Composer Ives biography. Brief biography of the American composer Charles Ives (Ives)

CHARLES IVES

ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: LIBRA

NATIONALITY: AMERICAN

MUSICAL STYLE: MODERNISM

ICONIC WORK: “THE UNANSWERED QUESTION”

WHERE COULD YOU HEAR THIS MUSIC: AS THE THEME MUSIC OF THE GERMAN FILM “RUN Lola RUN” (1998)

WORDS OF WISDOM: “IT IS AS EASY TO SPEAK THE WORD “BEAUTY” AS THE WORD “DEGRADATION” AND BOTH THINGS ARE VERY BETTER WHEN THEY EITHER AGREE WITH YOU OR NOT.”

The age of the United States is rarely remembered, except when one thinks about how much time must pass for a new state to develop its own art - then one realizes how young the United States is. At the time of Bach and Haydn, classical music did not exist in America. Only after the war between North and South opera houses and orchestras became a more or less stable phenomenon, and long years most of the performers were Europeans, and the music generally remained entirely European.

Nevertheless, the true American is clearly visible in the first major American composer. Instead of getting into European tradition, Charles Ives called classicism “girls’ music” and European musicians “sluts.” Instead of being educated at a French or German conservatory, as was then customary, he entered Yale University. And instead of earning money as a conductor, he sold insurance.

It is impossible to imagine a more American man than Charles Ives: he played baseball, smoked cigars, advertised his work and, in general, “made himself.” His music echoes such distinctly American phenomena as hymn singing at Christian tent gatherings and brass bands at Fourth of July parades. In addition, his music is certainly unique and unlike anything else.

But perhaps this is also very American.

CAN ALSO FEEL DISSONANCE

The Ives family had deep roots in the town of Danbury, Connecticut, members of this family were engaged in business, represented in local government and, in principle, were considered pillars of the community. That's just young George Ives was considered something of an eccentric. At seventeen, George ran away from home to serve in the Civil War as a military band conductor. Returning to Danbury, he led brass bands, played in local churches, and enjoyed amateur productions of popular operas. In general, they treated him well, but they wondered: when will he finally put an end to all this musical nonsense and get down to business?

FEW WOULD HAVE GUESSED THAT AN ORDINARY APPEARING INSURANCE AGENT FROM THE FIRM OF IVES AND MYRICK WAS WRITING MUSIC AT NIGHT, AND NOT ANYTHING BUT ATONAL.

George married Molly (Mary Elizabeth) Parmelee, and the couple produced two boys, Charles Edward and Joseph Moss. George soon realized that young Charlie shared his love of music. An avid experimenter himself, George never stopped his son from creating according to his own understanding. If Charlie played a chord not imaginable in classical tradition, George applauded his ingenuity. A little time passed, and Charlie was already composing musical pieces, and George was performing them with one of his orchestras. At the age of fourteen, Charlie took the place of organist in the local church. As a teenager, Charlie lived at breakneck speed: he was either running to school, or rushing to a baseball game, or flying home to practice his piano, or walking to church for choir rehearsal. According to tradition, the boys from the Ives family graduated from Yale University, and, after studying at a private school in order to improve their academic performance, in 1894 Charlie entered Yale.

At home in Danbury, Dad George made the fateful decision to leave music because his irregular income was unable to pay for the university education of his two sons. George got a job at the Danbury Savings Bank and told his son not to get involved in music: they say, music can be a hobby, but not a profession. Obviously, young Ives interpreted his father's instructions in his own way, because at the university he signed up for music course, where I was surprised to discover that the strict faculty traditionalists did not approve of experiments at all. When Charlie showed Professor Horatio Parker one of his songs, Parker circled a chordal dissonance, which, contrary to any rules commanded by the great Bach, was not followed by a second chord resolving the first into consonance. “This is a grave mistake,” Parker snapped. Charlie complained about the professor in a letter to his father, and George did not flinch, but showed full strength of spirit. “Tell Parker,” he wrote back, “that not every dissonance must be resolved if he does not feel inclined to do so.” Their correspondence soon ended. Instead of another message from his father, sad news came from Danbury: George Ives died, struck by a stroke at forty-nine years old.

