Charles Ives (jan 1, 1874 – sep 1, 1954)

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an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown.

United States of America
A. Charles Ives
1. In the nineteenth century, much of the music in America was imported from Europe, but some people worked to produce home-grown pieces.
2. The first writer to promote these ideas was Emerson, in a movement known as Transcendentalism.
3. New England Transcendentalism inspired Ives, perhaps the first great American composer.
4. After the premiere of his The Celestial Country in 1902, Ives renounced a career in
music.
a. He would not hear a public performance of his pieces for twenty years after this.
b. Ives moved into insurance, where he was a successful businessman.

Nostalgia
1. Some of Ives’s works do not seem to blend so easily with Transcendentalism and are disruptive, humorous, and heavy.
2. Similar to Beethoven’s scherzos, they might be considered “scherzoids.”
3. These programmatic pieces often display aspects of America’s pastoral primitivism views of unspoiled, abundant countryside over the polluted and corrupt big city.
4. The most famous and characteristic of these compositions is “Putnam’s Camp” from Three Places in New England.
5. Like Scriabin and Schoenberg, Ives also worked on a huge orchestral piece, which he called the Universe Symphony

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