Introduction
Even as Charles Ives has been touted as an icon of the American music, nevertheless this great music composer has not evaded the wrath of critics. A number of his critics have confessed that they often find his music to be quite pompous and bombastic. There have also been claims that his music is somewhat timid, based on the argument that a number if fundamental sounds that are characteristic of the conventional European music are very much a part of his own artistic work (Von 2003). Even Elliot Carter, who was once an avid supporter of Ives work, has since termed it ads being incomplete.
Main body
Charles Ives has gone down the history books as perhaps the one of the most revered composer of the “classical” music within the United States (Sherwood 2002).
The relationship that Charles Ives has had with American music appears to almost equal the connection that Walt Whitman enjoyed in as far as the American poetry is concerned. There are also a number of analysts that have compared this relationship with the one that Charles Pierce had with the philosophy of the United States.
Ives, just like Pierce received little recognition over his lifetime (Von 2003). As an idealist and a visionary, Charles Ives was able to endeavor listeners to the music that the composed. Arnold Schoenberg has boldly testified about the level of greatness of Charles Ives, within the American music industry. In note that has discovered by his wife following his death, Schoenberg recognizes Ives as a result composer who assist individual to find a solution to their problems, through his music.
During the twentieth century in the American music industry, Ives emerged assisted other composures and their world financially in a big way. For Example, Nicolas Sdlonimsky has asserted that Charles Ives assisted his whole music career financially (Cowell & Cowell 1983). Ives is believed to have been greatly inspired in his music career by his father, who was at the time a bandmaster.
Ives endeavored to learn the success behind such European great music masters as Stravinsky. During his sunset years, a time when his own creative gift in the composition of music was also fading, Charles Ives generously donated a big portion of the wealth that he had amassed over the years, for purposes of helping to other upcoming artists to better promote their individual music endeavors (Cowell & Cowell 1983). Ives was also an accomplished innovator, which could be the reason why he was able to compose abstract pieces, tone poems that were quite pragmatic, in addition inventing novel systems of harmonics.
Overall, the musical output of Ives has in essence ensured that he becomes amongst the several composers commanding a lot of influence in the United States. Through the assistance of his father and a number of his friends Ives managed to meet and get to know some of the great composers at the time, such as Beethoven, and Bach. Through his many symphonies, songs, as well as sonatas, Charles Ives managed to furnish a great deal of the musical past of the United States (Burkholder 2007) , while at the same time also endeavoring to link this with the future of the music industry.
Ives associated the nineteenth century musical sounds to the composite novel rhythms and harmonies. Thus, he managed to achieve with an elevated level of visionary zeal (Cowell & Cowell 1983). According to a number of critics to his music, one of the reasons why Ives was quite unpopular in his own country was because of the level of disrespect that he showed to the various musicians that he could not identify with, as well as whose he perceived as being somewhat disrespectful to him. To these, he often times referred to them as “sissies”.
Another reason as to why Ives was quite unpopular was that he had a habit of lamenting about the ongoing feminization process that was catching on with the music industry in the United States. Appalled by his practice of combining commerce and art (he was also are renowned insurer), Ives opted not to fully dedicate his efforts towards pursuing music, as a career, and neither did he commit himself to copywriting the various music that he managed to compose (Encyclopædia Britannica 2009). Then we have the issue of his work, that that almost always disorganized, and this further added to his woes, in effect causing his unpopularity at home.
It has been the opinion of a majority of the scholars that Henry Cowell remains to-date one amongst the few individuals who enthusiastically endorsed Charles Ives. Nevertheless, the conception that Cowell had over Ives has also been noted by a limited number of scholars, while the greater majority have sought to overlook it in totality (Burkholder 2007).
As the1920s came to a close, Cowell has been seen to have depicted Ives as an individual who was more of a social artist, form a fundamental point of view. In addition, Cowell at the time also depicts Ives as more of a musical ethnographer. During the1950s, Cowell, along with Sidney, his wife, co-authored a number of articles on Charles Ives, in which the latter is portrayed as more of a shining example who would be more than willing to assists in individualism power liberation (Cowell & Cowell 1983).
When the publications and the writings that Cowell has written over the years are scrutinized closely, in addition to manuscripts and letters that can be obtained from this author’s collection at the Performing Arts and Public Library in New York, what is it emerges that there are quite a number of factors that are in play, in as far as the influencing of this particular transition of Henry Cowell is concerned (Cowell & Cowell 1983).
The theories that have been provided by Bela Bartok as regards the authenticity of folk music have been identified as a driving force to the earlier conception that Cowell had on Ives. According to Cowell and Cowell (1983), Ives had managed to create classic art music that is true to the American people, by way of recording the peculiarity performance of artists in American folk music.
Following the level of anxiety that the Cold War brought with it, coupled with the writing partnership that started between Cowell and his wife Sidney, these activities acted to force Cowell to emphasize on the commitment that Ives had when it came to the issue of individualism, as advocated by “transcendental philosophers” (Burkholder 2007).
At that point, the Cowells ceased associating the “americanness” that Ives displayed with the capability that he had, when it came to recording of local practice. Rather, the Cowells sought to associate Ives with his introverted search for “Universal Mind” (Encyclopædia Britannica 2009).
The fact that a close associate of Ives like Cowell could offer mixed points of view as regards this great American composer, may very well have acted to influence the decision by the Americans that read his publications and journals, in essence rendering an otherwise popular American icon quite unpopular.
Works Cited
Burkholder, Peter. (2007). “Charles Ives”. Web.
Cowell, Henry & Cowell, Sidney. Charles Ives and His Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Encyclopædia Britannica (2009). “Charles Ives and His Music.” Web.
Sherwood, Gayle. Charles Ives: a guide to research. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Von, Glahn. (2003). “Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History, and: Charles Ives: A Guide to Research.” 59 (4): 901-902.