics:
1927 - Jean Sibelius - Concord Sonata - 1947

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Ives died in 1954 in New York City.

Related Topics:
1954 - New York City

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