Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives, around 1889

Charles Edward Ives (born October 20, 1874 in Danbury , Connecticut , † May 19, 1954 in New York City ) was an American composer .

Life

Charles Ives was the son of the US Army Kapellmeister George Edwards Ives (1845-1894) and his wife Mary Ives, nee. Parmelee († 1929). The father - a musician who was keen to experiment and trained by an organist who taught in New York and who came from Europe - introduced his son to the works of Bach and Helmholtz's theory of tone perception . Charles Ives then played the organ from 1888 . He began his composition studies in 1894 with Horatio Parker at Yale University in New Haven . Here the student got to know the German music theory of Salomon Jadassohn , whereby Ives initially adopted the song style of Schumann and Brahms . But even during his studies, which he finished in 1898, Ives emancipated himself from the rules of European music. After graduating, he decided to pursue a conventional career because he believed that musical compromises would have to be made if he was to make a living from music. So he started working for an insurance company, where he worked as an organist until he was thirty. He composed music in his spare time. In 1907, the insurance company Ives Ives & Co .

In 1908 Charles Ives married the nurse Harmony Twitchell (1876–1969). The couple moved to New York City, where Ives founded the insurance company Ives & Myrick in 1909 . In 1915, the couple adopted fifteen-month-old Edith Osborne (1914–1956). Ives remained a prolific composer until his first heart attack in 1918; after that he significantly restricted composing. In 1924 Ives made his first trip to Europe, to England. His last original composition Sunrise for voice and string quartet on his own text dates from 1926. This was followed by several revisions and revisions of earlier works. Further trips to Europe followed in 1932/33, 1934 and 1938.

Through his activities in the insurance industry, Ives had made a substantial fortune with which he financed concerts, publications and recordings by composers who were friends.

In 1946 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

reception

Ives' music was largely ignored throughout his life, and most of his works went unperformed for many years. Only a few listeners recognized his inclination to experiment and the uncompromising use of dissonance . After Ives's view was one of the worst words abzuklassifizieren music, the term "nice" ( nice ), so that his own unpopularity him probably not surprised. In 1940 he met Lou Harrison , a fan of his music who encouraged him and was able to increase his popularity somewhat. Most notable was his conducting the premiere of Symphony No. 3 in 1946, which Gustav Mahler originally intended to perform in Vienna in 1911. In the following year he won the Pulitzer Prize with it . He gave away the prize money (half to Harrison) with the statement: "Prizes are for schoolboys — I am no longer a schoolboy."

In the decades following his death, his reputation gradually grew and today he is considered one of America's most important composers.

Since 1988 he has given its name to the Ives Ice Rise , an ice dome on Alexander I Island in Antarctica.

In 2014 a full album of Ives pieces arranged for jazz orchestras was released: Mists: Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra - Arranged by Jack Cooper .

Compositions

Although Ives wrote many songs with often strikingly original piano accompaniment, he is primarily known today for his instrumental music. Influenced by his work as an organist, he wrote Variations on “America” in 1891 , which he performed himself at the July 4th celebrations. The piece makes a number of more conventional but funny variations on the melody (which corresponds to the British national anthem ). One is in the style of a flamenco , another, which he composed a few years after the premiere, is probably Ives' first approach to bitonality . A version by William Schuman for orchestra premiered in 1964 and shows how recognized Ives was after his death. Ives also experimented with textures that run at different speeds, with quarter tones and room music.

One of the first and most striking examples of Ives' enthusiasm for experimentation is The Unanswered Question from 1906, a work he wrote for an unusual line-up ( trumpet , four flutes and string quartet ). An orchestral version followed later. The strings play a very slow, uninterrupted, chorale-like sequence of pure chords throughout the piece , which the wind instruments encounter in dissonance. The trumpet first provides a short motif seven times, which Ives described as “the eternal question of existence”. The flutes seek an answer six times - always different and always more harsh. In the end, however, the question remains unanswered. It is a typical piece for Ives - it places various disparate elements on top of one another without precisely clarifying their relationships, it appears to be driven by a narrative of which we are never fully aware, and ultimately remains mysterious. Therefore, The Unanswered Question is often used as film music in death scenes, e.g. B. in the films Lola rennt (1998) by Tom Tykwer and in Der schmale Grat (1998) by Terrence Malick.

The inclusion of everyday music ( marches , dances , ragtimes , church hymns etc.) is another characteristic feature of Ives' music, which is used in works such as Central Park in the Dark (1906) or Three Places in New England (1908-14) Application comes. Quotations from the history of music, especially from the work of Ludwig van Beethoven, are also used, which makes the relationship to tradition problematical and thematized in music. Such retrospective style or genre recitations or specific quotations from other works can favor the effect of a “stylized simplicity” with Ives. However, as an example for the violin sonatas it can be stated: "Since the diverse quotations are metamorphoses in the sign of a harmonically-rhythmically complex re-shaping of the original material, Ives switches off a 'sensitive' element from the start and prevents the violin from becoming a carrier To become nostalgia. ”The most complex is the tense connection of heterogeneous elements in the Fourth Symphony (1910–16) as well as in the First (1901–1909) and especially the Second Piano Sonata (1909–1915). The latter, like Ives' entire thinking, is particularly influenced by the transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau , each of whom he dedicated one movement to in the sonata with the programmatic title Concord, Mass., 1840–1860 . The other dedicators were Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Alcotts (ie the family of the philosopher and reform educator Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May ). The work, which was considered almost unplayable for a long time, is now available in over fifteen recordings. Ives' last major project was the fragmentary Universe Symphony , whose first movement Prelude was to consist of nineteen different drum parts in different meters. The composers Larry Austin and Johnny Reinhard each presented their own realization of the work. Symphony No. 4 was included in The Wire's legendary wirelist "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)" .

