Popular American composers like Richard Rodgers, Aaron Copeland and Charles Gershwin are names known to most Americans. We hear that music has been played in many fields; musical theater productions, symphony concerts, recordings and film scores. But a distinct type of music, labeled the American sound, owes a great debt to a composer who was an insurance money trader, Charles Ives.
If you’ve never heard of it, don’t feel bad, most Americans who weren’t music majors in college are major. they don’t have But when you hear Charles Yvon’s brand of American music, you will listen and want to learn more about him. the man behind this uniquely American sounding classical music.
Hearing a symphony or movement by Charles Ives, sung or sounded like the Fourth of July, the summer harvest, the noise of the city streets of Chicago, the meeting of the city camp, and the southern evangelical churches combined with the high cathedrals of Europe. It is a mixed modulation of human and spiritual and modern melody based on the most polished stone of everyday reality. Listen to Charles Ivon’s Fourth Symphony while spreading out a picnic blanket or listen under Universal Symphony warm starry night in dia. His music is for American life.
American musicians have been artists since the days of the early settlers. We made music in the fields, in the wagon trains that were heading west, in fishing, in the coal mines. of the Virgin and in our churches. But we decided 200 years ago that American sounds and American music could hold their own against the European masters who dominated symphonies and concert halls around the world.
And it was Charles Ives who found a way to capture that American musical sound in concert-worthy pieces that could compete with Mozart and Beethoven, holding the sounds of America on the strings. His music was America; idealistic, independent, optimistic, and distinctly American. He took the sounds of America, the quiet and spiritual New England church hymn, the workers whistling in the fields, the pious tunes of our Fourth of July celebration, the tunes sung in front of the living room, and mixed with simple low ingredients into the exaltation of the vision. America that could compete with the European classics. His music told us that we were as good as the teachers we rebelled against. We no longer need their music, their art, their culture. We were able to create our own as strong and magnificent as any of Beethoven’s symphonies and yet uniquely American.
Also, the story of Charles Yves and how he became the foundation for future American composers is uniquely American. He was born in 1874 in the small manufacturing town of Danbury, Connecticut. His father, George Ives, was a bandmaster who served in 19th century, with music not a job It is not considered a real profession, but a hobby. And yet the man who was the father of the boy who would grow up to be the future of America’s music continued to choose the trade. He led choirs, conducted bands, taught music, led theater orchestras and Danbury became known as “the town of musicians in Connecticut.”
We can thank George Ivo for the love of music he shared with his son. He taught his son that nuclei have all great compounds; the ability to take the experiences of simple men and women and turn them into music. Music allows us to feel, to reintegrate the battle, the love of the thing, the loss of life, the pain of living, the torture of defeat, the hope of victory.
In fact, George Ives, his son, eventually referred to his American experiences This was the civil war, Stephen Foster’s love song, the workers ballad, the gospel lament of the slave. on the field and the baseball diamond hero who led Charles Ivon to become an American composer of music.
He was a genius, a prodigy of childhood, who composed the first pieces of music 13 and the first of them. his works give us a glimpse of his future musical work. Listen to Variations on “America” to hear America from his perspective. In the small-village the lover’s lovers mingle with the rhythm of their own lust
His father had trained him well on the harpsichord, gold, and horns; every musical instrument grasped in the hand was mastered by Charles IV, although the organ with its flighty sound appealed to him the most. His father had hoped he would become a concert musician or organist, but Charles Ives never earned a living as a musician, although creating music made his living.
George Ives gave his son many gifts, but the most important was the permission to be different, to see music in everything, not just traditional media. He smashed piano keys, mixed sounds, experimented with non-traditional and “quirky” keys and rhythms.
Today we call those experiments modernist music with its distinctly modern musical techniques of polytonality, tone, cluster, aleatoric elements and beat tones. Every major musical movement of the 20th century can be seen in the musical compositions of Charles Ivon. He challenged his tradition and made his own “music”, founding that later composers like Aaron Copeland and George Gershwin would embrace and spend .
At the age of 19, entering Yale University to obtain a degree in music, Charles Ives was fortunate to find someone who could take his natural musical talent and add to it the musical skills and knowledge that would allow him to become America’s first true composer. That man was Horatio Parker, a demanding, conservative music teacher at Yale University, who forced him to learn the necessary elements. to be a true composer. But later, having tamed them, he immediately challenged conventional composition in order to embark on his own musical flights.
It was at Yale that he composed his first symphony and he was indeed a great musician, precocious and born from European masters, but retaining a very original American ingenuity. And yet, the music of the quartet and the field still called to him and in the works First String Quartett we hear resonances of American gospel mixed with European classics, a modernist theme. that Charles Ivo should work throughout his life.
