Charles Ives space landscape biography. Charles Ives biography

Trying to explain something new and incomprehensible, we often resort to the technique of laying out this incomprehensible on familiar, simple and clear shelves. There are no such shelves for the Charles Ives phenomenon. But for all its crazy innovation, it is deeply traditional. Here is such a paradox, and, I note, a purely American one: a certain parallel with the titanic figure of William Faulkner suggests itself.

Great American Composer Charles Ives born October 20, 1874 in the provincial town of Danbury (Connecticut), in the family of the city bandmaster brass band George Edward Ives. Ives's father was multi-talented, an original person, had the inquisitive mind of a researcher with a constant desire for something new. He experimented a lot in music, being carried away by experiments with crushing the intervals of the temperament scale into quarters and even smaller fractions of tones, and devoted all his free time to musical experiments. One day he forced two orchestras, each playing their own music, to march towards each other, which produced a strong impression on little Charlie (its immediate echo was embodied much later in Ives’s Fourth Symphony).

Ives had quite a lot of such unusual sound impressions in his childhood. From the age of five, the father began teaching the boy harmony, polyphony, music history, and introduced him to the works of Bach and other great classics. Of course, such an unusual teacher could not limit himself to formal classical education. He initiated his son into the element of sound experimentation.

From childhood, the composer followed in his father’s footsteps: from the age of 12 he played drums in the city orchestra (and then began writing his first pieces for a brass band), and from the age of 14 he began working as a church organist. In 1898 he graduated from Yale University in composition and organ and received a position as organist in main church New Haven. But in the same year he quits the music service and becomes an agent for an insurance company. Free time he devoted himself to creating amazing, unique music, treating it as a hobby and not particularly striving for performance and publication.

The presentation of the facts would seem to paint an image of an unfortunate unrecognized genius. Don't believe it! Ives was passionate about insurance, organized his own company, made a number of innovations in the field of real estate insurance, became a successful businessman and prominent specialist, wrote several popular books and articles. The company he organized, Ives and Myrick, quickly took one of the first places among US insurance companies.

Such unbridled love for all manifestations of life affected my health. In 1907, symptoms of heart disease appeared, and over the years, diabetes and visual impairment were added to this. In 1918, a severe heart attack weakened him so much that he stopped active music studies. In the early 20s. Ives only completed some of the unfinished work, and in 1928 he quit his service. Despite his poor health, Ives lived long life, just short of 80 years old, of which the last 20 practically broke off all ties with outside world.

Ives was a bright, extraordinary, even strange personality and at the same time a typical American: a lover of life and a realist. He had no illusions, no particular hope that his music would ever be performed. True, in 1922, drawing the line musical path, Ives published several small works at his own expense.

Te Unanswered Question

But there was one thing that Ives wrote throughout his life, never finishing. This is a utopian “Ecumenical Symphony”, in which the composer dreamed of embodying the music of nature itself: the vibration of the earth, the noise of the forest, the harmony of the celestial spheres. Ives wrote several notes into the score of this grandiose composition, which remained in the drafts, literally on the eve of his death.

Although Ives led a secluded life, he was still known to some extent - but only as an odious musical eccentric. In the early 40s, when Ives was approaching his seventieth birthday, pianist J. Kirkpatrick took the risk of performing his grandiose Concord Sonata in New York. At this time, a stream of emigrants fleeing fascism poured into America. Among them were such major musicians as Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Schoenberg was shocked by such unusual music, met the author, and became interested in his work. Not without the influence of Schoenberg in 1947, his Third Symphony, written in 1911, was awarded Pulitzer Prize. In 1951, the premiere of Ives's Second Symphony (1907-1909) was conducted by the famous Leonard Bernstein.

“Ives’s music told me more than the novelists describing the American West... I discovered a new understanding of America in him,” said I. F. Stravinsky.

Without seeking popularity, Ives did not isolate himself from the public. When recognition came to him at the end of his life, he was very happy about it.

Today Ives is recognized as one of the most significant, and perhaps the most significant, composer in the United States.

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 the latest musical writing were already 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.

When “imagining” music, I usually imagine some kind of brass band with wings in the back of my mind.

Ives Charles

His father was tireless experimenter- this trait passed on to his son, (For example, he instructed two orchestras going towards each other to play various works.) From children's and teenage years, spent in a patriarchal atmosphere, originates from Ives’s “hearing” of America, the “openness” of his work, which probably absorbed everything that sounded around him. 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.

The fabric of existence weaves itself into a whole.

Ives Charles

Ives wrote his first works for a military band (he played the percussion instruments), 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, choruses and more than 100 songs. Most of their major works Ives wrote for a long 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.

Uncertainty is sometimes an indication of proximity to perfect truth.

Ives Charles

Before other composers, Ives came to many of the modern expressive means. 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 "World" 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 by Ives before A. Schoenberg came almost close to the serial organization of atonal music.

Ives's work was greatly influenced by folk music, which he listened to in his rural provincial childhood - folk songs, spiritual and religious hymns. Unique musical style Ives 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.

