The Music of Charles Ives

Author(s): Gilbert Chase

Source: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer, 1955), pp. 504-506
Published by: Kenyon College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333606
Accessed: 23-06-2016 23:45 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Kenyon College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Kenyon Review

This content downloaded from 192.54.242.155 on Thu, 23 Jun 2016 23:45:31 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 504 BOOK REVIEWS

cipline, and the alleviation of juridical and bureaucratic difficulties. Hider

has made it easy for us to accept the idea of a city-planning dictator, but
somehow Hadrian should be fashioned out of more serious stuff.
These are ungenerous complaints which probably reflect a transient
taste for psychological detective stories and a clinical analysis of autocrats.
Hadrian's Memoirs solves nothing, but it never offends our taste and it
maintains our interest on more than one level of communication.

A COMMUNICATION

THE MUSIC OF CHARLES IVES

Sirs:

Robert Evett's "A Post-mortem for Mr. Ives" was not only harsh ("a
composer whoring after novelty") and offensive (Ives "smelled like Whit-
man's armpits"), but also heedless of truth. I do not speak of critical judg-
ments, which may legitimately differ, but of facts, which are a matter of
record. It is simply not true, for example, that "Most of the music for
which Ives is famous . . . has never been heard, and probably never will
be." On the contrary, with the exception of some movements of the Fourth
Symphony, all the music for which Ives is famous has been heard, and he
is famous precisely because it has been heard.
Mr. Evett mentions the Third Symphony and the Fourth Sonata for
violin and piano, but there are many other works that have contributed to
Ives's fame. Prominent among them is the Second Piano Sonata, called
Concord Sonata, with its musical impressions of Emerson, Hawthorne, the
Alcotts, and Thoreau. As early as i920, single movements of this sonata
were played in the South by Lenore Purcell, and in I939 John Kirkpatrick
gave the first complete public performance in New York, which elicited

This content downloaded from 192.54.242.155 on Thu, 23 Jun 2016 23:45:31 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 A COMMUNICATION 505

unbounded critical acclaim. Thenceforth the composer's fame grew steadily,

reaching its peak when he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Third
Symphony in 1947. Much was added to his posthumous fame by the pro-
duction in New York last year of the ballet Ivesiana, with choreography
by Balanchine inspired by six of the composer's orchestral pieces, including
Central Park in the Dark, Hallowe'en, The Unanswered Question, and
Over the Pavements.
The important music of Ives has not only been heard, and heard with
increasing frequency since 1939, it has also been recorded, which means
that it has reached, and will continue to reach, thousands of persons who
may have missed the concert performances. His recorded works, in addi-
tion to those mentioned above, include the Second Symphony, the Second
String Quartet, the First Piano Sonata, three Sonatas for violin and piano,
the orchestral set titled Three Places in New England (one of his most
brilliantly effective compositions), and many of the songs for voice and
piano, as well as the highly expressive choral setting of Psalm Sixty-seven.
Again, it is simply not true that "every time an Ives work has been
performed, it has lost a good bit of prestige." If this were true, the com-
poser's reputation would not have mounted steadily over the past fifteen
years, as it has done not only in the United States but in other countries
as well. The widening public and critical recognition of Ives's music is well
documented in the recent book by Henry and Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives
and his Music, to which the interested reader is referred.
Mr. Evett claims that "The myths (sic) which grew up around the
composer during his lifetime are based more on his statements about his
work than on direct experience with it." This also is not true. Beginning
with Henry Bellamann's lectures in I9I9 (illustrated with musical ex-
amples), there was a small but constant flow of critical writing that pro-
claimed the originality and worth of Ives' compositions. If this was "myth-
making," it was nonetheless based on direct experience with the music, as
can readily be confirmed by consulting the writings of those critics and
composers who were responsible for the movement. They include Elliott
Carter, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Olin Downes, Lawrence Gilman,
Lou Harrison, Bernard Herrmann, John Kirkpatrick, Paul Henry Lang,
Paul Rosenfeld, Nicolas Slonimsky, and Peter Yates. None of them happens
to agree with Mr. Evett's opinion that the known compositions of Ives "are
incredibly banal." Perhaps their ears are better than his.
Mr. Evett urges the listener to recognize and to complain about what

This content downloaded from 192.54.242.155 on Thu, 23 Jun 2016 23:45:31 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 506 CHARLES IVES

offends him." If there is offence in the music of Ives, it is only to mental

complacency and aural inertia. Rather than subscribe to the myth of a
mindless music, I hope that the reader (and the potential listener to Ives's
work) will prefer to evoke with me the verses of William Carlos Williams:

And I could not help thinking

of the wonders of the brain that
hears that music and of our
skill sometimes to record it.

The brain of Charles Ives heard music that spoke of human and divine
wonders, and it is a miracle that he had the skill sometimes to record it.
The word "sometimes" implies all the adverse criticism that need be
directed at his occasional failures.
GILBERT CHASE
Chapel Hill, N.C.

This content downloaded from 192.54.242.155 on Thu, 23 Jun 2016 23:45:31 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms