Charles Ives

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Born: 1874 Died: 1954

Born in Danbury, Connecticut on 20 October 1874, Charles Ives pursued what is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. Businessman by day and composer by night, Ives's vast output has gradually brought him recognition as the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, Ives sought a highly personalized musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible. A fascination with bi-tonal forms, polyrhythms, and quotation was nurtured by his father who Ives would later acknowledge as the primary creative influence on his musical style. Studies at Yale with Horatio Parker guided an expert control overlarge-scale forms.

Ironically, much of Ives's work would not be heard until his virtual retirement from music and business in 1930 due to severe health problems. The conductor Nicolas Slonimsky, music critic Henry Bellamann, pianist John Kirkpatrick (who performed the Concord Sonata at its triumphant premiere in New York in 1939), and the composer Lou Harrison (who conducted the premiere of the Symphony No. 3) played a key role in introducing Ives's music to a wider audience. Henry Cowell was perhaps the most significant figure in fostering public and critical attention for Ives's music, publishing several of the composer's works in his New Music Quarterly.

In 1947, Ives was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 3, according him a much deserved modicum of international renown. Soon after, his works were taken up and championed by such leading conductors as Leonard Bernstein and, at his death in 1954, he had witnessed a rise from obscurity to a position of unsurpassed eminence among the world's leading performers and musical institutions.

List of Works:

Symphonies

* Symphony No. 1 (1901)
* Symphony No. 2 (1902, revised 1910)
* Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting (1901, rev. 1911)
* Symphony No. 4 (1916)
* A Symphony: New England Holidays (1919)
* Universe Symphony (1928, unfinished)

Sets

For orchestra

* Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England (1912–16, revised 1929)
* Orchestral Set No. 2 (1909–19)
* Orchestral Set No. 3 (1919–26; notes added after 1934)

For chamber orchestra

* Set No. 1 (1912); includes Calcium Light Night
* Set No. 2 (1912); includes "Gyp the Blood" or Hearst—Which is Worst!? (inc.)
* Set No. 3 (1917)
* Set No. 4: Three Poets and Human Nature (1925-30?)
* Set No. 5: The Other Side of Pioneering, or Side Lights on American Enterprise (1925-30?)
* Set No. 6: From the Side Hill (1925-30?)
* Set No. 7: Water Colors (1925-30?)
* Set No. 8: Songs without Voices (1930?); derived from Set No. 5
* Set No. 9 of Three Pieces (1934)
* Set No. 10 of Three Pieces (1934) [There are also two more chamber sets assembled in 1934 that are found listed in the same Work-List of Compositions.]
* Set for Theatre Orchestra (1915)

Overtures

* Alcott Overture (1904, mostly lost)
* Emerson Overture for Piano and Orchestra or Emerson Concerto (1911–12, incomplete)
* Matthew Arnold Overture (1912, inc.)
* Overture and March: 1776 (1904, rev. 1910)
* Overture in G Minor (1899, inc.)
* Overture: Nationals (1915, mostly lost)
* Robert Browning Overture (1914, rev. 1942)

[edit] Marches

* Holiday Quickstep (1887)
* March No. 2, with Son of a Gambolier (1895?)
* March No. 3 in F and C (1893?, inc.)
* March No. 3, with My Old Kentucky Home (1895?)
* March No. 4 in F and C (1894?, inc.)
* The Circus Band (1898)

Others

* Central Park in the Dark (1906, rev. 1936)
* Chromâtimelôdtune (1923?)
* Country Band March (1905?, rev. 1914, inc.)
* The General Slocum (1910?, inc.)
* The Gong on the Hook and Ladder (1934)
* Piece for Small Orchestra and Organ (1905?, mostly lost)
* The Pond (1906, rev. 1913)
* Postlude in F (1899?)
* Three Ragtime Dances (1911, mostly lost)
* Four Ragtime Dances (?)
* Nine Ragtime Pieces (1902?, mostly lost)
* The Rainbow (1914)
* Skit for Danbury Fair (1909, inc.)
* Take-Off No. 7: Mike Donlin-Johnny Evers (1907, inc.)
* Take-Off No. 8: Willy Keeler at Bat (1907, inc.)
* Tone Roads et al. (1915?)
* The Unanswered Question (1908, rev. 1935)
* Yale-Princeton Football Game (1899, inc.)

Band

* Fantasia on Jerusalem the Golden (1888)
* March in F and C, with Omega Lambda Chi (1896)
* March Intercollegiate, with Annie Lisle (1892)
* Runaway Horse on Main Street (1908, mostly lost)
* Schoolboy March in D and F, Op. 1 (1886, mostly lost)

Chamber/Instrumental

String quartet

* String Quartet No. 1: From the Salvation Army (1900)
* String Quartet No. 2 (1913)
* Pre-First Sonata for Violin and Piano (1913)

Violin sonata

* Violin Sonata No. 1 (1917?)
* Violin Sonata No. 2 (1917?)
* Violin Sonata No. 3 (1914?)
* Violin Sonata No. 4: Children's Day at the Camp Meeting (1916)

Other

* Decoration Day (1919)
* From the Steeples and the Mountains (1901)
* Fugue in B-flat (1895?, inc.)
* Fugue in D (1895?, mostly lost)
* Fugue in Four Greek Modes (1897, inc.)
* Fugue in Four Keys on The Shining Shore (1903?, inc.)
* Hallowe'en (1914)
* In Re Con Moto et al. (1916)
* Largo for Violin and Piano (1901)
* Largo for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (1934? arrangement of Largo for violin and piano)
* Largo Risoluto No. 1 (1909)
* Largo Risoluto No. 2 (1910)
* An Old Song Deranged (1903)
* Piece in G for String Quartet (1891?)
* Polonaise (1887, inc.)
* Practice for String Quartet in Holding Your Own! (1903)
* Prelude on Eventide (1908)
* Scherzo: All the Way Around and Back (1908)
* Scherzo: Over the Pavements (1910)
* Scherzo for String Quartet (1904)
* A Set of Three Short Pieces (1935?)
* Take-Off No. 3: Rube Trying to Walk 2 to 3!! (1909)
* Trio for Violin, Violoncello, and Piano (1907, rev. 1915)

Keyboard

* Variations on "America", for organ (1891) (arranged for orchestra by William Schuman and also arranged for piano solo by Lowell Liebermann)
* Piano Sonata No. 1
* Piano Sonata No. 2 Concord

Songs that were orchestrated

* General William Booth Enters into Heaven (based on a poem by the same name written by Vachel Lindsay)

Choral Psalms

* Psalm 14 (1902, 1912-13)
* Psalm 24 (1901, 1912-13)
* Psalm 25 (1901, 1912-13)
* Psalm 42 (1891-92)
* Psalm 54 (1902)
* Psalm 67 (1898-99)
* Psalm 90 (1923-24)
* Psalm 100 (1902)
* Psalm 135 (1902, 1912-13)
* Psalm 150 (1898-99)

Bibilography:

Biography- Schimer.com
Wikipedia- List of Compositions by Charles Ives