Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Biography

Charles Ives (20 October 1874, Danbury, CT - 19 May 1954, New York City) was an American composer.

Widely considered an innovator, Ives was the son of U.S. Army Bandleader George Ives. At a young age, Ives studied organ and went on to Yale to study composition with Horatio Parker. Believing that he could not earn a living writing the music that he wanted to write, he formed a successful insurance business and composed in the evenings. Much of his music was ignored during his own lifetime, and many of his compositions were not published until decades after he had written them.

His compositional style was largely experimental, but also incorporated American folk tunes and hymn songs to paint a unique tonal portrait. In 1947 he received a Pultzer Prize for his Third Symphony (1911), after its debut only a year earlier in 1946. He died in New York City in 1954, leaving a legacy that predated most of the twentieth century innovations such as atonality, aleatoricism, polytonality, microtones, multiple cross-rhythms, and tone clusters.

Works for Winds

This composer primarily wrote orchestral music. Transcriptions of his music include:

• The Alcotts (tr. Elkus) (1920/1947)
• The Alcotts (tr. Thurston) (1920/1972)
• Charlie Rutlage (tr. Sinclair)
• A Christmas Carol (tr. Paxton) (1922/2016)
• The Circus Band (tr. Elkus)
• Country Band March (tr. Sinclair)
• Decoration Day (tr. Elkus)
• Fantasia on "Jerusalem the Golden" (1888)
• Finale from Symphony No 2 (tr. Elkus)
• Four Eccentric Songs (tr. Paxton) (1922/2016)
• Fugue in C (arr. Sinclair) (1900/1992)
• Here's to Good Ol' Yale: See: March 6: Here's to Good Ol' Yale
• In the Mornin' (arr. Singleton) (1929)
• March 6: Here's to Good Ol' Yale (tr. Elkus)
• March Intercollegiate (ed. Brion) (1892(?)/1973)
• Old Fashioned Hymns (tr. Paxton) (1922/2016)
• Old Home Days (arr. Elkus) (1954)
• Omega Lambda Chi (ed. Brion) (1896/1974)
• Overture and March "1776" (tr. Sinclair) (1904/1910)
• Ragtime Dance No. 4 (trans. Sinclair) (?/1990)
• Runaway Horse on Main Street (1908)
• A Son of a Gambolier (arr. Elkus) (1892/1962)
• They are There! (arr. Sinclair)
• The Unanswered Question (1908/1935/1989)
• Variations on "America" (orch. Schuman, tr. Rhoads) (1891/1968)
• Variations on "Jerusalem the Golden" (tr. Brion)
• Postlude in F (tr. Singleton)

References

• Charles Ives, Prized Composers, University of Washington
• Charles Ives Society website
• Ives, Charles. Essays Before a Sonata Digital Text.
• Ives, Charles. (1843) Chips from the Workshop (Poems) Digital Text.
• Miles, Richard B., and Larry Blocher. (2010). Teaching Music through Performance in Band. Volume 1. Chicago: GIA Publications. pp. 771.
• Williams, Nicholas Enrico. "The Alcotts." In Teaching Music through Performance in Band. Volume 10, Compiled and edited by Richard Miles, 819-825. Chicago: GIA Publications, 2015.