Despite his love of music and his success at Yale, in 1898, Charles Ives made a design that was also distinctly American< /a>. He decided to drop his music degree and the slow way to music fame at the University, study in Europe and work on the continent. Instead, he left Yale to become a $15.00 a week insurance salesman.
Charles Ives did not want to follow a traditional musical path. He wanted to be free to create his own music, when he wanted and how he wanted. This American steakhouse is set apart from tradition by individuals such as Charles Yves. And it allowed him to create and compose equally keenly the independent American music which became his gift to us.
For the next twenty years he worked slowly and steadily. He worked on selling insurance and getting rich. And he never left the song. He served as organist and choir director of the church. And he would work out what he had said.
His work in these years was eclectic. He wrote the Second Symphony where he mixes elements of classical European music with several styles Walt Whitman and wrote in a powerful essay by Emerson.
Charles Ives gave away his music, turned it down and shared it with anyone who wanted to use it. It is the first open source in the field of freeware music where the competition is always fierce. He quit looking for musical fame, saying, “I work better if I stick to my music, and keep others to theirs.” Sentences such as “The more a composer receives from his patrons, the less he will receive from himself,” show a strong desire for music to remain true to itself.
If you’ve never heard Charles Ivo’s music and you haven’t, you should start with Ive Ivo’s stories. Because his work is so rarely mentioned or even played. Concerts in the halls of America are a few examples from his life. But between the years 1934 and 1943, Charles Ives decided to record his works so that he could listen to them. Remember all those years of selling insurance and becoming known as the common insurance man with estate planning? Charles Ives could afford to produce his own music after retiring from “work”. His decision many years earlier to set up his work as an insurance career gave him the musical freedom he enjoyed.
Ivo recording-studio”>studio entered to work on those parts that fascinated him. Does it also fascinate the listener? It remains to be seen, but on the CD, Ivonis Plays, you can hear not only the music he composed, but also the actors. Charles Ivo was not a singer and this was evident in the sound of his voice, as he patriotic songs releases. They are there. The parts of this CD will leave us wondering if those of us who love his work are crazy and his parts are soulless. They will leave you. And this is the effect that Yvonis wanted to have.
In his own words,
“If she feels like kicking into the ashes, the poet’s castle, or the prosody law, will you stop her? … If they feel like flying where men cannot fly, singing what cannot be sung, like walking in a cave, or blinded by hope and faith you tighten your belt and try to climb mountains that don’t exist, who should stop you?
Charles Ives, an American composer died at the age of 80 in 1954, having a uniquely American life, he lived fiercely .he decided to be his own man, and to make his own music, as he was known in the world, creating and experimenting with the musical and technical elements that are the basis of all modern music, while he never achieved critical acclaim and continues to espouse the genius of Charles Ivos.Like many geniuses and prodigies time will show if Charles Ivos enters the hallowed halls of Brahms, Beethoven, and Mozart, but for many Americans he is their composer.
If you’ve never heard the music of Charles Yves, start with the Ivo Ivo story, and then move on to some of them to discover the crazy brain of Charles Ives, the original American musician. Don’t expect beautiful music, but expect to be challenged.
Charles Ivons music online
Ivo play Ivo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXHjeSamzno
Concordia Sonata: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKzf4CQP3cM
Festa Symphonia: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559370
Variations in America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2S_5y0eOAA&feature;=related
Bellagio Fountains: Hoe Down:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2S_5y0eOAA&feature;=related
Two Little Flowers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_YBpocM4Yw
You must buy music!
The Complete Songs of Charles Ivon: Volume III http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Songs? tag=einfovn-20 -Charles-Ives-Vol/dp/B0000049MM
Universal Symphony: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/reinhard
Symphony Number Two: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00001GC4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&tag =einfovn-20 -1&pf;_rd_t=201&pf;_rd_i=B000062D1&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0RZ6RTRW8YVWPB33M7CR
Ivon’s Play Ivon’s: http://www.amazon.com/Plays-Complete-Recordings-Charles-1933-1943/dp/B000ETRM9E ?tag=einfovn-20
Violin Sonata:http://www.amazon.com/Ives-Violin-Sonatas-Nos-1-4/dp/B00008MLVJ? tag=einfovn-20
CWinter Day at Camp Congress: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QWTDTQ/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=&tag =einfovn-20 486539851&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf;_rd_t=201&pf;_rd_i=B00008MLVJ&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0ES91J8WA425TJGPEATE
Ivonis: The American Journey: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005UED6/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf;_rd_t=201& &tag=einfovn-20 ;pf;_rd_i=039337196&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0468DMBR555NXZ6V75KB
Resources used:
Charles Ivo: Life with Music by Ian Swafford
Essays Coram from Sonata, Majority and other Writings by Charles Ivo. Edited by Howard Boatwright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ives
http://www.charlesives.org/
The author, Betty Malone, has personal experience as a fan and listener of Charles Ivon