Essays

• Cantata “Celestial country” (Celestial country, 1899).
• For orchestra - 5 symphonies (1898-98, 1897-1902, 1901-04, 1910-16, 5th, Holidays- Holidays, 1904-13), Universe (Universe symphony - fragments of a symphony, 1911-16), “Central park in darkness” the dark, 1898-1907), Three places in New England (1903-14) and other program plays, overtures (1901-12), pieces for large symphony and chamber orchestras, 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.
• Pieces 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

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Ives is the son of a military bandmaster who became his first music teacher. From 1887 (from the age of 13) he worked as an organist in the church. He graduated from Yale University (1894-1898), where he studied composition (class of X. Parker) and playing the organ (class of D. Buck). He began composing music in the 90s of the 19th century. Since 1899, he has been a church organist in New York and other cities. He worked for various insurance companies, opened his own business, and introduced a number of innovations in real estate insurance. He achieved significant success in the insurance business, which allowed him to support his family while pursuing music as a hobby. After 1907, heart problems began, and diabetes and other diseases were added over time. Since 1926, he practically stopped composing; in the 1930s he left the service.

Until the early 1940s, his works were rarely performed and were practically unknown. Ives was truly recognized only after his death, when he was declared one of the most important American composers. The first recognition came in the 1940s, when Ives's work was highly praised by Arnold Schoenberg. Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1947) for the 3rd Symphony (1911). In 1951, Leonard Bernstein conducted the premiere of Ives's Second Symphony (1907-1909).

Since 1970, the American Academy of Arts and Letters has awarded young composers annual bonus Charles Ives. A crater on Mercury is named after 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, 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 (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 large symphony and chamber orchestras , Ragtime dances (1900-11) for theater orchestra.
• String quartet (1896) and other chamber instrumental ensembles.
• 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.
• Pieces 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 about quarter-tone music (including "Some quartertone impressions", 1925).

Lyrics

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

Literature about the composer

• Ivashkin A. Charles Ives and the music of the twentieth century. Moscow: Soviet Composer, 1991.
• Schneerson 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.

Trying to explain something new and incomprehensible, we often resort to the technique of laying out this incomprehensible on familiar, simple and clear shelves. There are no such shelves for the Charles Ives phenomenon. But for all its crazy innovation, it is deeply traditional. Here is such a paradox, and, I note, a purely American one: a certain parallel with the titanic figure of William Faulkner suggests itself.

The great American composer Charles Ives was born on October 20, 1874 in the provincial town of Danbury (Connecticut), in the family of the bandmaster of the city brass band, George Edward Ives. Ives's father was a multi-talented, original person, possessed of an inquisitive mind of a researcher with a constant desire for something new. He experimented a lot in music, being carried away by experiments with crushing the intervals of the temperament scale into quarters and even smaller fractions of tones, and devoted all his free time to musical experiments. One day he forced two orchestras, each playing their own music, to march towards each other, which produced a strong impression on little Charlie (its immediate echo was embodied much later in Ives’s Fourth Symphony).

Ives had quite a lot of such unusual sound impressions in his childhood. From the age of five, the father began teaching the boy harmony, polyphony, music history, and introduced him to the works of Bach and other great classics. Of course, such an unusual teacher could not limit himself to formal classical education. He initiated his son into the element of sound experimentation.

From childhood, the composer followed in his father’s footsteps: from the age of 12 he played drums in the city orchestra (and then began writing his first pieces for a brass band), and from the age of 14 he began working as a church organist. In 1898 he graduated from Yale University with degrees in composition and organ and received a position as organist in the main church of New Haven. But in the same year he quits the music service and becomes an agent for an insurance company. He devoted his free time to creating amazing, unique music, treating it as a hobby and not particularly striving for performance or publication.

The presentation of the facts would seem to paint an image of an unhappy, unrecognized genius. Don't believe it! Ives was passionate about insurance, organized his own company, made a number of innovations in the field of real estate insurance, became a successful businessman and prominent specialist, and wrote several popular books and articles. The company he organized, Ives and Myrick, quickly took one of the first places among US insurance companies.

Such unbridled love for all manifestations of life affected my health. In 1907, symptoms of heart disease appeared, and over the years, diabetes and visual impairment were added to this. In 1918, a severe heart attack weakened him so much that he stopped active music studies. In the early 20s. Ives only completed some of the unfinished work, and in 1928 he quit his service. Despite his poor health, Ives lived a long life, just shy of 80, the last 20 of which he practically cut off all ties with the outside world.

Ives was a bright, extraordinary, even strange personality and at the same time a typical American: a lover of life and a realist. He had no illusions, no particular hope that his music would ever be performed. True, in 1922, summing up the musical path he had traveled, Ives published several small works at his own expense.

But there was one thing that Ives wrote throughout his life, never finishing. This is a utopian “Ecumenical Symphony”, in which the composer dreamed of embodying the music of nature itself: the vibration of the earth, the noise of the forest, the harmony of the celestial spheres. Ives wrote several notes into the score of this grandiose composition, which remained in the drafts, literally on the eve of his death.

Although Ives led a secluded life, he was still known to some extent, but only as an odious musical eccentric. In the early 40s, when Ives was approaching his seventieth birthday, pianist J. Kirkpatrick took the risk of performing his grandiose Concord Sonata in New York. At this time, a stream of emigrants fleeing fascism poured into America. Among them were such major musicians as Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Schoenberg was shocked by such unusual music, met the author, and became interested in his work. Not without the influence of Schoenberg in 1947, his Third Symphony, written in 1911, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In 1951, the premiere of Ives's Second Symphony (1907-1909) was conducted by the famous Leonard Bernstein.

“Ives’s music told me more than the novelists describing the American West I discovered a new understanding of America in him,” said I. F. Stravinsky.

Without seeking popularity, Ives did not isolate himself from the public. When recognition came to him at the end of his life, he was very happy about it.

Today Ives is recognized as one of the most significant, and perhaps the most significant, composer in the United States.

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