Ives, Charles (EN)

Ives Charles Edward, *20 October 1874 Danbury (Connecticut), †19 May 1954 New York, American composer. He came from a family settled in New England, cultivating the life ideals and way of thinking of American transcendentalists. Ives’s artistic personality was greatly influenced by his father, George Ives (1845–1894), a bandmaster from Danbury, who played many instruments, was fond of traditional American music (religious hymns, popular songs and dances), and was also gifted with an original musical imagination and a sense of experimentation (for example, he loved to investigate and imitate the special properties of random, simultaneous musical events). Under the guidance of his father, Ives learned the principles of harmony, counterpoint and arrangement, playing the piano, violin, cornet, drums, and organ. After only three years of studying the organ, he took up the position of organist at the Congregational Church in Danbury. He served as organist for 13 years (1889–1902) in Danbury, New Haven, Connecticut, Bloomfield, New Jersey, and New York City. At an early age, he began composing and arranging well-known works for various ensembles led by his father. Ives’s earliest surviving composition, Slow March, dates from 1887, and in 1888 the Standard Orchestra in Danbury performed Holiday Quickstep. In 1891–93, Ives attended Danbury Academy and then Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven. In 1894–98, he studied theory and composition with H. W. Parker at Yale University and organ with D. Buck. From 1899 to 1906, he worked as a clerk in the accounting department of the Ch. H. Raymond Agency, the central agency of The Mutual Life Insurance Company in New York. In 1907, Ives and J. S. Myrick founded their own insurance company, which survived until 1930, when Ives retired due to poor health. Ives, absorbed by the doctrine of transcendentalism (an American trend in romantic philosophy shaped by a group of writers and thinkers gathered around R.W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau, who derived the ideas of moral autonomy and democratic equality from religious premises), was of the opinion that all human activity must serve the highest ideals, the common good, the widest community. In his opinion, working in an insurance company was conducive to the implementation of such an attitude. Ives expanded the scope of insurance, which included an increasingly large group of low-income members. He organised a vocational school to educate agents and published for them in 1912 a pamphlet entitled The Amount to Carry – Measuring the Prospect; he also developed a concept of planning the growth of wealth and the amount of insurance policy, later adopted by other insurance companies. Ives’s hard work in the company was accompanied by intensive creative work. In 1908, he married Harmony Twichell (1876–1969), who supported him in his persistent pursuit of finding his own means of musical expression. In 1912, he bought a farm in West Redding, where he settled permanently after retiring. From 1918, Ives suffered from heart disease, diabetes and cataracts. In 1924, he made his first trip to Europe (six weeks in England), but he did not become more familiar with the musical life of the old world until 1933, when he spent a whole year in Europe, stopping in London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, among other places. He travelled to England and Scotland in 1934 and 1938.

By 1916, almost all of Ives’s most important works had been written. In 1916–26, he wrote only a few chamber pieces and a dozen or so songs. During this time, he mainly worked on old compositional sketches, adapting songs for instrumental ensembles and vice versa; however, he was almost completely ignored as a composer. Ives’s autobiographical notes (Memos 1972) contain many references to critical remarks about his work. In 1915, at Ives’s expense, musicians from the Globe Theatre orchestra performed Washington’s Birthday, and the school orchestra conducted by E. Stowell played a fragment of Symphony No. 2 (the composer waited until 1951 for the first performance of the whole piece). Under the influence of critical remarks, Ives sometimes tried to use only conventional compositional means (e.g. in the songs Autumn, Nature’s Way), but soon returned to his own vision of sound and technical means. After World War I, Ives worked with decreasing energy, and after 1926, he stopped composing altogether. There are various interpretations of this fact: some believe that it was the result of overwork from too intensive work in the previous period, illness (including nervous breakdown), others see the reason in an almost complete lack of understanding of his music, and still others believe that Ives – a great humanist, a passionate promoter of the democratic idea – after the cataclysm of World War I – doubted the meaning of his art and devoted himself almost entirely to work in the enterprise, treating it as a means of helping people to secure their existence. In 1919, he prepared for printing and then published at his own expense Piano Sonata No. 2 (1920), a collection of 114 Songs (1922) and sent them free of charge to musicians and music institutions – together with Essays Before a Sonata (1920), a kind of extensive, programmatic commentary on the sonata. The reaction to this publication varied, from mockery to an approving article by the poet H. Bellamann, who became a faithful admirer of Ives’s work and ideas; however, the composer’s text was generally treated with disdain. Ives presented his economic and social concepts in a publication entitled The Majority, on which he worked in the years 1912–22; it contained a programme of political reconstruction of the social system based on the principle of direct rule. In this spirit, he edited, printed and distributed among members of Congress the draft of the 20^th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was, however, treated as a frivolous joke. Ives believed that private property should be limited, because excessive accumulation of goods causes conflicts between people. As the owner of a company that began to bring large profits, he consistently adapted to this postulate.