DISSONANCE LOVES HARMONY

Ives was deeply affected by his father's death, but did not become disheartened, and Charlie's university daily routine was even more intense than in school years. His friends nicknamed him Hurricane. He still loved sports; his coach said that Charlie could have become a champion sprinter if he had not spent so much time at the piano. Ives was invited to exclusive college fraternities and sororities, and despite his shyness, he was a welcome guest at parties because he could sit down at the piano and play a popular song. Friends had no idea that Ives took music very seriously.

After graduating from university, Ives took his father's advice and went into insurance business. Together with a friend, he opened the Ives and Myrick agency in New York in a building near Wall Street. Ives' marketing savvy made the company a success, and their firm became the most prosperous insurance agency in the country. Ives became rich. And yet every evening, returning home, he composed music.

In 1905, Ives fell in love with a girl whose name was - you really can’t imagine it on purpose! - Harmony. Harmony Twitchell was the daughter of a New England minister; her brothers attended university with Ives. Deeply devout Harmony trained as a nurse and worked among the urban poor. She met Ives back in his student years- and even was his companion at the ball of penultimate year students - but they only became flaming with feelings for each other when they met again in 1905. Charlie and Harmony were married in June 1908.

Harmony became pregnant almost instantly, but then suffered a miscarriage with complications so severe that doctors had to remove her uterus. This was a terrible blow for the couple; they dreamed of a big family. In 1915, Ives and his wife invited a poor New York family to spend the summer at their cottage in Connecticut. One of the guests' daughters, Edith (aged just over a year), was constantly ill. The girl had been ill all summer, and Mrs. Ives suggested that her parents leave Edie in the village, where a registered nurse, Harmony, could nurse her. The inevitable happened: Charles and his wife fell in love with the blond baby. They decided to adopt her - not the easiest idea, considering that both Edith's parents were alive and well. However, Ives had enough money to settle any conflict. Subsequently, Edith's family regularly extorted specie from Ives.

GO YOUR OWN WAY, AND EVERYTHING ELSE... - FOLLOW THE DRUM!

Years passed, but few people heard the music written by Ives. Since he had nothing to follow except his own inclinations, he interpreted every aspect of writing in a very unique way. His consonances would have given Haydn a heart attack, and his rhythms would have given Brahms a headache. Ives did not understand why an orchestra should play in the same key - or even adhere to a single rhythm. In Ives' work, one group of instruments may play a marching rhythm while another performs a waltz; Some of his orchestral works even require more than one conductor.

Ives' favorite technique was to incorporate popular songs and melodies into his works - a sort of early version of hip-hop. He quoted church hymns (“Nearer, Lord, to Thee,” “In a Wonderful Future”), marches (often written by John Philip Sousa) and well-known tunes (“Turkey in the Straw,” “London Bridge is Falling”), sometimes the same tune invaded another or sounded over another. In addition, Ives had, so to speak, musical feeling humor. He loved to create musical effects that "sang" real world. In "The Country Marching Band," written in homage to amateur brass bands, a hapless trumpet player plays two bars longer than his comrades. “The Fourth of July,” one of the movements of Ives’s Fifth Symphony (“Holidays”), ends with fireworks that set City Hall on fire, and in the song “Runaway Horse on Main Street.” musical means it depicts exactly what the title says - a runaway horse and a street. From time to time Ives showed his work professional musicians, but in best case scenario I encountered a sincere misunderstanding.

MUSIC BY MAIL

First World War awakened the composer political activity. He joined the campaign for a constitutional amendment that would turn the United States into a direct democracy, with the country's entry into any military conflict decided by popular vote. (The activists did not get very far along this path.) Then Ives decided that the war required his direct participation, and at forty-four he enlisted in the army for six months as an ambulance driver.

He was about to leave for France for the theater of war when the astonishing intensity with which Ives lived every moment of his life suddenly ricocheted. He collapsed with a massive heart attack. A close encounter with death changed Ives. He realized that he could go to the next world at any moment, and therefore, in the limited time remaining, he must solve the two most important tasks in his life: ensure the financial security of his family (a natural priority for an insurance salesman) and make sure that his music is finally heard .

