Charles Ives

On June 9, 1908, Charles Ives married Harmony Twichell. She was the sister of one of his friends and was a trained nurse. The couple had an adopted daughter named Edith (Osborne).

Ives died on May 19, 1954 from a stroke in New York City. He was then seventy-nine years old and was survived by his wife and daughter.

Charles Ives was independently rich, and on her death, Harmony Ives bequeathed the royalties from his music to the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the Charles Ives Prize. Initially it consisted of six scholarships of $7,500, and two fellowships of $15,000, awarded annually to young composers.

Charles Edward Ives was born on October 20, 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, into a well-to-do business family, who made their initial money by manufacturing and selling hats. Later they branched out into other businesses, earning distinction in life. All of them were highly educated, socially very conscious, and little eccentric.

Charles’ father, George Edward Ives, was an exception. During the Civil War, he became the youngest bandleader in the US Army. Thereafter, he returned to Danbury to become the town’s bandmaster even though the vocation was then looked upon with little respect.

Subsequently, he also became a theater orchestra leader, choir director, and teacher. Trained in classical music, he loved to experiment with tone clusters, polytonality, quartertones, and acoustics. It was clashes of rhythm and tone, which interested him the most and he passed down this trait to his son.

Charles’ mother, Mary Parmelee, was also a unique woman. She used to whistle as she went about doing the household chores. The couple had two sons. While Charles inherited his father’s musical talent, his younger brother, Joseph Moss Ives, became a lawyer.

Charles had his first lesson in music from his father. As the story goes, he was introduced to the art through an interesting incident. One day, when he was five years old, his father came home to find him banging the piano keys with drum parts, using his fists.

On graduating from Yale, Charles Ives first thought of pursuing a career in composition. But remembering Parker’s reaction to his innovations, he realized that he could not make a living by writing the kind of music he wanted to. Moreover, there were fewer opening for composers than for performers.

He then joined the Mutual Life Insurance Company as a clerk, earning $5 a week. Simultaneously, he took up employment as a part-time organist and choir director at the First Presbyterian Church in Bloomfield New Jersey, moving to Central Presbyterian Church in New York in the following year.

In 1899, Ives left MLI Company to join Charles H. Raymond & Co., where he remained employed until 1906. In private, he continued to work on music, writing new scores as well as improving on his existing works such as ‘String Quartet No. 1’ (1897 – 1902) and ‘Symphony No 1 (1898 -1901).

Among his fresh works, ‘Symphony No 2’ (1899 -1902), ‘Central Park in Dark’ (1906) and ‘The Unanswered Question’ (1906) are most significant. Like many of Ives’ works, the last two pieces remained unknown until they were performed much later in 1946.

When Charles H. Raymond & Co closed down in 1906, Charles teamed up with his friend Julian Myrick to form their own insurance agency. In 1907, they established Ives & Co, which was later renamed as Ives & Myrick. Within a short period it became very successful.

Working in the office during the day and writing music at night or over the weekend affected his health. In 1918, he became seriously ill and sustained cardiac damage. Slowly he began to reduce his business activities.

He also began composing less and less, but kept on revising his existing works. In 1919, he started working on ‘Orchestra Set No 3’, but in 1926 left it incomplete. According to his wife, one day in 1927, he came down with tears in his eyes, saying that he could not compose anymore.

Indeed, he tried to work on ‘Universal Symphony’, but abandoned it in 1928 because he could not complete it. In 1930, he retired from his insurance business so that he could devote more time to his music; but it did not help.

Although he could not create anything new, the 1930s was important from another aspect. It was during this decade that Nicolas Slonimsky first performed Ives’ ‘Three Places in New England’, both in USA and Europe. It kindled an interest in his work, which were so far largely neglected.

His reputation was further established when in 1939, pianist John Kirkpatrick premiered his ‘Concord Sonata’ at the New York Town Hall. It led to favorable commentary in the major New York newspapers.