As Ives’s compositional activity waned, interest in his work gradually began to grow. In 1924, Ives accidentally met the French pianist E.R. Schmitz. The French-American musical society Pro Musica, founded by Schmitz, organised concerts at which Ives’s works were performed (1925 – Three Quarter-tone Pieces for 2 pianos, 1927 – two movements of Symphony No. 4), which were unfavourably received by the critics. Ives gained understanding and support for his artistic views only from young, experimental composers (J. Becker, H. Cowell, W. Riegger, C. Ruggles, N. Slonimsky) gathered around the quarterly “New Music” (published since 1927 under the editorship of H. Cowell and partly financed by Ives), in which the 2^nd movement of Symphony No. 4 was printed in 1929. Cowell fervently promoted his work, gave lectures, prepared several manuscripts for publication, and in 1955, together with his wife Sidney Robertson Cowell, published a monograph on Ives. In turn, N. Slonimsky, founder and conductor of the Boston Chamber Orchestra, performed First Orchestral Set in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Havana, Paris in 1931–32, and three parts of A Symphony “Holidays” in Paris, Berlin, and Budapest. The European concerts caused a great stir; in addition to protests, they also aroused interest in Ives’s work and personality among music critics, which in turn caused a change in the attitude of the American music community towards Ives and prompted the composer to write his memoirs (Memos, published in 1972). Ives’s music began to appear in the programmes of concerts of the New Music Society; in 1932, several of his songs were performed at the contemporary music festivals in Yaddo. Articles by H. Bellamann in the “Musical Quarterly” (1933) and by H. Cowell and Ives in “American Composers on American Music” (1933), and especially the composer’s year-long stay in Europe (1933), contributed to the popularisation of his ideas and work among young music students. In 1934–35, the first recordings of Ives’s works appeared, conducted by N. Slonimsky (Barn Dance, fragments from Washington’s Birthday, In the Night with Set for Theatre or Chamber Orchestra, and General William Booth Enters into Heaven). In the 1930s, only supporters of the American avant-garde showed interest in Ives’s music, and Ives’s isolation from professional life contributed to the creation of a legend around the composer. A breakthrough event in the reception of Ives’s music and creative ideas, which influenced the acceptance of his music by a wider audience, was the performance of Piano Sonata No. 2 in New York on 20 January 1939, and then in other cities in the United States, by the American pianist J. Kirkpatrick, a piece received with enthusiasm by listeners and critics, and a recording (Columbia 1948) of this composition turned out to be a bestseller. In 1944, in connection with the 70^th anniversary of the births of Ives and Schoenberg, almost all available chamber works and many of Ives’s songs were performed in Los Angeles – in a series of concerts dedicated to both jubilarians. In 1945, the composer was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1947, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Symphony No. 3 (performed in New York on 5 April 1946, conducted by L. Harrison). In 1949, the National Association of American Composers and Conductors awarded him a medal for “distinguished service to American music,” and in 1954, Ives received an honorary doctorate from Yale University. By then, he was already seriously ill and died that year after a surgery at Roosevelt Hospital in New York.

Few of Ives’s works were published during his lifetime. The publication and performance of the remaining ones were very difficult, because their manuscripts were not in order. In 1960, J. Kirkpatrick published a catalogue of the manuscripts, establishing the chronology of the compositions and their mutual connections (inserts, alterations, transcriptions). It was only after his death that Ives was recognised as the most outstanding American composer, and his music gradually gained a permanent place in concert life. L. Bernstein included Symphony No. 2 and The Unanswered Question in the concert programme of his orchestra, which in 1959 toured the countries of Western Europe, Central Asia and the USSR. An important event in the reception of Ives’s music was the premiere performance in 1965 (completed in 1916) of Symphony No. 4 by the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by L. Stokowski, which critics considered a masterpiece. In the 1960s, Ives became an idol of the American and European musical avant-garde (e.g. in 1967, The Charles Ives Society was founded in Amsterdam). His music gained an increasingly wider audience, especially thanks to recordings of orchestral works (e.g. under the direction of L. Bernstein, M. Gould, E. Ormandy, L. Stokowski) and gained a permanent place in studies on the history of music. In his monograph, H. Cowell included Ives among the leading creators of music in the first half of the 20^th century – alongside Schönberg, Stravinsky and Bartók, while E. Salzman (Twentieth Century Music 1974) considered him the father of almost all innovative compositional concepts in 20^th-century music. In Poland, interest in Ives’s music did not occur until the 1970s, e.g. in 1975–80, during the festival of young musicians in Stalowa Wola, the Polish premieres of String Quartet No. 1, Three-Page Sonata for piano, violin sonatas and over 50 songs took place.

Avant-garde composers considered Ives the leader of the avant-garde, supporters of national music considered him a pioneer of American music, and philosophers interpreted him as an uncompromising advocate of moral values ​​and democratic ideas. It is not easy to assess Ives’s significance in the history of music, because his very diverse work entered the mainstream of concert life with great delay. It was work integrally connected with philosophical views derived from American transcendentalism. Ives believed that human life should be an integrated whole, in which artistic, intellectual and practical activity is subordinated to moral and religious values. He treated music as an expression of various manifestations of human life. He believed that all art separated from life is untrue. His specific attitude to the so-called programme in music and to the means of musical expression in general stemmed from such a philosophical and artistic attitude. Even within a single piece, he combined crude humour with spiritual sublimity, juxtaposed popular marches and innovative clusters, banal melodies and sophisticated sounds, introduced strict fugues and free form and cast. Ives treated all music with respect, and did not recognise a narrowly understood professionalism of composition. Numerous quotes from melodies known in the United States were intended to suggest extra-musical content related to the life of small-town American society at the end of the 19^th century, that specific intertwining of daily toil, joyful fun, patriotic fervour, and religious contemplation. Ives also believed that in compositional work one could find means of expression with such a degree of transcendence that they would become “the community of all humanity” (Essays).

Many of Ives’s compositions have been lost, some are incomplete or unfinished, many were reworked several times, transcribed for different instruments, and used fragmentarily in other works. A characteristic feature of Ives’s compositional technique is the numerous borrowings, quotations, and musical reminiscences. Over 150 hymns, many popular songs, marches, ragtimes, as well as themes from Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Foster, and others have been identified in his works. About 200 solo songs have survived, very diverse in terms of compositional technique, means of expression, and duration. Several dozens of them were written by him to his own or his wife’s texts, the rest to the texts of English poets (G. Byron, J. Milton) and American poets (R.L. Stevenson, W. Wordsworth, T.B. Aldrich) and a few to German texts (Müller, J.W. Goethe, H. Heine). A large group consists of so-called household songs with a simple texture, sentimental character, referring to Foster’s melodies (The Things Our Fathers Loved, Down East). Others reach back to the American musical tradition associated with religious life (The Camp Meeting, His Exaltation), entertainment (Little Annie Rooney, Waltz) or historical events (3 Songs of the War); the composer used hymns, dance melodies, patriotic and war songs in them. In some songs, Ives introduced unconventional means of musical expression, e.g. rhythmic recitation without pitch marking against the background of a trill-cluster glissando in the piano part (Charlie Rutlage), glissando in the vocal voice (Like a Sick Eagle), a resonant polyphony of great ambitus in the piano part (The Housatonic at Stockbridge), and fast, chromatic sound courses creating a sound patch (The Camp Meeting). The voice is usually not accompanied. The piano part, sometimes complicated (fast dissonant courses, polyphonies, polymelodic sound arrangements varied rhythmically and articulatory), plays an important role in conveying the mood of the text. In many songs, Ives uses constant changes of meter (Down East, The Side Show) or does not introduce a meter marking at all (Grantchester, Old Home Day), sometimes inserts bar lines where he wants to indicate the initial accent (e.g. in Paracelsus, the shortest bar contains three quarter notes, and the longest 21), omits key signatures (General William Booth Enters into Heaven), introduces consistent 12-note progressions in the vocal part (Soliloquy, On the Antipodes), jumps by ninth and seventh intervals, retrograde arrangements, in which exegetes saw analogies with later proposals by composers of the Viennese School. This specific vision of sound influenced the selection of harmonic-melodic, rhythmic-metric, textural means, as well as the cast, e.g. in the song Old Home Day, the composer proposes that the second verse be sung (ad libitum) with the accompaniment of violin or flute; sometimes, taking into account the difficulties of performance, he notates a so-called simplified version (e.g. in The Housatonic at Stockbridge). One of the most representative songs of Ives, which is a synthesis of dramatic and lyrical means of expression, is General William Booth Enters into Heaven after a poem by V. Lindsay, which quotes, among others, the war song Réveille.