The first task presented no difficulties. Ives had already amassed a considerable fortune, and in the 1920s he increased it. However, the second task was not so simple. To begin with, Ives was resolutely unwilling to suck up to classical music societies and orchestras for their approval; these official musical figures he called them nothing more than “angry, obsessed weaklings.” Ives was a firm believer that music should become more American, more masculine, and musical societies society women and pampered men were often in charge - Ives was not at all eager to impress this kind of audience. Macho Ives was so furious that he branded the melodic, harmonious music of Mendelssohn, Debussy and Ravel with the epithet “girlish”. “To recoil from dissonance - is that a manly thing?” - he asked.

So how did Ives solve the problem? He took his music straight to the people. He printed the scores at his own expense and sent them by mail to modernist composers, adventurous conductors, and sympathetic critics. This tactic worked. Gradually, a few fans of modern music became interested in Ives, and even if not immediately and with great difficulty, he still achieved the performance of his works in concert hall. The responses were mostly negative - although the most insightful listeners fully appreciated the composer's unique, purely American style.

The recognition with which he was finally awarded did not excite Ives any more than his former rejection. When he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for the Third Symphony (written thirty-seven years earlier), he said: “Prizes are for boys, but I’ve grown up a long time ago!”

Since 1926, Ives essentially stopped composing music, and in January 1930 he left the firm of Ives and Myrick. He suffered numerous heart attacks and was forced to remain on bed rest for months. In the spring of 1954 he was operated on for a hernia; the operation seemed to be successful, but then he suffered a stroke. Charles Ives died on May 19th.

Ives paved the way for many trends in the music of modernism and even postmodernism. Polyrhythm, polyharmony, polytonality, atonality, clusters, dissonant counterpoint - all this is presented in his work. We classify Ives as a modernist, but in fact he does not fit into any category, remaining entirely himself to the end - the embodiment of American individualism.

NOT MY GAME

When George Ives decided to play his young son's "Holiday Quickstep" with the orchestra, Charlie was both delighted and scared. Usually he played snare drum in his father's band, but this time Charlie was so worried that he stayed home. And when the band marched down Main Street past the Ives house, Charlie did not stick to the window overlooking the street - he ran into the backyard and began throwing a baseball at the barn door.

Ives, in principle, did not want hometown knew how musically gifted he was. If he was asked: “What do you play?” - he invariably answered: “Not with anything, but with something - baseball.”

MUSIC, IT IS MUSIC

The military band conducted by Father Ives was considered the best in the army, and this fact did not escape the attention of the commander in chief, President Lincoln. Lincoln, arriving at the location of General Grant's Army of the Potomac during the siege of Petersburg, noted:

Good orchestra.

Grant just shrugged.

There's no point in talking to me about this. I know only one tune - “Yankee Doodle”, and about everything else I know that it is not “Yankee Doodle”.

IVES IVES DIFFERENCE

Perhaps as you read this chapter you kept thinking, “Wait, isn’t that the Ives who sang “Merry Christmas to you?” Not that one, but it's another case of name confusion in the music world.

Burl Ives (1909–1995) was an Academy Award-winning actor and popular singer in folk style. He played in theaters on Broadway, acted in films; Tennessee Williams wrote the role of Big Daddy in the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” especially for him. But most of all, this Ives became famous for voicing the snowman Sam in the cartoon “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which is so popular on television. As for Charles Ives, he belonged to other areas - the insurance business and musical composition.

SHIPS CAME INTO MARK HARBOR...

Harmony Twitchell's father, Joe, was a close friend of Mark Twain. They traveled together in Europe, and it was Joe Twitchell who encouraged Twain to write a novel about his life on the Mississippi. When Harmony and Ives got engaged, the girl naturally introduced her fiancé to an old family friend.

So, - Mark Twain drawled when the couple entered the door, - everything seems to be fine with the bow, now turn it around, let’s see what kind of stern it has.

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He received his initial musical education under the guidance of his father, a military bandmaster. In 1894-98 he studied at Yale University, where he studied composition with H. Parker and organ playing with D. Buck. Since 1899, church organist in New York and other cities.

