Talk:Charles Ives

Revise sentence

The sentence "Although he is now best known for his instrumental music, he composed two string quartets and other works of chamber music" (found in the first paragraph of the second section) could use some revision. Chamber music is a type of instrumental music. Is "orchestral music" the intended phrase?

You're correct; I fixed it. Thanks! Antandrus 22:55, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

The photo description "Charles Ives, left, captain of the baseball team and pitcher for Hopkins Grammar School"

Shouldn't it be "captain of Hopkins Grammar School and pitcher of the baseball team"? Rwiggans (talk) 02:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Nope, he was indeed both pitcher and captain of the baseball team while at Hopkins. Binksternet (talk) 03:13, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for references

Hi, I am working to encourage implementation of the goals of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Part of that is to make sure articles cite their sources. This is particularly important for featured articles, since they are a prominent part of Wikipedia. Further reading is not the same thing as proper references. Further reading could list works about the topic that were not ever consulted by the page authors. If some of the works listed in the further reading section were used to add or check material in the article, please list them in a references section instead. The Fact and Reference Check Project has more information. Thank you, and please leave me a message when you have added a few references to the article. - Taxman 17:12, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hey nerds, stop vandalizing.

Should this be in the Introduction?

Ives, who died in 1954 in New York City, left behind material for an unfinished Universe Symphony. Although there have been several attempts at completion, none has found its way into general performance.

This is certainly interesting information, but hardly introductory (the symphony, I mean; date and place of death are appropriate here). After this article passes its time as featured, I plan on editing this. JPB 15:52, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't think it should be in the intro either; it's detail which is better covered elsewhere in the article, as indeed it is. Definitely feel free to edit it. Antandrus 18:00, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Date of Yale entry?

The Charles Ives article lists him born in 1874 and entering Yale in 1864. I'm a novice at Music History, but I don't think that could be right. Maybe it's 1894? -PSS

You are correct--he started at Yale in September 1894, and graduated in 1898. He only began studying with Parker seriously in 1896; it appears he only audited his courses for the first two years (that's not in the article... yet). Antandrus (talk) 20:46, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

The rest is silence

Ives was virtually silent for the last 30 years of his life. Shouldn't there be some attempt to explain this?

I added a paragraph. The reason is not known for certain; there are lots of theories, but the story told by Harmony to John Kirkpatrick is pretty well known. Antandrus (talk) 04:03, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

So what is the story told by Harmony? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 19:01, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Pretty well known. Those in the know, know, you know? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.163.65.9 (talk) 22:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, it was in there. This was the paragraph I added in 2005, but the article has been beat up a bit since then. "Harmony's story" is the one about him coming down the stairs with tears in his eyes, saying "nothing sounds right any more." Antandrus (talk) 22:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Influence of Dvorak

"The first symphony of 1898 was Ives’ graduation piece from Yale and is directly modelled on the spiritual godfather of all American symphonies, Dvorak’s New World which had been premiered just five years previously in New York. Although it sounds closer to Dvorak than it does to Ives’ own mature works it still contains many fascinating insights into the composer he was soon to become." - quoted form http://www.necgroup.co.uk/visitor/whatson/2005 Given the strong early influence of Dvorak, why is this not mentioned?

Low marks at Yale

If i'm not mistaken didn't Ives receive either an overall grade of F or similar failing grade in music, or was it low scores in just some music courses? If so, it would be interesting to include this in the article!

If I remember correctly, he had a C average in music coures and a D average for everything else. Though I can't recall a source for that. --Mahlered 08:10, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

He got around a middling B in music and Ds in everything else —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.149.49.69 (talk) 18:52, August 20, 2007 (UTC)

His interest in popular reception

I think this should be verified.

Maynard Solomon article

Why no mention of the Maynard Solomon contentions? It seems rather central to a modern understanding of Ives.