Most choral works are religious compositions intended for a cappella mixed choir or with organ accompaniment, and less frequently also other instruments (bells, kettledrums, trombones). A significant group are psalm arrangements, in which Ives fondly uses polyphonic technique (psalm 67 – fugato in the middle section, psalm 54 – double canon, psalm 150 – fugue with imitation of a second), sporadically polymeter, unconventional harmonic means (e.g. in psalm 54 – a series of chords augmented after the notes of the whole-tone scale; psalm 90 ends with an 8-note, second consonance). An example of the symbolic meaning of the compositional means used is the song Lord of the Harvest (from Three Harvest Home Chorales), where three rhythmic layers divided into 6, 9 and 4 and a constant pedal note in the bass symbolise the idea of ​​a single, three-person God, and the mirror-like construction of the whole – the cosmic order. One of the few pieces performed during Ives’s lifetime was the seven-part cantata The Celestial Country (1898–99) for solo voices, choir, organ and orchestra, with traditional means of musical expression, referring to the works of Elgar, Parker and Mendelssohn. Secular choral pieces are usually intended for unison choir and various instrumental ensembles, with Ives referring to the practice of “impure” amateur ensembles, splitting unison singing into dense cluster chords (Lincoln, Majority).

Associated with the function of organist from an early age, Ives wrote organ works already in his adolescence: marches, collections of variations on themes of popular hymns or songs (Variations on America, Variations on Jerusalem the Golden), improvisational interludes. In some organ compositions, he introduced polytonal sound arrangements, as for example in the organ fantasy entitled Variations on America (1891), containing two interludes notated simultaneously in two different keys (F major and D flat major, and A flat major and F major).

The piano pieces of Ives, a great pianist, are varied, but almost all of them are very difficult to perform. Two sonatas are of particular importance: No. 1 (1909, performed only in 1949 by W. Masselos) and No. 2 “Concord” (1915, performed in 1939 by J. Kirkpatrick). Sonata No. 1, in five movements with a symmetrical structure (movement 1 – rhapsodic Adagio con moto, movement 5 – heroic Andante maestoso, movements 2 and 4 fast, dance-like, movement 3 – varied, symmetrical Largo-Allegro-Largo), is united by the composer with a quote from the hymn I Was a Wondering Sheep, which appears in the slow movements. This piece abounds in reminiscences from various hymns, ragtimes, Foster’s melodies, from which Ives, thanks to his own sound vision, creates an original synthesis. This compilation of musical associations in one piece resulted from Ives’s conviction, shared with the transcendentalists, that the diverse activities of man originate from the same mind and heart, that they constitute unity. Ives dedicated his Sonata No. 2 to the main representatives of this philosophical movement, the subsequent movements of which he entitled: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, Thoreau. In Movement 1, the composer introduced the viola ad libitum, and in the last movement, the flute. The text Essays Before a Sonata, preceding the sonata, is an interpretation of Ives’s philosophical and aesthetic attitude and his views on social issues. Reflections on the “four wise men of Concord” (Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, Thoreau) end with an extensive epilogue, in which Ives considers primarily the problem of values ​​in music; he distinguishes the highest value (substance) and the lower (manner), which he associates with moral consciousness and the way of creation, respectively, and discusses them, referring to the works of Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky. A motif taken from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, repeated many times, runs through the entire sonata, and is the carrier of the philosophical guiding thought of the piece; according to Ives (Essays), it is “the soul of humanity knocking at the door of divine mysteries, radiating with faith that they will be opened and that man will become divine.” This idea is supported by a motif taken from the religious song Revival Meetings, repeated several times. The sonata’s sound material is highly chromatic, both in the horizontal course and in vertical arrangements. The chords have a varied structure, from two-note to dense multi-notes used in a wide range of dynamic-colour shades as a percussive effect (low register, fff) or a subtle colour spot (high register, ppp). Ives only occasionally uses metric markings here.

The bar line rather serves as a stimulator of free sound progressions, and large parts of the piece are notated without using it at all. The frequently used polyrhythm and polymetry promote the differentiation of sound, emphasising two or three sound layers. Ives combines textural innovations with new performance proposals (the use of fists and even a suitable board in the playing). The principle of form creation is the assembly of static sound planes, which, when properly put together, give the impression of continuous, dynamic development. A manifestation of Ives’s specific sense of humour is the three-part Three-Page Sonata, in which the B-A-C-H motif (part 1), the Westminster Chimes melody (part 2) is repeated by the second piano or celesta (ad libitum) and two waltzes played simultaneously at different tempos (part 3). The musical grotesque character is also present in Varied Air and Variations, in which among dissonant sounds, changing rhythmic-metrical arrangements, a C major chord appears in the dynamics of a multiplied forte. The result of Ives’s experimental explorations is his Three Quarter-tone Piece for 2 pianos, one of which was to be tuned 1/4 tone higher.