List of works

Orchestral works

• Overture in G Minor (1899, only partially preserved, completed by David G. Porter , possibly part of the lost series "Set of Overtures: In These United States")
• Central Park In The Dark (1906)
• Emerson Concerto
• Holiday Quickstep for Orchestra (1887)
• Hymn for String Orchestra (1904)
• Orchestral Set No.1 “Three Places In New England” (1903–1914)
• Orchestral Set No.2 (1915)
• Robert Browning Overture (1908–1912)
• Symphony No. 1 JS1 (1897 / 98–1908)
• Symphony No. 2 JS2 (1897-1909)
• Symphony No. 3 “The Camp Meeting” JS3 (1901–1904 / 1908–1911)
• Symphony No. 4 JS4 (1910-1925)
• Symphony No. 5 JS5 (Suite) (1917)
• Symphony No. 6 “Universe Symphony” for multiple orchestras, in continuous Sections JS6 (fragment, completed by Larry Austin) (1911–1928)
• The Fourth of July for Orchestra (1904-1913)
• The Unanswered Question for Trumpet, 4 Flutes and Strings (1906)
• Washington's Birthday for Orchestra (1913)

Chamber music

• 114 songs (1888-1921)
• Adagio sostenuto for cor anglais (or basset horn or flute), 3 violins (3rd ad lib./ viola), cello ad lib. and piano (or harp or celesta or high bells) (before 1912)
• Fugue In Four Keys On The Shining Shore for Trumpet in Bb, Flute and Strings (1896)
• Largo for Violin and Piano (1901)
• Piano Quintet “In Re Con Moto Et Al” (1913)
• Piano Sonata No. 1
• Piano Sonata No. 2 “Concord, Mass. 1840-60 ”
• Piano Sonata No. 3
• Scherzo all the way around and back for Flute, Violin, Trumpet, Horn and Piano (1908)
• Set for String Quartet
• Sonata No. 0 for violin and piano JS59 (1908)
• Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano JS60 (1901)
• Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano JS61 (1901)
• Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano JS62 (1901)
• Sonata No. 4 for violin and piano JS63 (1903)
• String Quartet No. 1 JS57 (1897)
• String Quartet No. 2 JS58 (1907)
• The Innate for Piano Quintet and Double Bass ad lib. (1908)
• Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano (1905)
• Variations on “America” for Organ solo (1891)
• Quarter-tone pieces for violin
• Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for 2 Pianos (1923/24)

Choral works

• December for Male Choir in unison, Woodwind and Brasses (1912/13)
• Easter Carol for SATB and organ (1892)
• Holydays Symphony for Choir and Orchestra (1904–1913)
• Psalms No. 14, 24, 25, 42, 54, 67, 90, 100, 135, 150 for choir and orchestra

Fonts

• Essays before a Sonata , New York 1920.
• Essays before a Sonata and other Writings , ed. By H. Boatwright, New York 1964.
• Memos , ed. By J. Kirkpatrick, New York 1973.
• Selected texts: Essays Before a Sonata; Epilogue to the 114 songs; Memos. , transl. v. F. Meyer, Zurich 1985.

Correspondence

• Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives , ed. By TC Owens, Berkeley 2007

Catalog raisonné

• James B. Sinclair: A Descriptive Catalog of the Music of Charles Ives , New Haven 1999

literature

• Peter J. Burkholder : All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives And The Uses Of Musical Borrowing , New Haven (CT) 1995
• Peter J. Burkholder: Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind The Music , New Haven (CT) 1985
• Peter J. Burkholder (Ed.): Charles Ives And His World , ed. By, Princeton (NJ) 1996
• Henry et al. S. Cowell : Charles Ives And His Music , New York 1955, rev. ²1969
• Hermann Danuser (Ed.): American music since Charles Ives . Laaber 1987, ²1993
• Gregor Herzfeld : Time as Process and Epiphany in Experimental American Music. Charles Ives to La Monte Young . Steiner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-515-09033-9
• J. Philip Lambert (Ed.): Ives Studies . Cambridge 1998
• J. Philip Lambert: The Music Of Charles Ives . New Haven (CT) 1997
• GS Magee: Charles Ives Reconsidered . Urbana (ILL) 2008
• Wolfgang Rathert : Charles Ives . WBG, Darmstadt 1989 a. 2011 ISBN 978-3-534-24245-0
• Wolfgang Rathert: "The Seen and Unseen". Studies on the work of Charles Ives . Munich-Salzburg 1991
• J. Swafford: Charles Ives: A Life With Music . New York 1996
• Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Charles Ives . Music concepts 123, edition text + kritik I / 2004, ISBN 3-88377-760-9

Web links

Commons : Charles Ives  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Charles Ives in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Charles Ives  in the German Digital Library
• Homepage. The Charles Ives Society, accessed July 20, 2011 . 
• Biography and works. Peermusic Classical, accessed July 20, 2011 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Rathert: Ives' legacy . In: Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Charles Ives . Music Concepts 123, edition text + kritik I / 2004, p. 9.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} timetable. In: Ulrich Tadday (Ed.): Charles Ives . Music Concepts 123, edition text + kritik I / 2004, p. 127f.
3. ^ Members: Charles Ives. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 5, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Mists: Charles Ives for Jazz Orchestra (Planet Arts 101420) , CD review by Frank Griffith on LondonJazz News of December 30, 2014, accessed January 8, 2015 (English)
5. ↑ Christoph Kammertöns : Ives, Charles Edward , in: Lexikon der Violin , ed. by Stefan Drees, Laaber: Laaber 2003, pp. 323-324, p. 323.