Well his claims have been largely debunked and rejected by most Ives scholars such as Jan Swafford, and considering they mostly arose 20 years ago, I don't think it's worth adding. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.8.102 (talk) 23:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

State of the article

This article looks to me like a candidate for some significant cleanup. It needs overall reorganization, a large number of sentences have rather clunky structure with useless words abounding, and the overall feel is pretty amateurish. I will do what I can but I encourage you to help out too! --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 19:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted to address the clunky sentence structure in the first part of the 'Early Music' section. The 'two pillars' part was a bit vague and I didn't know if it included his father or the 'two pillars' of outdoor music and instrumentation-so I just replaced it with 'interests' and hope it flows better. --Godfinger 11:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I've tried improving a few other sentences too, which I feel needed improving to avoid the amateurish tone. It is easy to get carried away so I'll leave it for now as I don't want to mess anything up if it is getting any where close to featured article status. But I still think there is a lot of stylistic problems with parts of the article. --Godfinger 14:58, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

For me, this seems a bit unclear

<Quote> His works have dissonance, which comes from untrained voices singing a hymn together: some voices straining and sharpening the pitch, others just missing and flattening the pitch, creating a cluster of tones instead of a single tone. <unquote>

I think I know what you are saying, but it sounds like "dissonance comes from untrained voices..." etc. I think that perhaps you mean that Ives creates the image of "untrained voices, missing pitches, etc" by using dissonance and other things (cluster tones, polytonality, etc.)

Anyway, I don't mean to take away from such a great article, just to say that for me this was unclear. It seems as if the article is defining dissonance, and that isn't what dissonance is. Just my opinion. Ditto BTW on Polyrythm. Thanks! --83.145.228.42 (talk) 22:22, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

yeah i don't think discussing the origins of ives' compositional devices in hymn-culture belongs in the introduction anyway (see WP:BETTER), and is probably original research. 70.49.253.29 (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not original research perse - it is true to an extent that his experiences with choral music influenced his experimental thought and this has been commented on many times. However ths is not the only place where is 'comes from', so the information as writ is not correct. The wording of that section is appalling, and I agree that this is not really information that should go in the introduction. If someone wants to paraphrase this in a less clmusy way in a later section of the article (making it clear that there were many other influences on his poltonality, polyrythms and dissonance), then that would be great. If not, I will do it in about 1 weeks time, to allow enough people to comment on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.54.164 (talk) 00:31, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I have edited it now 131.111.8.104 (talk) 08:54, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

An image on this page may be deleted

This is an automated message regarding an image used on this page. The image File:1997 Charles Ives stamp.jpg, found on Charles Ives, has been nominated for deletion because it does not meet Wikipedia image policy. Please see the image description page for more details. If this message was sent in error (that is, the image is not up for deletion, or was left on the wrong talk page), please contact this bot's operator. STBotI (talk) 17:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Contemporary music

See list at top of this page. I do not think Charles Ives meets the criteria for WikiProject Contemporary music. Davidships (talk) 17:52, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Everywhere Ives is taught, discussed or critiqued, he's assigned contemporary music status. I would never question his inclusion in that project. Binksternet (talk) 19:32, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Composer project review

I've reviewed this article as part of the Composers project review of its B-class articles. This article is still B-class; things mentioned in the last FAR have still not been addressed, 18 months later. My full review (which mentions some other things), is on the comments page; questions and comments should be left here or on my talk page. Magic♪piano 19:44, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Stamp image removal

I have removed the stamp image File:1997 Charles Ives stamp.jpg because it a non-free image of a stamp that fails WP:NFC#Images which clearly states: "Stamps and currency: For identification of the stamp or currency, not its subject', which was the use here, so it may not be used in this article. This use is improper and must be removed. If you disagree you may want to familiarise yourself with the following: WP:NFCC#3a, WP:NFCC#8, WP:NFC#Images, and this FAQ to better understand the issues. Sorry. ww2censor (talk) 04:11, 17 May 2009 (UTC)