Charles Ives: A Life with Music by Jan Swafford

Charles Ives: A Life with Music Reviews

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  robin friedman

  A Great American Composer Brought To Life
  
  Charles Ives (1874-1954)was the first, and still probably the greatest, composer of a distinctly American art ("classical") music. His relationship to American music seems to me roughly parallel to Walt Whitman's relationship to American poetry and to Charles Peirce's relationship to American philosophy. Like Peirce, Ives was little-known during his lifetime. Furthermore, while many people may be aware of Peirce and of Ives, a much smaller number have much acquaintance with their works.
  
  Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut and remained throughout his life attached to his vision of the post-Civil War small-town New England of his childhood. His father, George Ives, was a bandmaster and the greatest influence on Ives's life. Ives was a musical prodigy who began composing at an early age, quickly picking up experimental styles. He showed great proficiency at the piano and organ. (Through young manhood, he worked Sundays as a church organist.) He studied music at Yale where his teacher was Horatio Parker, a then famous American who was trained in the music of German Romanticism. As a college student, Ives wrote music played for the inauguration of President William McKinley.
  
  After graduation from Yale, Ives became a millionaire in the insurance industry where he pioneered many marketing techniques. He also became increasingly Progressive and politically active and actually proposed a constitutional amendment which would increase the power of the democracy in government decision-making. At the age of 32, he married Harmony Twitchell who, after his father, was the greatest influence on his life.
  
  Ives wrote music in the midst of an extraordinarily busy life. Most people think of Ives as a trailblazer and iconoclast. He was indeed, but may of his earlier works, such as the Second and the Third Symphonies are easily accessible and have a feel of America about them similar to the feelings Aaron Copland evoked some three decades later.
  
  Jan Swafford's biography movingly and eloquently describes the life of Charles Ives. He offers a reflective, thoughtful discussion of Ives, his America, his music, and its reception. In addition to a thorough treatment of Ives' life and works, Swafford has three chapters which he titles "Entra'acets" which consist of broad-based reflections on Ives's music and its significance. Swafford's entire book is full of ideas which are intriguing in themselves. Of Ives's work, Swafford gives his most extended treatment to the Fourth Symphony (he sees Ives as essentially a symphonist) and to the Concord piano Sonata. But many works are discussed in detail which will be accessible to the non-musician. The book has copious and highly substantive footnotes and an extensive bibliography.
  
  Ives's Americanness, humor, romanticism, modernism, optimism, and generosity ( Ives gave large amounts of money to his family and to musicians and music publications. He also paid for the publication of several of his important works when commercial publishers showed no interest in them.) come through well. Swafford sees Ives as the last American transcendentalist in the tradition of Emerson. At the conclusion of his book, Swafford writes of Ives
  
  " [I]n his music and his life he embodied a genuine pluralism, a wholeness beneath diversity, that in itself is a beacon for democracy and its art. Aesthetically he is an alternative to Modernism, an exploratory road without the darkness and despair of the twentieth century. In spirit he handed us a baton and calls on us to carry it further. He suggests a way out of despair, but leaves it to us to find the route for ourselves. If we are alone with ourselves today, Ives speaks incomparably to that condition."
  
  This book made me want to learn more about and to hear the music of Charles Ives. In its own right, it is a joy and an inspiration to read.
  
  Robin Friedman
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  Marianne Meyers

  Awesome, definitive biography. I am a Charles Ives fan so I found it riveting. I knew a good overview of his life before, but this book covered all his years. A fascinating, original American genius!
• 
  Caleb

  I really wanted to like this. For a while I even thought I was. When this book is talking about Charles Ives as a person, or about his family, it's an amazingly fascinating book. The story of his father, what I got of his wife, his co-workers, his other family and friends, and just people that were a part of his life in some manner, this was the one of the best reads I've had in a very long time.
  
  The problem comes when it comes time to discuss his music.
  
  Now, I preface this by saying that while I do know a little bit about music theory and a fair bit more about music history and where Charles stands in the grand scheme of things, I am far from an expert when it comes to analyzing music.
  
  That said, Jan Swafford probably knows what he's talking about when he's analyzing Charles' work, but my god is it boring, and at times repetitive. There are two camps that the works always gets classified into; those written when he still had much to learn and those when he did not. First of all, duh. Second of all, it's stated every time we get into a new section of musical analysis. I get it. He wasn't learned enough to know how to write the thing, or later on, yes, now he knows that it must be this way. You don't need to tell me again. It's annoying and feels like you're talking down to me sometimes.
  
  The other stuff he talks about is just over my head half the time, and feels made up the rest. Some of it we can trace back to Charles' notes, so okay, fine. But some of it you're reaching for out of thin air and I find it a waste of my time to read, especially as someone who is confused by some of the music talk as it is. And believe me, I'm trying. I've even got my few books on music theory out so I can make sure I know what I'm reading.
  
