Charles Ives Reconsidered

A New Look At Charles Ives

The American composer Charles Ives (1874 -- 1954) has achieved something of an iconic stature. As Gayle Sherwood Magee explains in the Introduction to her recent book, "Reinventing Charles Ives" (2008) the Ives legend runs along the following lines -- to paraphrase Magee. Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut and received an unconventional early music training from his father George, a Civil War bandleader. As a student at Yale, Ives studied with Horatio Parker but was bored with Parker's conservative approach which was based solely upon the German classics. Upon graduating from Yale, Ives created a highly modernistic, advanced body of compositions while pursuing a highly successful career in insurance. Ives's work was virtually unknown and rejected for many years, as Ives lived in musical isolation. Ives virtually stopped composing in 1918. Beginning with his receipt of a Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his Third Symphony followed by Leonard Bernstein's resurrection of Ives's Second Symphony in the early 1950, this eccentric, reclusive American composer began at last to gain the recognition he deserved for the forward looking, modern compositions of his early years.

Magee takes a fresh look at Ives and the legend. Magee is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagna and the author of a research guide to Ives. Her book is part of an outstanding series of the University of Illinois Press called "Music in American Life".

Magee challenges the Ives legend in a number of ways. Most importantly, she questions the view that Ives stopped composing in 1918. She argues that Ives continued to revise his works continuously through the 1920s. She finds that many works thought to anticipate modernism were in fact revised from earlier more conservative versions to give them a modernistic spirit derived from then-contemporary compositions. In other words, Ives frequently revised his works to follow modernistic trends as opposed to himself pioneering modernism in American music. Some earlier scholars had gone further than Magee by accusing Ives of predating his manuscripts to make his compositions appear earlier than they were. Magee rejects this accusation.

Magee tends to downplay the importance of Ives's father George in Ives's early musical education. And she argues as well that Parker's influence and teaching exerted a much stronger influence on the composer than he was willing to acknowledge. Contrary to Ives's reputation as a recluse devoted solely to his art, Magee shows an Ives who, from his days at Yale, avidly sought to make his music popular and to gain public recognition. Ives, at least in his early years, was a substantially conservative composer. Magee maintains as well that Ives received throughout his life more recognition for his works than the legend of a neglected genius would have it. In her biography of Ives, Magee gives a portrait of a complicated person a "flawed, brilliant, naive, shrewd, insecure, compassionate, ambitious, deceitful, trusting, earnest human being -- who wove his life and his times into some truly remarkable compositions." (p.180)

Magee offers a thorough, provocative portrayal of Ives, his times, and his music. In many respects, her study is not as removed from the traditional view of Ives as may appear at first glance. The standard view of Ives is best expressed in Swafford's biography: "Charles Ives: A Life with Music." Thus Magee recognizes that in Ives's lifetime there were two basic schools of thought regarding American music: some people thought that the United States should produce a distinctively American musical style based upon folksongs, popular culture, gospel hymns and the like. Others thought that American music should develop by following the models of classical art music. Ives was clearly influenced by both schools, as exemplified by the figure of his father on the one hand and Horatio Parker on the other hand and sought to combine them in his work. Further, much of Ives' music was rejected as modernistic and barbarous early in Ives's career, as witnessed by the harsh reception of his violin sonatas which Magee's book discusses at length. And the role of the iconoclastic composer Henry Cowell and the subsequent role of pianist John Kirkpatrik in championing Ives, with the composer's assistance, is also part of prior biographies of Ives.

Magee gives close attention to a small number of Ives's important works rather than attempting to discuss his entire output. Her treatment of the four symphonies,the "Concord" piano sonata, the violin sonatas and of the late quarter-tone works were insightful. I have been listening to Ives's songs recently, and I learned a great deal from Magee's treatment of Ives's varied song output from the beginning of his career to the end. Ives is frequently undervalued as a song composer. Magee's account of Ives draws heavily from the "Memos" he wrote in the 1930's and from his other voluminous writings. Her uses of these sources helped in my understanding of Ives. In the final section of her book, "Ives Today, Ives Tormorrow" Magee offers a useful division of Ives's work into three periods, the first extending from 1886 -- 1902, the second from 1907-1914, and the third from 1919-1929. I learned a great deal about Ives's compositional activities during each of these periods from Magee.

Even though it challenges some of the legends that have been built up around Ives -- legends that Ives himself substantially encouraged and promoted -- Magee's book cannot be viewed as a debunking. For all his self-promotion, Ives emerges as a three-dimensional, complex person in this study. More important, Ives's compositional achievement permeates this study of the details of his life. Magee's study made me want to return to and to revisit the works of this great American composer.

Robin Friedman