With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Charles Ives
Music
1874 – 1954
Awarded a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished musical composition in 1947, Ives had already spent decades composing symphonies, sonatas, orchestral works as well as hundreds of songs. Few of these were performed during his lifetime, but in 1951 he heard his Second Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein. A modernist composer, he explored varying musical techniques in his work and has been recognized as an “American original.”
- Biography/Description of Work
A Danbury native, Charles Ives grew up under the influence of his musician father, George Ives, cornet player, band director, theater orchestra leader, choir director, and teacher. Charles himself began composing at the age of 13, and played the organ at local churches. In 1893, Ives started at Yale University in New Haven, studying under Horatio Parker, one of the finest composition teachers in the U.S. at the time. As a freshman, Ives became the organist at Center Church in New Haven, the most prestigious keyboard position in town. Shortly after he began at Yale, his father died which deeply affected him. After graduating in 1898, he decided not to pursue music as a career, and instead moved to New York City to work at the Mutual Life Insurance Company as a clerk. He composed at night or during his free time. In 1907, he started his own insurance agency, Ives & Company, later Ives & Myrick, among the largest in the country known for Ives’s innovative ideas which would develop into estate planning. Between 1907 and 1918, Ives was a creative and prolific composer, while managing a successful business. A heart attack in 1918 left him weak, and he never really recovered his physical or creative health. By the late 1920s he was no longer creating original compositions, rather editing and revising past compositions. He retired from his insurance company in 1930, and concentrated on his music, often tracking where and when it was performed. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his Symphony No. 3. Ives died at his Redding home in 1954.
- Sources view
- Schling, Dorothy T., ‘Charles Ives Birthplace National Register Nomination,’ National Park Service, 1976; Charles Ives Article - New York Times - 1949-10-23; Charles Ives Musical Inventor - New York Times - 1974-10-20; Charles Ives Remebered - New York Times - 1974-10-24; Charles Ives Obituary - New York Times - 1954-5-19; Mrs. Charles Ives Obituary - New York Times - 1969-4-5; http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=1948
- Associated Resource(s)