In shaping Ives's work important role played by the patriarchal environment of his childhood and teenage years; in the provinces he constantly heard folk music, was a participant in rural musical holidays. The roots of his work are in folk songs and religious hymns, in wind music performed by village musicians ( early writings Ives written for a brass band, in which he played percussion instruments).

Ives developed his own musical style, combining elements of traditional everyday music with unusual, sharp harmonies and original instrumentation. Ives's work is characterized by lyricism and humor, a penchant for philosophical content along with the rationalism of musical language.

In a number of works, Ives sought to reflect the life of his homeland. Thus, in the episodes from the 2nd sonata for violin and piano, sharp collisions of different intonation and rhythmic elements reproduce pictures of noisy village festivities.

Ives began writing music in the 90s. 19th century, but until the end of the 30s. His works were not known in the 20th century. (It was only in 1947 that he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the 3rd Symphony, written in 1911.) Ives received real recognition posthumously when American musicians discovered in his artistic heritage the features of an original creative individuality of a strongly national character and proclaimed Ives the founder of a new American school.

Most famous works Ives's 2nd piano sonata (Concord, 1909-15), 3rd and 4th symphonies, overture No. 2 are replete with sharp techniques of dissonant atonal and polytonal writing. Techniques of sound representation are characteristic of the style of the 4th sonata for violin and piano “ children's day at the camp" (“Children's day at the camp meeting”, 1915).

In some compositions, Ives used the unique serial writing technique he discovered, as well as the means of the quarter-tone system (“Three quartertone piano pieces” for two pianos, 1903-24). Ives owns essays and articles on quarter-tone music (“Some quartertone impressions”, 1925, etc.).

Works: cantata Celestial country (1899); for orc. - 5 symphonies (1898-98, 1897-1902, 1901-04, 1910-16, 5th, Holidays, 1904-13), Universe (Universe symphony - fragments of a symphony, 1911-16), Central Park in darkness (Central park in the dark, 1898-1907), Three villages in New England (Three places in New England, 1903-14) and other program plays, overtures (1901-12), pieces for a large symphony. and chamber orc., Ragtime dances (Ragtime dances, 1900-11) for theater. orc.; strings quartet (1896) and other chamber instruments. ensembles; 2 fp. sonatas; 5 sc. sonatas; Op. for organ; plays for various instr.; Op. for choir, song cycles based on Amer. poems. poets (114 songs, 1884-1921).

Literature: Rakhmanova M., Charles Ives, "SM", 1971, No. 6, p. 97-108; Copland A., The Ives case in our new music, N. Y., 1941; Сowell H. and S., Charles Ives and his music, N. Y., 1955; Letters from Ch. Ives to N. Slonimsky, in the book: Slonimsky N., Music since 1900, N. Y., 1971, p. 1318-48.

G. M. Schneerson

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Style

Ives's work was greatly influenced by folk music, which he listened to in his rural provincial childhood - folk songs, spiritual and religious hymns. Ives's unique musical style combines elements of folklore, traditional everyday music with complex, sharp, dissonant atonal and polytonal harmony, and sound imaging techniques. He developed original equipment serial writing, used the quarter-tone system.

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Literature about the composer

Ivashkin A. Charles Ives and music of the twentieth century. Moscow: Soviet composer, 1991.
Shneerson G. M. Ives Charles Edward // Music Encyclopedia in 6 volumes, TSB, M., 1973-1982, T. 1, p. 74-75.
Akopyan L. O. Music of the 20th century: an encyclopedic dictionary / Scientific editor Dvoskina E. M. - M.: “Praktika”, 2010. - P. 21-23. - 855 s. - 2500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-89816-092-0.
Rakhmanova M. Charles Ives, SM, 1971, no. 6, p. 97-108.
Cowell H. Cowell S. R. Charles Ives and His Music. New York: Oxford UP, 1955.
Rossiter F. R. Charles Ives and his America. New York: Liveright, 1975.
Block G. Charles Ives: a bio-bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Burkholder J.P. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.
Charles Ives and his world, ed. by J. Peter Burkholder. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press, 1996 (collection of articles).
Swafford J. Charles Ives: A Life with Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
Sherwood G. Charles Ives: a guide to research. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Copland A. The Ives case in our new music, N.Y., 1941.
Letters from Ch. Ives to N. Slonimsky, in the book: Slonimsky N., Music since 1900, N. Y., 1971, p. 1318-48.