In Ives’s chamber works, the violin quartets and sonatas are of particular importance. The quartets are very diverse stylistically. Quartet No. 1, in four movements (Chorale, Prelude, Offertory, Postlude) entitled From the Salvation Army or A Revival Service and based on traditional compositional means, comes from the period of his studies at Yale (1896). The first movement is a school fugue (initially intended for organ, later reworked for orchestra and used in Symphony No. 4), in which Ives used religious melodies from L. Mason’s Missionary Hymn and O. Halden’s Coronation. Quartet No. 2 (in three movements: Discussion, Arguments, The Call of the Mountains) is one of Ives’s most characteristic works due to its programmatic concept and sound qualities. In the manuscript, the composer noted that it is a quartet for “four people who talk, discuss, quarrel, fight and finally go to the mountains to contemplate the firmament,” which helps to reconcile them. In this piece, Ives emphasises the individual sound of each instrument, uses diverse sound material and texture; next to chromatic melodies, simple diatonic progressions appear, two-note chords (fourths and fifths) and multi-note, almost cluster chords are used, polyphonic texture is juxtaposed with static rhythmic-harmonic formulas. This contemplation of nature and the Creator (part 3) is accompanied by the melody of L. Mason’s famous hymn Bethany. Apart from Pre-First Violin Sonata, the remaining four violin sonatas, composed between 1902 and 16, constitute a fairly homogeneous group of pieces. All of them are three-part, in each one part is based on a religious melody, in the others the composer exposes motor movement. Ives’s attitude to the so-called transformation of known melodies is characteristic here, e.g. in part 3 of Sonata No. 4, the melody of R. Lowry’s hymn Beautiful River is initially only announced by a few notes, and in the whole, quoted melody appears at the end as if gradually emerging from a dissonant background.

Ives’s orchestral works demonstrate his enormous inventiveness in shaping sound. The composer not only adapts the means of performance to a given piece, but often changes them in subsequent parts of the cycle. Moreover, taking into account the difficulties of assembling a given ensemble and the poorer technical capabilities of the performers, he proposes alternative casts and performances of a given fragment (or just the part of an instrument), e.g. The Pond is scored for string ensemble, piano and voice or trumpet or basset horn, for flute or violin, for 3 harps with celesta or with bells ad libitum, and in addition, if possible, the flute part should be played “behind the scenes.” This type of cast proposal was significantly influenced not only by the original vision of sound, but also by experience with small-town instrumental ensembles, problems with assembling an appropriate ensemble, untidy performance, and limited technical capabilities of the performers. Many orchestral works are so-called songs with or without vocals (e.g. The Pond, The Rainbow, Set for Theatre or Chamber Orchestra). In turn, in In the Night (part 3 of Set for Theatre), the composer writes down a melody with text that is not to be sung; it is only to recall the content, extra-musical associations. Ives leaves to the performers not only the possibility of choosing the cast, but also the decision regarding the formal shape of the piece, e.g. Over the Pavements (1903–13) is scored for clarinet, bassoon or saxophone, trumpet, piano, percussion, and piccolo and 3 trombones ad libitum, and the middle section of the piece can be played or omitted.

Most of the preserved orchestral works are intended for a chamber or so-called theatre orchestra with a varied cast or for a brass band (so-called band). These are usually single-part programme pieces (e.g. Over the Pavements, The Pond) or multi-part pieces called “sets” with programme titles of the subsequent parts (e.g. Set no. 2 – part 1 Largo “The Indianas,” part 2 Gyp the Blood or Hearst, part 3 Andante “The Last Reader”), as well as arrangements of popular melodies (Ragtime Pieces, Country Band March). The most frequently performed and appreciated works intended for chamber orchestra include The Unanswered Question for strings, 4 flutes and trumpet, although the 3^rd and 4^th flutes can be replaced by an English horn, oboe or clarinet. The programme of this piece (formulated by Ives in the score published in 1953) concerns the question of the meaning of human existence, to which various answers are given. Against the background of long-sustained consonant chords in the strings (pp, con sordino), symbolising the contemplative reverie of the wise mystics, a chromatic melodic phrase appears five times in the trumpet, that existential question, to which the group of wind instruments gives a varied answer, increasingly dynamic and restless (from Adagio in pp to Molto agitato in fff). A sort of oppositional complement to this piece is Central Park in the Dark, in which the music symbolises (according to Ives) people focusing only on the temporal dimension of reality, on human products.

There are four symphonies for symphony orchestra, A Symphony “Holidays”, First Orchestral Set, Second Orchestral Set, Robert Browning overture and sketches of the unfinished Universe Symphony. Symphony No. 1 (1898), written during his studies at Yale, shows influences from Brahms and Dvořák. The five-movement Symphony No. 2 for classical orchestra features fragments of numerous popular and patriotic songs (including Celestial Country) and hymns, and the whole integrates analogous thematic material appearing in subsequent movements. The orchestration of Symphony No. 3, entitled The Camp Meeting, is very sparse (a single ensemble of woodwind instruments, 2 horns, trombone, strings and bells ad libitum), and the compositional devices serve to convey the atmosphere of religious gatherings, as indicated by the titles of the subsequent movements (Old Folks Gathering, Children’s Day, Communion). Polymelodic linearism dominates this piece; most of the themes refer to well-known hymns. The harmonies seem to result from the accidental meeting of sounds of juxtaposed melodic lines; a network of harmonies is created, from chords with a third structure to third-third stackings and second-third-fourth combinations. Stable, usually consonant chords are exposed, acting as local tonal centres. Ives treated tonal issues quite freely, stating: “I see no reason why tonality should always be present, nor do I see why it should be rejected forever. Its application depends, it seems to me, on what we intend to present” (Essays.).

