author
Charles Ives
1874–1954
A bold American original, he wrote music so unusual that much of it went unrecognized for years. His work mixed hymn tunes, marching bands, and daring new sounds into something unmistakably his own.
1 Audiobook
Essays Before a Sonata
by Charles Ives
About the author
Born in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1874, Charles Ives grew up with music from an early age. His father, a bandleader and music teacher, encouraged experiments with sound, and that spirit stayed with him. Ives later studied at Yale, but instead of following a conventional musical path, he built a parallel career in business while continuing to compose on his own terms.
That independence helped shape some of the most adventurous music of his time. Ives drew on American hymns, parlor songs, marches, and the noise of everyday life, combining them in ways that anticipated many later developments in 20th-century music. For years, much of his work was ignored or rarely performed, but he eventually came to be seen as one of the first major American composers of international importance.
He spent much of his working life in the insurance business and is often remembered as both a composer and a businessman. By the end of his life, his reputation had grown dramatically, and his music had begun to receive the attention it had long been denied. He died in New York City in 1954.