Excerpt characterizing Ives, Charles

I tried to calm down, took a deep breath and tried again. Only this time I didn’t try to touch anything, but decided to just think about what I wanted - for example, for the cup to be in my hand. Of course, this did not happen, she again just simply moved sharply. But I was jubilant!!! My whole insides simply squealed with delight, because I already realized that sharply or not, this was only happening at the request of my thought! And it was absolutely amazing! Of course, I immediately wanted to try the “new product” on all the living and inanimate “objects” around me...
The first one I came across was my grandmother, who at that moment was calmly preparing her next culinary “work” in the kitchen. It was very quiet, the grandmother was humming something to herself, when suddenly a heavy cast-iron frying pan jumped up like a bird on the stove and crashed to the floor with a terrible noise... The grandmother jumped up in surprise worse than that the same frying pan... But, we must give her credit, she immediately pulled herself together and said:
- Stop doing that!
I felt a little offended, because no matter what happened, out of habit, they always blamed me for everything (although this moment this, of course, was absolutely true).
- Why do you think it’s me? – I asked pouting.
“Well, it seems like we don’t have ghosts yet,” the grandmother said calmly.
I loved her very much for her equanimity and unshakable calm. It seemed that nothing in this world could truly “unsettle” her. Although, naturally, there were things that upset her, surprised her, or made her sad, she perceived all this with amazing calm. And that’s why I always felt very comfortable and protected with her. Somehow, I suddenly felt that my last “prank” interested my grandmother... I literally “felt in my gut” that she was watching me and waiting for something else. Well, naturally, I didn’t keep myself waiting long... A few seconds later, all the “spoons and ladle” hanging over the stove flew down with a noisy roar behind the same frying pan...
“Well, well... Breaking is not building, I would do something useful,” the grandmother said calmly.
I was already choked with indignation! Well, please tell me, how can she treat this “incredible event” so calmly?! After all, this is... SUCH!!! I couldn’t even explain what it was, but I certainly knew that I couldn’t take what was happening so calmly. Unfortunately, my indignation did not make the slightest impression on my grandmother and she again calmly said:
“You shouldn’t spend so much effort on something you can do with your hands.” Better go read it.
My outrage knew no bounds! I couldn’t understand why what seemed so amazing to me didn’t cause any delight in her?! Unfortunately, I was still too young a child to understand that all these impressive “external effects” really do not give anything other than the same “external effects”... And the essence of all this is just intoxication with the “mysticism of the inexplicable” gullible and impressionable people, which my grandmother, naturally, was not... But since I had not yet matured to such an understanding, at that moment I was only incredibly interested in what else I could move. Therefore, without regret, I left my grandmother, who “did not understand” me, and moved on in search of a new object of my “experiments”...
At that time, my father’s favorite, a beautiful gray cat, Grishka, lived with us. I found him sleeping soundly on the warm stove and decided that this was just a very good moment to try my new “art” on him. I thought it would be better if he sat on the window. Nothing happened. Then I concentrated and thought harder... Poor Grishka flew off the stove with a wild cry and crashed his head on the windowsill... I felt so sorry for him and so ashamed that I, all around guilty, rushed to pick him up. But for some reason all the fur of the unfortunate cat suddenly stood on end and he, meowing loudly, rushed away from me, as if scalded by boiling water.
It was a shock for me. I didn’t understand what happened and why Grishka suddenly disliked me, although before that we were very good friends. I chased him almost all day, but, unfortunately, I was never able to beg for forgiveness... His strange behavior lasted for four days, and then our adventure was most likely forgotten and everything was fine again. But it made me think, because I realized that, without wanting it, with the same unusual “abilities” I can sometimes cause harm to someone.
After this incident, I began to take much more seriously everything that unexpectedly manifested itself in me and “experimented” much more carefully. All the following days, naturally, I simply fell ill with the mania of “movement.” I mentally tried to move everything that caught my eye... and in some cases, again, I got very disastrous results...
So, for example, I watched in horror as shelves of neatly folded, very expensive, dad’s books fell “organized” onto the floor and with shaking hands I tried to put everything back in place as quickly as possible, since books were a “sacred” object in our house and Before you took them, you had to earn them. But, fortunately for me, my dad wasn’t at home at that moment and, as they say, this time it “blown away”...
Another very funny and at the same time sad incident happened with my dad’s aquarium. My father, as long as I remember him, was always very fond of fish and dreamed of one day building a large aquarium at home (which he later realized). But at that moment, for lack of anything better, we simply had a small round aquarium that could only hold a few colorful fish. And since even such a small “living corner” brought dad spiritual joy, everyone in the house looked after it with pleasure, including me. Charles Edward Ives