One of Ives’s most original pieces is the four-part Symphony No. 4, in which, similarly to Piano Sonata No. 2, String Quartet No. 2, or The Unanswered Question, the composer wanted to use musical means to convey his reflections on the meaning of human existence. The aesthetic programme of this symphony – as he wrote in “New Music” (1929, No. 2) – is a search for answers to the basic, existential questions of “what for,” “why,” which in Part 1 (Prelude) are formulated by the choir in the words of L. Mason’s hymn Watchman, tell us, while the remaining three parts symbolise various answers. In Part 2 (Allegretto), the nostalgic melody of the hymn is juxtaposed with popular music (marches, ragtimes) and patriotic songs. According to the composer, “it is not a scherzo in the accepted sense of the word, but rather a comedy in which the daring, easy march through life contrasts with the arduous journey of the pilgrims.” Part 3, the fugue (a transcription for orchestra of the chorale from String Quartet No. 1), is, according to Ives, a symbol of “life’s reaction to formalism and ritualism,” and part 4 (Largo maesteso), exposing refined, subtle sounds, is like a philosophical conclusion to the whole, an apotheosis of religious experience. The subsequent parts contrast with each other in terms of duration (1 and 3 are short, 2 and 4 are extended), the nature of musical expression, and the type of compositional and performance means. In the outer parts, Ives distinguished the so-called distant choir (part 1: 2 violins, viola, clarinet ad libitum, harp; part 4: 5 violins, 2 harps and percussion instruments), which plays with an orchestra composed in part 1 of string instruments, piano, flute ad libitum, trumpet, trombone ad libitum, celesta, cymbals, kettledrums and choir ad libitum, and in part 4 – with an orchestra composed of a group of woodwind instruments (2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons), a group of brass instruments (2 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba), joined by 2 pianos, organ, celesta, bells, kettledrums, and in the final part an ad libitum choir without text. The most complicated texturally, rhythmically and sonically is Part 2, in which the orchestra is sporadically divided into two bands of different composition, conducted by two conductors at different tempos, and the performance line-up is enriched with a group of saxophones and percussion instruments, enabling the hustle and bustle of street parades to be conveyed. The piece abounds in unconventional sounds, in innovative polyagogic, polymetric and polyrhythmic ideas, which are intended to evoke the impression of the simultaneity of many musical actions.

The universalist philosophy, the vision of the world evolving towards spirituality, was the basis of the formal and sound concept of the unfinished Universe Symphony, which remained in sketches. The plan of the symphony includes three movements: The Origin of Lands and Mountains, Evolution in Nature and Humanity, The Ascent of Everything to Spirituality. In his autobiography, Ives outlines a gigantic vision of several different orchestras and vocal ensembles placed in valleys and hills, playing simultaneously the music of Earth – in lower registers – and the music of Heaven – in higher registers – against the background of a percussion ensemble symbolising the beats of the pulse of life of the universe.

National holidays and historical events are referenced in Symphony “Holidays,” a collection of four previously written programme pieces arranged in the order of the holidays celebrated during the year (winter – Washington’s Birthday 1909; spring – Decoration Day 1912; summer – The Fourth of July 1911–13; autumn – Thanksgiving 1904), and the First Orchestral Set (called Three Places in New England or A New England Symphony), one of Ives’s most frequently and earliest performed orchestral pieces (a version for a small orchestra was published in 1935). Part 1, entitled The Saint Gaudens in Boston Common, was inspired by a relief commemorating the so-called Black March during the Civil War, and the title of Part 2 refers to the victorious events of that war. Fragments of popular melodies from that period are repeated in them against a background of dissonant chords, different marches are juxtaposed simultaneously, and the Country Band March (in Part 2) is performed simultaneously at different tempos. The last part of The Housatonic at Stockbridge, full of subtle, impressionistic sounds (later adapted for voice and piano, with text by R.U. Johnson), is inspired by the beauty of the valley near Stockbridge, which Ives saw – as he wrote in his memoirs – with his wife shortly after their wedding.

Ives is an exceptional figure in the history of music, not only because of his unusual creative path and delayed reception of his works, but above all because of his uncompromising artistic and philosophical attitude, which left its mark on the programmatic concept of his works and the selection of musical means, and determined his attitude to social issues. Persistently striving to express his vision of the world as adequately as possible through musical means, Ives avoided what was customary, comfortable, and routine. He believed that searching for so-called beautiful music, focusing only on sensual beauty, could distract from the main goal of music, which should be the search for truth and spiritual power, which is revealed in the close bond between spiritual life and everyday activities. However, it must be admitted that he sometimes treated his unusual sound ideas with irony as a protest, a mockery of convention. A characteristic feature of Ives’s compositional workshop is the intertwining of traditional and unconventional means of expression, subordinating them to a certain main programmatic idea. In his works – and sometimes within a single work – there are both uniform and simultaneous diverse key markings, and sometimes the composer completely dispenses with key markings despite the chromatic sound material. Ives treats the time signature marking similarly; he uses uniform, although sometimes atypical markings throughout the entire work or a fragment, changes every few bars, combines different metric divisions at the same time or does not mark the time signature at all; he uses the bar line traditionally, omits it or treats it as a sign of uneven particulation of the sound progression (e.g. in Symphony No. 4 in the 4^th movement, a uniform eighth-note movement is simultaneously realised within the 6/8, 5/8, 7/4, 3/4, 12/8 metre, and there are no bar lines in the double bass part). Ives uses traditional rhythmic values, divides the metric unit into 5, 7, 9, and sometimes more parts, uses a wealth of different divisions (e.g. quintuplets into 2 + 3, introduces a two-bar triplet in 4/4 metre), juxtaposes progressions with different rhythmic values, obtaining complex relations of the duration of successive sounds. He also treats agogic problems in a specific way, because in addition to verbal tempo designations (largo, andante) or digital metronome markings, he sometimes juxtaposes different tempos simultaneously (e.g. movement 2 in Symphony No. 4). The simultaneous use of diverse dynamics and articulation is also worthy of special attention. The quoted melodies that appear in Ives’s works almost never appear in their original form, although their provenance is usually clear; the composer changes the rhythm, combines fragments of different melodies, juxtaposes different melodies or leads the same one at different tempos, uses them fragmentarily, weaves them into his own sound world, and sometimes this well-known melody gradually emerges in the course of the piece. Almost every fragment maintained in a serious mood is woven from hymn melodies. Exegetes of Ives’s music emphasise the fact that before he heard music later than Brahms’s works, the composer was a forerunner of many new technical devices in the field of metrorhythmics (polyrhythm, polymeter, polyagogy), harmony, instrumentation and tendencies aimed at impreciseness of the sound and formal shape of the work. The convergence of Ives’s research and that of European composers (including Stravinsky, Bartók, Schönberg, Stockhausen, Boulez) is indeed striking, especially in the field of the organisation of musical time and new sound values, although the motivation for this research was different. It seems that Ives’s innovative proposals resulted from the desire to convey the simultaneity of events by musical means, they used the experience related to the imprecise music-making of American amateur bands, they were an attempt to convey the atmosphere of crowded gatherings at ceremonies related to religious and national holidays, and they resulted from a specific philosophical and artistic attitude.

