NOTE:
This is my old Charles Ives page, one of the first of its kind on the
World Wide Web. Meanwhile especially the link section has gotten quite
obsolete due to excellent other resources like the Wikipedia article.
But I still keep it here unchanged, so you can get a glance at the
"good old days". Some of the links no longer work though.
Is it natural, that one is excited by the music of Charles Ives? Is he a romantic, or more the kind of a musical craftsman constructing polytonal music scores? ... On this page you will also find links to some audio files of Ives' music to get a first impression.
Charles Ives (1874-1954) is a great American composer. His music
wasn't esteemed very high by his contemporaries, as he often doesn't
obey the rules of the classical or romantic music styles. Now he is
widely recognized as Father of the modern American music.
Nevertheless, when talking with my friends, I still have the impression
that many people get a strange feeling when hearing most of his works.
I think about everything he has composed -- be it important for the
development of modern music or not -- sounds great, just
because
it sounds great. I enjoy it, maybe just because it's so complicated.
Hope you don't conclude that I'm entirely crazy.
And no, this has nothing to do with patriotism. Though Charles Ives
certainly is often used as patriotic figure by the Americans, but I'm
certainly not an US patriot (not even an US citizen ;)). Sure thing,
America is a great country (while it has good and bad sides of course),
but that I like Ives' music has nothing to do with that.
Here is a list of Ives's works, that I use to listen regularly, together with a simple rating. The links go to my own descriptions of the works, -- personal rather than scientific ones:
Rating: * = beginners, ** = intermediate, *** = advanced listeners only.
You can try to go to
various online CD sellers and listen to free sample files of Ives's
music. Actually I don't want to make any promotion for any commercial
web page here, but it is a really good way to get some first impression
of his works.
Since the links to the music files themselves change very often, I
don't try to give you direct addresses. Just use your favourite search
engine.
It seems that there are only a couple of persons on the web, that
like to share their personal feelings about Ives's music. But
there are quite many resources that are dealing with Ives's biography
or
his work in general. Visit these links:
New on Oct 12 2004:
The site SearchMusicNetwork
has a very nice collection
of links to Charles Ives websites.
Wikipedias article
is also a nice source. Especially because you can edit what you don't
like... hehe.
The British Musicweb has an site written by Scott
Mortensen, with a huge collection of pictures. Really worth to take a
look at it.
The "Reader's Companion to American History" has an interesting article,
in which I read first time about the theory that "Charles Ives may have
predated a number of his compositions to make them appear uninfluenced
by European modern music". Sounds interesting. Might be true as well.
But it's not really important. Music is not a competition who has
written what first.
New
on 27 Dec 2001:
The Karadar Classical Music page has a biography, list of his most important works, and even a midi file of The Unanswered Question.
New
on 25 Apr 2000:
There is an ultrashort biography at www.encyclopedia.com. (LINK UPDATED Dec. 2002)
Check the Ives category of Yahoo.
New
on 08 Jan 2000:
The Lycos site has now a category especially reserved for Charles
Ives. There are only 3 links there up to now:
Lycos Home > Arts > Music > Styles > Classical >
Composers > I > Ives, Charles (LINK UPDATED
Dec. 2002)
The complete song texts of Charles Ives are available on internet now.
I have found a new Spanish biography of Ives.
>> And there is a new page on Ives on the IHAS page. It also provides two (complete) audio files of Ives' songs for the listener. "IHAS" is an abbrevation of "I Hear America Singing", so this page mainly concentrates on Ives's vocal works.
New
on 01 Aug 1999:
A rather new page can be found on the "Peer music classical" site. (LINK UPDATED Oct. 2004)
The Charles Ives Society has also a new page, currently "under construction".
The CCM page has a discography and an ultrashort biography.
If you are looking for books on Charles Ives in libraries (U.S. and Canada), visit the Malaspina page.
Older (reliable) links:
The Schirmer page as well as the Housatonic page offer a short description of Ives' life and works.
The HNH page gives some general information about his compositions by category.
About a dozen good links are to be found on this page.
Read the first chapter of the book "Charles Ives / A Life With Music" by Jan Swafford on the Washington Post site. There is also a review on this book.
There is an entry at The Classical Music
Pages (there are also several pictures on
that side).
On that page you can find a longer article about
Ives' father's influence on his son.
There is an article on Ives's Piano Trio in German language on the page of the Altenberg Trio Vienna.
There is also a very nice page dedicated to Carl Ruggles (LINK UPDATED Dec. 2002), whose music style is somewhat similar to Ives'. The author has placed a direct link to an audio file of Ruggles' Sun Treader -- it's worth listening!
Old links,
meanwhile inactive, but there always is hope, or see it as a little
reminiscence ;)
The David Wilken page
(LINK INACTIVE LATELY) offered
also a short introduction to composition with quartertones.
The Richmond Symphony page had also a short biography. (LINK INACTIVE LATELY)
There were 17 songs of Charles Ives downloadable in mp3 format at the Klahhane page. (LINK INACTIVE LATELY)
A very good site was the Monkman page. It provided interesting texts, e.g. on Ives' symphonies, and had a good collection of links. Sad that it is obviously gone now :( (LINK INACTIVE LATELY)
You could read
here a nice essay on Charles Ives. (LINK INACTIVE LATELY)
And there was the Charles Ives page by Paul Carr. (LINK INACTIVE LATELY)
Here was a new page on Charles Ives.(LINK INACTIVE LATELY)
Charles Ives is often been seen in connection with
Gustav Mahler. On this Mahler page (LINK INACTIVE) you'll also
find some information on Charles Ives.
hits since 27.09.2003
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last update: Dec.19 2002