Charles Ives, warts and all

Subject: Charles Edward Ives, 1874 - 1954
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 01:41 PM

The Mudcat Cafe must have a thread for the North American citizen, Charles Ives.
There are few enough places where Ives, with all the territory his career and work covered, all the influences brought to bear in his compositions, and all the contradictions in his person (from sentimental to rebellious) can receive the appreciation due him.

Ives left a lot of compositions behind, and there is much to say about them.
And Ives himself had a thing or two, to express in his own words.

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 03:50 AM

Charles Ives was a US citizen. What a "North American citizen" is, or why its relevant, I have no idea. Why not just say the American composer Charles Ives?

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 07:40 AM

I love his "Concord" piano sonata (No.2, I think) with its themes evoking New England. Ives also wrote a book to accompany this piece, called Essays Before A Sonata which I bought, back in the day, and still have lying around somewhere.

It's now available as a free download from (I think) Gutenberg.org. Thanks for the heads-up about the other link, Keb. I've nabbed it, and will post one to the Essays when I get a minute.

His lighthearted riffs on the tune that he (along with the rest of the USA) calls "America" and the British call "God Save The Queen" are huge fun, but thank God it's instrumental only, so no words to fight about. He was clearly in humor/humour mode when he composed these variations.

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 07:45 AM

Essays Before A Sonata, Charles Ives

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3673

Subject: lyrics added: "The All-Enduring"
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 05:07 PM

When Ives set the following poem to music (solo voice and piano),
he left the poet anonymous.
Thanks to Google Books, it is possible to succeed in a search for this poem, and to identify its author.



THE ALL-ENDURING

Man passes down the way of years, and ruins mark his trail;
He buildeth, and the hand of Time wipes out his structures frail.
Upon the graves of greatness passed, new monuments are placed,
And they, in turn, by fleeting years, are ruthlessly effaced.

His hopes, ambitions, loves and hates endure but for a day,
Then, by the ever busy hand of Time, are swept away.
His glory shineth for a space and spreads its brilliant light,
Then fades, and passes with the rest into eternal night.

Thrones crumble, fall, and are no more, and nations grand decay;
Power sinks to nothingness, and wealth abideth but a day.
Fame from its lofty pedestal disdainfully is tost,
But to the world, no worthy deed or thought is ever lost.

by Arthur Jerome Burdick   1858 - 1926

appears in:
The Baptist Home Mission Monthly, Volume XXIII, no. 8, back cover [no pagination], dated August 1901, New York City: The American Baptist Home Mission Society.

   


Small wonder that Arthur J. Burdick is elusive, as authors of poetry go.
Poetry was an avocation for Burdick.
A California native, and resident of Riverside County,
Burdick wrote books on minerals, metallurgy, and the chemistry of same.
He ventured into the same American Southwestern desert country
written about by Everett Reuss and Edward Abbey,
and published at least one book about it.

As to Burdick's poems, I know of no place
where all of them are collected in their entirety,
and the periodical above is the only place I know of
for the lyric which Charles Ives set to music.

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 05:52 PM

Was he Eugene Burdick's father?

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 06:25 PM

According to Wikipedia, Jack, the answer is negative.
Eugene Burdick's people came from the Midwest,
and moved to California when he was a little boy.

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Dec 18 - 09:35 PM

Ives was such a character. I was so intrigued with his music that I took the plunge and read his biography, a substantive tome. That was several years ago and I still remember certain gems from that book. He got the idea for his fourth symphony from hearing two marching bands crossing the intersection of two streets at the same time during a parade. He was a young boy then, but he was fostering the ideas in the late 19th century that would emerge as a groundbreaking classical composition in the early 20th century (although it was not given its proper recognition until the mid-20th century). His father was a musical influence, insisting that Charles learn to play the piano the "right way" before allowing him to indulge the music he heard inside his head. He used to have to go to movie theatres and pay the musicians who provided the soundtracks for the silent movies to play his compositions so he could hear what they sounded like outside of his head. He came to appreciate those musicians as highly accomplished because they could turn their musical repartee on a dime, depending on what scene was flickering up there on the silver screen. This after he had occasion to meet with a famous and highly regarded classical violinist at the time who dismissed Ives' music because he couldn't play it (I can't remember who exactly--was it Isaac Stern?...the same violinist who tried to give Einstein violin lessons but gave up telling Einstein his problem was he "couldn't count." lol)... His young daughter said it sounded like "Daddy's music" when the housekeeper dusted the piano keys. Ives made the bulk of his wealth selling life insurance; his net worth was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was a millionaire by today's standards. He wrote what was considered the definitive bible on how to close an insurance deal. He was devoutly religious but was given to, on occasion, cursing like a sailor. Later he had the grand idea of performing Symphony IV with two orchestras, each of them perched atop mountains across from each other, with two conductors, but the logistics of such an undertaking proved to be insurmountable. What a true American original.

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 11:10 AM

We now know that Ives distorted quite a lot of his life story - his father was not such an oddball as Charles made out, and Ives was given to revising his scores to make them more modernistic than they were when he first wrote them.

Still one heck of a composer though.

Subject: RE: Charles Ives, warts and all
From: MickyMan
Date: 09 Dec 18 - 05:37 PM

Ives was not only a musical pioneer, he also was one of a few individuals who came up with the concept of "Mutual Insurance".   He commuted to NYC each day from Danbury CT, leading the stressful, hectic life of an insurance executive. Almost all of his music was composed during the busiest time of his life, writing feverishly on the train...... etc.