Ives’s aesthetic views, formulated primarily in Essays before the Sonata, were the result of his idealistic concept of art, which, in his opinion, should be a manifestation of striving for the highest ideals and serving true values. This moral aspect influenced the separation of such concepts as substance – the attitude of an artist who wants to approach truth with his art, to evoke the noblest human aspirations – and manner – the attitude of a creator who cares above all for the recognition of the audience, for efficient artistic craftsmanship. Ives claimed that both substance and manner manifest themselves in works of art in various proportions and can be intuitively recognised, but substance “is the only thing of value in them.” Ives compared the difference between these concepts, among others, to that which occurs between a personal feeling of God’s transcendence and theoretical knowledge about God. Characteristic of Ives’s views is the conviction of the need to unite this prophetic function of art with its democratic aspect, its purpose for the mass audience, with the postulate of linking artistic creation with the diverse manifestations of life of the environment from which the artist originates, but exposing what is universal. He wanted such music to be accepted and understood by the widest circles of listeners. His understanding of national art grew from such views; each creation should, in his opinion, grow from the tradition of its own environment, but evoke universal values. The composer tried to express his conviction through musical means that only the religious truth about human existence allows for the integration and hierarchy of various manifestations of human activity, and in its light the richness of diversity, multiple contradictions turn out to be different aspects of Unity. It is no wonder that Ives’s music and views had difficulty gaining understanding and acceptance from musicians and listeners, but today, from the perspective of several decades, his uncompromising attitude encourages reflection on the purpose of contemporary art and the role of the artist in society.

Reference literature: J. Kirkpatrick A Temporary Mimeographed Catalogue of the Music Manuscripts and Related Materials of Charles Ives, New Haven 1960; Charles Ives Papers, ed. V. Perlis, New Haven 1983; J. B. Sinclair A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives, New Haven 1999; 2^nd ed. 2010; Selected correspondence of Charles Ives, ed. T. C. Owens, Berkeley 2007.

Literature: D.R. de Lerma Charles Ives 1874–1954. A Bibliography of His Music, Kent 1970; R. Warren Charles Ives. Discography, New Haven 1972; H. and S. Cowell Charles Ives and His Music, New York 1955, 2^nd ed. 1969, Polish transl. entitled Ives, Kraków 1982 (includes a discography); J. Bernlef, R. de Leeuv Charles Ives, Amsterdam 1969; S. Pawliszyn Charles Ives, Moscow 1973; V. Perlis Charles Ives Remembered: an Oral History, New Haven 1974; R.S. Perry Charles Ives and the American Mind, Kent 1974; F. Rossiter Charles Ives and His America, New York 1975; H.W. Hitchcock Ives. A Survey of the Music, London 1977; An Ives Celebration, ed. H.W. Hitchcock, V. Perlis, Urbana (Illinois) 1977; J.P. Burkholder Charles Ives. The Ideas Behind the Music, New Haven 1985, G. H. Block Charles Ives: a Bio-Bibliography, New York 1988; W. Rathert Charles Ives, Darmstadt 1989, 2^nd ed. 1996, 3^rd ed. 2011; C. W. Henderson The Charles Ives Tunebook, Warren, MI, 1990; 2^nd ed. 2008; Bericht über das Internationale Symposion “Charles Ives und die amerikanische Musiktradition bis zur Gegenwart: Köln 1988, ed. K. W. Niemöller, Regensburg 1990; S. Feder Charles Ives: “My Father`s Song”: A Psychoanalytic Biography, New Haven 1992; J. Peter Burkholder, All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing, New Haven 1995, 2^nd ed. 2004; J. Swafford Charles Ives: A Life with Music, New York 1996; Charles Ives and the Classical Tradition, ed. G. Block, New Haven 1996 Charles Ives and his World, ed. J. P. Bulkholder, Princeton 1996; Ives Studies, ed. P. Lambert, Cambridge 1998; A. G. Piotrowska Idea muzyki narodowej w ujęciu kompozytorów amerykańskich pierwszej połowy XX wieku, Toruń 2001; Charles Ives: a Guide to Research, ed. G. S. Magee, New York–London 2002; 2^nd ed. 2010 (as Charles Ives: a Research and Information Guide); Charles Ives, 1874–1954: Amerikanischer Pionier der neuen Musik, ed. H.-W. Heister, W. Kremp Trier 2004; Charles Ives [“MusikKonzepte” 123], ed. U. Tadday, Munich 2004; G.S. Magee Charles Ives reconsidered, Chicago 2008; J. M. Burk A Charles Ives Omnibus, Missoula, MT, 2008; L. Denave Un siècle de création musicale aux États-Unis: Histoire sociale des productions les plus originales du monde musical américain, de Charles Ives au minimalisme (1890–1990), Geneva 2012; D. C. Paul Charles Ives in the Mirror: American Histories of an Iconic Composer, Urbana 2013; M. McDonald Breaking time’s arrow: Experiment and expression in the music of Charles Ives, Bloomington 2014; S. Budiansky Mad Music: Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel, Liban 2014; T. P. Sadownik W poszukiwaniu amerykańskiego idiomu muzyki narodowej: Analiza Old American songs Aarona Coplanda oraz wybranych pieśni Charlesa Ivesa, Katowice 2016; L. Denave Charles Ives: Naissance de la modernité musicale aux États-Unis, [Editions Aedam Musicae] Chateau-Gontier 2017; K. Gann Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays after a sonata, Chicago 2017; J. Peter Burkholder Listening to Charles Ives: Variations on his America, New York–London 2021.

