Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives

by Charles Ives

This authoritative volume of 453 letters written by and to composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) provides unparalleled insight into one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. The most comprehensive collection of Ives's correspondence in print, this book opens a direct window on Ives's complex personality and his creative process. Though Ives spent much of his career out of the mainstream of professional music-making, he corresponded with a surprisingly large group of musicians and critics, including John J. Becker, Henry Bellamann, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Ingolf Dahl, Walter Damrosch, Lehman Engel, Clifton J. Furness, Lou Harrison, Bernard Herrmann, John Kirkpatrick, Serge Koussevitzky, John Lomax, Francesco Malipiero, Radiana Pazmor, Paul Rosenfeld, Carl Ruggles, E. Robert Schmitz, Nicolas Slonimsky, and Peter Yates.

Genres: Music

410 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Charles Edward Ives (October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. His music was largely ignored during his early life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Owen Goldin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fans of Ives’ writings (Essays Before a Sonata, Memos) will not find much worthy prose here, but the correspondence is certainly biographically interesting for Ives-philes. Most of the letters written by Harmony or Edith were in fact written on the basis of drafts written by “Charlie” – in their voice. His generosity and humility come through. There is a little evidence concerning Ives’ response to his friend and protégé Henry Cowell’s imprisonment for “morals” – which some have mined in order to probe the sources of Ives’ sometime hypermasculinity. Ives pleads with Walter Damrosch to please give back the ink copy of the third symphony and is ignored, and so the “shadow parts” are lost. Copland, Cage, Lou Harrison, and of course John Kirkpatrick make appearances.

The Nazis used to say “be like Beethoven.” A total misunderstanding of Beethoven. But we Americans can say with pride “be like Ives”