Style

Ives's work was heavily influenced by the folk music he listened to in his rural provincial childhood - folk songs, spiritual and religious hymns. Ives's unique musical style combines elements of folklore, traditional everyday music with complex, sharp, dissonant atonal and polytonal harmony, and sound imaging techniques. He developed an original technique of serial writing and used the quarter-tone system.

Essays

Cantata “Celestial country” (Celestial country, 1899).
For orchestra - 5 symphonies (1898-98, 1897-1902, 1901-04, 1910-16, 5th, Holidays, 1904-13), Universe (Universe symphony - fragments of a symphony, 1911-16), " Central park in the dark (1898-1907), Three places in New England (1903-14) and other program plays, overtures (1901-12), pieces for a large symphony and chamber orchestras, Ragtime dances (Ragtime dances, 1900-11) for theater orchestra.
String Quartet (1896) and other chamber instrumental ensembles, including “The Unanswered Question” (1906, later an orchestral version was created)
2 piano sonatas (including the second piano sonata - “Concord”, 1909-15).
5 violin sonatas (including the fourth sonata for violin and piano - “Children’s day at the camp meeting”, 1915).
Works for organ.
Plays for various instruments(including “Three quartertone piano pieces” for two pianos, 1903-24).
Works for choir, song cycles based on poems by American poets (114 songs, 1884-1921).
Articles on quarter-tone music (including “Some quartertone impressions”, 1925).

Lyrics

Memos/ John Kirkpatrick, ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972

Memory

Literature about the composer

Ivashkin A. Charles Ives and the music of the twentieth century. Moscow: Soviet Composer, 1991.
Shneerson G. M. Ives Charles Edward // Musical encyclopedia in 6 volumes, TSB, M., 1973-1982, Vol. 1, p. 74-75.
Rakhmanova M. Charles Ives, SM, 1971, no. 6, p. 97-108.
Cowell H. Cowell S. R. Charles Ives and His Music. New York: Oxford UP, 1955.
Rossiter F. R. Charles Ives and his America. New York: Liveright, 1975.
Block G. Charles Ives: a bio-bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Burkholder J.P. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.
Charles Ives and His World/ J. Peter Burkholder, ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996.
Swafford J. Charles Ives: A Life with Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
Sherwood G. Charles Ives: a guide to research. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Copland A. The Ives case in our new music, N.Y., 1941.
Letters from Ch. Ives to N. Slonimsky, in the book: Slonimsky N., Music since 1900, N. Y., 1971, p. 1318-48.

Links

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Born on October 20
Born in 1874
Born in Danbury
Died May 19
Died in 1954
Deaths in New York
Composers by alphabet
US composers
Composers of the 20th century
Yale alumni
Organists of the USA
Academic musicians of the USA
Pulitzer Prize Winners
Grammy Award Winners

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- (Ives, Charles) CHARLES IVES with his wife. (1874 1954), innovative American composer, the most original figure in history American music. Ives passionately loved dissonances and tried out a lot of new ones in his work. expressive means… … Encyclopedia Collier - (18741954), one of the founders of the modern American school of composition. He created an original synthesis of popular and professional composer's music. Five symphonies (18981915), chamber instrumental works, songs... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (Ives) Charles (1874 1954), American composer. He was one of the first to use aleatorics, serial technique, and the quarter-tone system. 5 symphonic, chamber instrumental works, combining a philosophical interpretation of the theme with subtle lyricism... Modern encyclopedia