Articles: H. Bellamann The Music of Charles Ives, “Pro Musica”, March 1927; H. Cowell Charles Ives, “Modern Music” IX, 1932; H. Bellamann Charles Ives. The Man and His Music, “The Musical Quarterly” XIX, 1933; H. Cowell Charles Ives, in: American Composers on American Music, ed. H. Cowell, Stanford 1933; A. Copland 114 Songs, “Modern Music” XI, 1934; P. Rosenfeld Discoveries of a Music Critic, New York 1936; P. Rosenfeld Ives’s “Concord Sonata”, “Modern Music” XVI, 1939; E. Carter Ives Today. His Vision and Challenge, “Modern Music” XXI, 1944; B. Herrmann Four Symphonies by Charles Ives, “Modern Music” XXII, 1945; H.G. Sear Charles Ives. Song Writer, “Modern Music” LXXXI, 1951; L. Schrade Charles Ives. 1874–1954, “Yale Review”, summer 1955; H.G. Helms Der Komponist Charles Ives. Leben, Werk und Einfluss auf die heutige Generation, “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” CXXV, 1964; H. Boatwright Ives’ Quarter-Tone Impressions, “Perspectives of New Music”, spring–summer 1965; H.G. Helms Über statisches Komponieren bei Charles Ives, “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” CXXVII, 1966; K. Stone Ives’s Fourth Symphony, “The Musical Quarterly” LII, 1966; S.R. Charles The Use of Borrowed Material in Ives’ “Second Symphony”, “Music Review” 1967; D. Marshall Charles Ives’ Quotations. Manner or Substance, “Perspectives of New Music” VI, 1967/68; J. Patkowski IV Symfonia Charlesa Ivesa, in: Horyzonty muzyki, Kraków 1970; C. Sterne Quotation in Charles Ives’ 2^nd Symphony, “Music and Letters” LII, 1971; S.R. Clark The Element of Choice in Ives’ Concord Sonata, “The Musical Quarterly” LX, 1974; N.S. Josephson Zur formalen Struktur einiger späten Orchesterwerke von Charles Ives, “Die Musikforschung” XXVII, 1974; “Current Music” 1974 no. 18 (articles about Ch. Ives by: E. Carter, L. Harrison, A. Koppenhaver, D. Walker, P. Yates); “Current Music” 1975 no. 19 (articles about Ch. Ives by: H.G. Helms, L. Wallach); H. D. Perison, The quarter-tone system of Charles Ives, “Current musicology” (18) 1974; N. Slonimsky, Charles Ives: The man and his music, “The choral journal: Official publication of the American Choral Directors Association” V, 1975; P. A. Balshaw Charles Ives: The man and his music – The celestial country: An introduction, “The choral journal: Official publication of the American Choral Directors Association” VII, 1975: C. Ballantine Charles Ives and the Meaning of Quotation in Music, “The Musical Quarterly” LXV, 1979; S. Feder Decoration Day – a Boyhood Memory of Charles Ives and R.H. Mead, H. Cowell Ives and „New Music”, “The Musical Quarterly” LXVI, 1980; Hartmut Lück, Provokation und Utopie. Ein Porträt des amerikanischen Komponisten Charles Edward Ives und Charles-Ives-Diskografie, “Neuland” I, 1981; S. Feder Charles and George Ives: the Veneration of Boyhood, “Annual of Psychoanalysis” IX, 1981, reprint in: Psychoanalytic Explorations in Music, ed. S. Feder, R.L. Karmel, G.H. Pollock, Madison, CT, 1990; P. Conn Innovation and Nostalgia: Charles Ives, in: The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898–1917, Cambridge 1983; M. D. Nelson Beyond mimesis: Transcendentalism and processes of analogy in Charles Ives‘ The Fourth of July, “Perspectives of new music” I/II, 1983; T. G. Milligan Charles Ives: Musical activity at Yale (1894–98), and Charles Ives: Musical activity at Poverty Flat (1898–1908) “Journal of band research” I, II, 1984; J. P. Burkholder Charles Ives and his Fathers: a Response to Maynard Solomon, “Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter” I, 1988; C. I. Carr Charles Ives’s humor as reflected in his songs, “American music” II, 1989; W. Osborne Charles Ives the organist, “The American Organist” VII, 1990; C. K. Baron Dating Charles Ives’s music: Facts and fictions, “Perspectives of new music” I, 1990; R. V. Wiecki Two Musical Idealists, Charles Ives and E. Robert Schmitz: a Friendship Reconsidered, “American Music” I, 1992; C. K. Baron Georges Ives’s Essay in Music Theory: an Introduction and Annotated Edition, “American Music” I, 1992; J. Tick Charles Ives and Gender Ideology, in: Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. R.A. Solie, Berkeley, 1993; L. Kramer Cultural Politics and Musical Form: the Case of Charles Ives, in: Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, Berkeley 1995; Z. Skowron, Charles Ives i muzyczny transcedentalizm, in: Nowa muzyka amerykańska, Kraków 1995; D. von Glahn Cooney, A sense of place: Charles Ives and Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut, “American music” III, 1996; H. Stover Charles Ives’s Variations on ‘America’, “The American organist” XI, 1997; G. Buhles Amerikanische Komponisten: Von Charles Ives und Carl Ruggles bis John Cage und Morton Feldman, “Das Orchester: Zeitschrift für Orchesterkultur und Rundfunk-Chorwesen” IX, 2000; D. Von Glahn Charles Ives, cowboys, and Indians: Aspects of the Other side of pioneering, “American music” III, 2001; M. Janicka-Słysz, II sonata fortepianowa Concord Charlesa Ivesa: Portret amerykańskich transcendentalistów, in: Muzyka w kontekście kultury: Studia dedykowane Profesorowi Mieczysławowi Tomaszewskiemu w osiemdzisięciolecie urodzin, ed. M. Janicka-Słysz, T. Malecka, K. Szwajgier, Kraków 2001; G. Sherwood Charles Ives and ‘our national malady’, “Journal of the American Musicological Society” III, 2001; M. E. Johnson Charles Ives’s (utopian, pragmatist, nostalgic, progressive, Romantic, modernist) Yankee realism, “American music” II, 2002; C. K. Baron Efforts on Behalf of Democracy by Charles Ives and His Family: Their Religious Contexts, “The Musical Quarterly” I, 2004; W. Rathert Reale und imaginäre Landschaften: Charles Ives’ musikalische Exkursionen und ihre Folge, “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” II, 2004; L. E. Miller, Rob Collins The Cowell-Ives relationship: A new look at Cowell’s prison years, “American music IV, 2005; A. Brown New England artists: Charles Ives and E.E. Cummings, “The musicology review” III, 2006; P. Dickinson Hitchcock’s Ives: A new edition of 129 songs, “Music & letters” IV, 2006; D. C. Paul From American Ethnographer to Cold War Icon: Charles Ives through the Eyes of Henry and Sidney Cowell, “Journal of the American Musicological Society” 2006; D. Massey The Problem of Ives’s Revisions (1973–1987), “Journal of the American Musicological Society” 2007; W. Rathert ‘Sonate, que me veux-tu?’ Die Concord Sonata von Charles Ives als musikalische Utopie, “Jahrbuch (Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste)” (22) 2008; D. Von Glahn Charles Ives at ‘Christo’s gates’, “Twentieth-century music” II, 2008; L. Kramer Music and the politics of memory: Charles Ives’s A symphony: New England holidays, “Journal of the Society for American Music” IV, 2008; Z. Lyman Realizing Ives’s Universe symphony: An interview with Johnny Reinhard, “American music” IV, 2010; K. Schmidt, E. Mascher, J. Neupert, H. Bäßler Charles Ives: Eine Frage ist besser als eine Antwort, “Musik & Bildung: Zeitschrift für Musik in den Klassen” II, 2010; R. Hair ‘Local color’: Ronald Johnson, Charles Ives, and America, “Comparative American studies: An international journal” II, 2011; D. Oehlerking Charles Ives’ Country band march: Living on borrowed time, “Journal of the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles” (18), 2011; J. Iverson Creating space: Perception and structure in Charles Ives’s collages, “Music theory online” II, 2011; B. R. Simms The German apprenticeship of Charles Ives, “American music” II, 2011; T. Henneberger Auf das Unhörbare hören? Charles Ives—The unanswered question (1906/1930–35), in: Das Universum im Ohr: Variationen zu einer theologischen Musikästhetik, ed. D.Korsch, K. Röhring, J. Herten, Leipzig 2011; I. Iwańska Pieśni Charlesa Ivesa inspirowane poezja anglojęzyczną, “Teoria muzyki: Studia, interpretacje, dokumentacje” I, 2012; D. Gail Charles Ives: La musique comme fabrique de l’existence, in: Théories de la composition musicale au XXe siècle, ed. N. Donin, L. Feneyrou, Lyon 2013; D. P. Thurmaier ‘When borne by the red, white, and blue’: Charles Ives and patriotic quotation, “American music” I, 2014; C. Bylander Charles Ives and Poland’s Stalowa Wola Festival: Inspirations and legacies, “Polish review” II, 2014; C. Bylander, E. Szczepańska-Lange Charles Ives i festiwal w Stalowej Woli: Inspiracje i spuścizna, “Teoria muzyki: Studia, interpretacje, dokumentacje” VI, 2015; R. P Morgan Ives and Mahler: Mutual responses at the end of an era (1978), and The things our fathers loved: Charles Ives and the European tradition (1997), in: Music theory, analysis, and society: Selected essays, (Ashgate) Farnham 2015; G. Mumma, R. Reynolds, L. Harrison On the Ives railroad (1977), in: Cybersonic arts: Adventures in American new music, Chicago 2015; M. J. C. Mesquita Charles Ives and the superposition technique, “Musurgia: Analyse et pratique musicales” II, 2015; D. P. Thurmaier “Perhaps I’d better go back to Mr. Jadassohn”: Charles Ives’s harmonic training in late nineteenth-century America, “Theoria: Historical aspects of music theory” (23) 2016; P. Dickinson Two Ives reviews and Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, in: Words and music, Woodbridge (Suffolk) 2016; V. Thomson The Ives case, in: The state of music & other writings, New York 2016; Ch. Wolff Some notes on Charles Ives and politics (2004) and On Charles Ives (1990), in: Occasional pieces: Writings and interviews, 1952–2013, Oxford 2017; B. Jolas Charles Ives (1874–1954), in: De l’aube à minuit, Paris 2017; J. Manton Digital project update: Rare Charles Ives recordings now available for streaming, “Music reference services quarterly” IV, 2018; W. Rathert ‘The ever flowing, changing, growing ways of mind & imagination’: Charles Ives, Henry Brant und A Concord symphony, “Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung”, (31) 2018; D. Myler Charles Ives and techniques of choral narrative: Exploring Three harvest home chorales, “Choral journal” VIII, 2019; S. McMahon Atoms and aggregates: The Great War and the imagined communities of Heinrich Schenker and Charles Ives, “International review of the aesthetics and sociology of music” I/II, 2019; G. S. Magee ‘Every man in New York’: Charles Ives and the First World War, in: Over here, over there: Transatlantic conversations on the music of World War I, ed. W. Brooks, Christina Bashford, Chicago 2019; D. Von Glahn The new river updated: Charles Ives and the disappearing river gods, in: Cultural sustainabilities: Music, media, language, advocacy, ed. T. J. Cooley, Chicago 2019; D. Von Glahn The new river updated: Charles Ives and the disappearing river gods, in: Cultural sustainabilities: Music, media, language, advocacy, ed. T. J Cooley, Chicago 2019; B. C. Robinson The songs of Charles Ives: A closer look at undiscovered pedagogic treasures for the collegiate voice, “Journal of singing” IV, 2020; F. Meyer Charles Ives: Concord sonata (c. 1915–19), in: Ignition: Beethoven: Reception documents from the Paul Sacher Foundation, ed. F. Meyer, S. Obert, Basel 2020; B. C. Robinson The songs of Charles Ives: A closer look at undiscovered pedagogic treasures for the collegiate voice, “The official journal of the National Association of Teachers of Singing” IV, 2020; M. Broyles Planes, perspectives, and tonalities: Charles Ives’s and Lee Friedlander’s attack on the Renaissance, “Music in art: International journal for music iconography” I/II, 2021; T. Kint Charles Ives and the lied: Modelling in Ives’s early German song repertory, “Music & letters” IV, 2021; I. Brinberg David Wallis Reeves and John Philip Sousa’s influence on Charles Ives’s early marches for wind band, “Journal of band research” II, 2022.