Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - Charles Ives (1874-1954) was probably one of the most psycho - intellectually brilliant, imaginative and flexible Americans to ever "walk the land of free-dom." A graduate of Yale, he became a multi-millio-naire in the American insurance industry, introducing brilliant innovations within that industry. He also, unlike a few composers, found the time and the money (being a shrewd and practical businessman) to get married and have children. His accomplishments for which he is best known, however, are those in the field of music. At the time of its composition, Ives' music was probably the most radically modern in history, and by itself had enough material to serve as the foundation of modern 20th century music. For example, at the turn of the century, this eccentric composer created band works featuring multiple melodies of multiple time signatures opposing and complimenting each other within the same piece. Ives was also a revolutionary atonal composer, who created, essentially without precedent, many atonal works that not only pre-date those of Schoenberg, but are just as sophisticated, and arguably even more so, than those of the 12-tone serialist.

In 1921, insurance executive Charles Ives sent out copies of a piano sonata to two hundred strangers. Laden with dissonant chords, complex rhythm, and a seemingly chaotic structure, the so-called Concord Sonata confounded the recipients, as did the accompanying book, Essays before a Sonata . Kyle Gann merges exhaustive research with his own experience as a composer to reveal the Concord Sonata and the essays in full. Diffracting the twinned works into their essential aspects, Gann lays out the historical context that produced Ives's masterpiece and illuminates the arguments Ives himself explored in the Essays . Gann also provides a movement-by-movement analysis of the work's harmonic structure and compositional technique; connects the sonata to Ives works that share parts of its material; and compares the 1921 version of the Concord with its 1947 revision to reveal important aspects of Ives's creative process. A tour de force of critical, theoretical, and historical thought, Charles Ives's Concord provides nothing less than the first comprehensive consideration of a work at the heart of twentieth century American music.

This volume shows Charles Ives in the context of his world in a number of revealing ways. Five new essays examine Ives's relationships to European music and to American music, politics, business, and landscape. J. Peter Burkholder shows Ives as a composer well versed in four distinctive musical traditions who blended them in his mature music. Leon Botstein explores the paradox of how, in the works of Ives and Mahler, musical modernism emerges from profoundly antimodern sensibilities. David Michael Hertz reveals unsuspected parallels between one of Ives's most famous pieces, the Concord Piano Sonata, and the piano sonatas of Liszt and Scriabin. Michael Broyles sheds new light on Ives's political orientation and on his career in the insurance business, and Mark Tucker shows the importance for Ives of his vacations in the Adirondacks and the representation of that landscape in his music. The remainder of the book presents documents that illuminate Ives's personal life. A selection of some sixty letters to and from Ives and his family, edited and annotated by Tom C. Owens, is the first substantial collection of Ives correspondence to be published. Two sections of reviews and longer profiles published during his lifetime highlight the important stages in the reception of Ives's music, from his early works through the premieres of his most important compositions to his elevation as an almost mythic figure with a reputation among some critics as America's greatest composer.

A source book incorporating all the most important unpublished writings of America s great composer."

Brusque, inventive, an eccentric loner who created some of the greatest music of our time while getting rich as a New York insurance broker, Charles Ives was an authentic American original. In this major biographical study, the author explores the unlikely drama of the composer's life, from his boyhood in a Connecticut village to his later years when, ignored or derided by the musical community, he shut himself up in angry silence. Then, with a high order of scholarship and crisply edged authority, the author goes on to point out the intelligence and continuity of Ives's major works - the songs, the Concord sonata, the magnificent New England Holidays (which include his famous Fourth of July), and the rest - and to trace their roots in nineteenth-century popular music, in jazz, in the homely transcendentalism of Thoreau and Hawthorne's dark Puritan dreams. Writing with a musician's understanding and sympathy, the author makes plain both the frustrations of Ives's creative life and the inevitability of his ultimate recognition, long after his death, as America's most important composer. In its rich musical insights, in its portrayal of a complex and fascinating artist, this book is a striking contribution to American cultural history.

Beethoven’s piano sonatas form one of the most important collections of works in the whole history of music. Spanning several decades of his life as a composer, the sonatas soon came to be seen as the first body of substantial serious works for piano suited to performance in large concert halls seating hundreds of people. In this comprehensive and authoritative guide, Charles Rosen places the works in context and provides an understanding of the formal principles involved in interpreting and performing this unique repertoire, covering such aspects as sonata form, phrasing, and tempo, as well as the use of pedal and trills. In the second part of his book, he looks at the sonatas individually, from the earliest works of the 1790s through the sonatas of Beethoven’s youthful popularity of the early 1800s, the subsequent years of mastery, the years of stress (1812†“1817), and the last three sonatas of the 1820s. Composed as much for private music-making as public recital, Beethoven’s sonatas have long formed a bridge between the worlds of the salon and the concert hall. For today’s audience, Rosen has written a guide that brings out the gravity, passion, and humor of these works and will enrich the appreciation of a wide range of readers, whether listeners, amateur musicians, or professional pianists. The book includes a CD of Rosen performing extracts from several of the sonatas, illustrating points made in the text.