  In the end though, I can't force myself through this anymore. For something I thought would be geared more towards the casual reader, this is clearly not that. It really wants to be an academic level book, and comes close at times. If that's what you're looking for, great. Have at it. For me, I'm done.
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  Tim

  One of the best biographies I've read. Part biography and part music notes, a good portion of this book analyzes significant works by Ives, placing them in context of his life. The other portion is just as well-written and engaging.
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  Danielle McCoin

  This is an exceptional biography. I am a better person for reading it and have a better grasp on music history and our society in general. It is not for the faint of heart. Stafford has a vocabulary that could flummox most professors. His detail and scholarship are rarely rivaled, yet the book was thoroughly enjoyable.
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  Joseph

  As with the other composer biographies by Jan Swafford, I think it would be facile to say that this is a fine, or even a great one. “Charles Ives: A Life with Music” naturally presents the facts of the noted American composer’s life in logical sequence and with the expected refinements of prose style. More importantly, this biography does much to paint a convincing picture of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is an era in US history that is now quite in the past and one that people, politicians in particular, like to sentimentalize, so that it is both refreshing and useful to gain a clearer picture of what life in this country then consisted of. Personally, I especially enjoyed reading about father George Ives’s experiences as the youngest bandmaster in the Union Army during the Civil War. Swafford’s later retelling of the young Charles Ives’s years as musical enfant terrible, senior football team player, and member of Wolf’s Head at Yale I also found revealing. Throughout, I was fascinated by the composer’s talent, intelligence, clearsightedness, forceful originality, and courage. As I read, I tried to acquaint myself with works by Ives I did not yet know. My aural understanding of his music grew a stretch in the few weeks I devoted to reading this biography, and I encourage other readers to familiarize themselves with at least some of the Ives compositions they have not already heard. For me, becoming reacquainted with the Fourth Symphony was especially rewarding; I listened to it twice through consecutively scarcely noticing that a full hour had clicked by. In general, having read three Swafford biographies, I now recognize a tendency in the author to portray a composer’s father in most glowing colors. Since Swafford’s next published biography will be on Mozart, a continuation of this trend can only be envisioned.
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  Carol

  This lengthy biography of American composer Charles Ives was quite detailed but remained engrossing throughout. Swafford of course concentrates on Ives' musical career rather than his work in the insurance industry. Swafford really brings Ives and his world to life, especially Ives' boyhood and adolescence in Danbury, CT, as those experiences were very central to Ives' music. I also liked the way the book treats Ives' courtship and relationship with his wife Harmony as a real love story. Swafford does a great job of providing lots of insight into Ives' music, how he wrote it, and how it works, without getting into tedious descriptions or lengthy technical analysis. It leaves you with a strong desire to listen to the music.
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  Thomas Hager

  VERY deep dive into the life of an interesting American composer.
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  Bart

  This is a dense and difficult, but ultimately wondrous, biography of a generally misunderstood Yankee composer who changed American classical music.
  
  Charles Ives wrote some of the most innovative scores of the 20th century in his home, and at night and on vacation, while building a life-insurance empire in Connecticut. He tried desperately to get his music heard - by himself primarily - and generally failed, even while paying enormous sums to musicians to perform his tunes. Decades after diabetes took his will and ability to write new symphonies, Ives's music was discovered by America and the rest of the world. By then, he was a generally content, though sometimes cranky, old survivor too jaded by innumerable failures to care very much waht others opined of him.
  
  Jan Swafford's writing is excellent throughout. Here are a few examples.
  
  On Charles Ives's father and hero:
  
  "Certainly he realized that as far as most of the town was concerned he was finally getting a job, finally growing up. To them he was a failure because he had only been a musician. To himself he was a failure because he hadn't made a go at the job he loved."
  
  On pianist and Ives custodian John Kirkpatrick:
  
  "Handsome and dandyish, he was part of Heyman's circle and so ran with an arty, polysexual Parisian crowd among the intoxicating atmosphere of Joyce and Pound and Hemingway . . . Kirkpatrick kept a mistress financed by his brother and flirted with the occult."
  
  And on Charles Ives at the end:
  
  "Yet few people who knew Ives thought of him as a tragic man, but rather as an energetic and delightful and fascinating figure, a mythical creature in the flesh, a perpetual event."
  
  This book is not a light undertaking - it could take you a month to read - but it is a worthwhile one.
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  Paul Secor

  All that you've ever wanted to know - perhaps more than you've ever wanted to know - it's a long fairly thorough biography - about Charles Ives. If you've lived with and gotten to know something of his music, you'll probably want to read this.
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  Nathanial

  BORING!
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  Angela

  The biographical parts of the book I found most interesting. There were some parts, especially near the end that were bogged down with analysis but over-all a very good book.