String Quartet No. 1: Ives Society Critical Edition

by Charles Ives (Composer)

(Peermusic Classical). Ives began his String Quartet No. 1 while in college at Yale and finished it by 1902. It is in a late-romantic tonal style influenced by Brahms and Dvorak, but it uses themes paraphrased from the hymn tunes he sang in church and played as an organist ("From Greenland's Icy Mountains", "Beulah Land" and "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" among them). By infusing the sound and character of American hymnody into the romantic European string quartet, Ives united two of the musical traditions he loved and claimed a place among the nationalist composers of his day.

24 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2020

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.