Probably, if the musicians of the early 20th century. and on the eve of the First World War they learned that the composer Charles Ives lived in America and heard his works, they would have treated them as a kind of experiment, a curiosity, or even would not have noticed at all: so unique was he himself and the soil on which which he grew up. But no one knew Ives then - very for a long time he did nothing at all to promote his music. Ives’s “discovery” occurred only in the late 30s, when it turned out that many (and, moreover, very different) methods of modern musical writing had already been tested by the original American composer in the era of A. Scriabin, C. Debussy and G. Mahler. By the time Ives became famous, he had not composed music for many years and, seriously ill, cut off ties with the outside world. One of his contemporaries called Ives’s fate an “American tragedy.” Ives was born into the family of a military conductor. His father was a tireless experimenter - this trait passed on to his son (For example, he instructed two orchestras going towards each other to play various works.) From his childhood and youth, spent in a patriarchal environment, Ives’s “hearing” of America, the “openness” of his work, which probably absorbed everything that sounded around him, began. Many of his compositions contain echoes of Puritan religious hymns, jazz, and minstrel theater. As a child, Charles was brought up on the music of two composers - J. S. Bach and S. Foster (a friend of Ives’s father, an American “bard”, author of popular songs and ballads). With his serious attitude to music, alien to any vanity, and sublime structure of thoughts and feelings, Ives would later resemble Bach.

Ives wrote his first works for a military orchestra (he played percussion instruments in it), and at the age of 14 he became a church organist in his hometown. But besides this, he played the piano in the theater, improvising ragtime and other plays. After graduating from Yale University (1894-1898), where he studied with H. Parker (composition) and D. Buck (organ), Ives works as a church organist in New York. He then served as a clerk for an insurance company for many years and did so with great enthusiasm. Subsequently, in the 20s, moving away from music, Ives became a successful businessman and a prominent insurance specialist (author of popular works). Most of Ives's works belong to the genres of orchestral and chamber music. He is the author of five symphonies, overtures, program works for orchestra (Three Villages in New England, Central Park in the Dark), two string quartets, five sonatas for violin, two for piano, pieces for organ, choirs and more than 100 songs. Ives wrote most of his major works over a long period of time, over several years. In the Second Piano Sonata (1911-15), the composer paid tribute to his spiritual predecessors. Each of its parts depicts a portrait of one of the American philosophers: R. Emerson, N. Hawthorne, G. Topo; the entire sonata bears the name of the place where these philosophers lived (Concord, Massachusetts, 1840-1860). Their ideas formed the basis of Ives's worldview (for example, the idea of merging human life with the life of nature). Ives's art is characterized by a high ethical spirit; his discoveries were never of a purely formal nature, but were a serious attempt to identify the hidden possibilities inherent in the very nature of sound.

Before other composers, Ives came to many of the modern means of expression. From his father’s experiments with different orchestras there is a direct path to polytonality (the simultaneous sound of several keys), volumetric, “stereoscopic” sound and aleatorics (when the musical text is not rigidly fixed, but from a combination of elements appears anew each time, as if by chance). Ives's last major project (the unfinished "Worldwide" Symphony) assumed the location of orchestras and choirs in the open air, in the mountains, at different points in space. Two parts of the symphony (Music of the Earth and Music of the Sky) were supposed to sound... simultaneously, but twice, so that listeners could alternately fix their attention on each. In some works, Ives, before A. Schoenberg, came almost close to the serial organization of atonal music.

The desire to penetrate the depths of sound matter led Ives to the quarter-tone system, completely unknown classical music. He writes Three Quarter-Tone Pieces for Two Pianos (suitably tuned) and the article “Quarter-Tone Impressions.” Ives devoted more than 30 years to composing music, and only in 1922 did he publish a number of works at his own expense. For the last 20 years of his life, Ives retired from all activities, which was facilitated by increasing blindness, heart disease and nervous system. In 1944, in honor of Ives's 70th birthday, an anniversary concert was organized in Los Angeles. His music was highly appreciated by the greatest musicians of our century. I. Stravinsky once noted: “Ives’s music told me more than the novelists describing the American West... I discovered a new understanding of America in him.”