Why Ives?

Charles Ives was a composer who broke from established traditions to write music that is American to the core. Born in 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, Ives’ father was a bandmaster and music teacher who early fostered a love of many musical traditions in Charles and encouraged the emergence of his individual musical voice. Ives studied composition and organ at Yale University and then returned to Danbury where he founded Ives & Myrick, that eventually became one of the largest insurance agencies in the country (Ives is frequently credited with inventing term life insurance). For the rest of his life, Ives would combine a public career as a highly successful businessman with an intense, private commitment to combining his various influences into a uniquely American compositional voice.

The most consistent characteristic of Ives’s music is liberation from rules. His compositional output includes atonal pieces and pieces in the simple harmonic style of hymn or folksong. Some works are highly systematic and abstract in construction; others are filled with quotations from the music of Ives's youth—hymns, popular songs, ragtime dances, and marches. Some, like the Three Places in New England, are explicitly programmatic and nostalgic; others, like the Fourth Symphony, are fuelled by the vision of an idealist democracy. Ives liked to recreate in his music the aural experience of standing on a street corner in Danbury, hearing organ music emanating from the church, band music being played in the park, a popular tune coming from the bar, and an art song being sung in an afternoon salon. Most of his music was not written for performance, and it was only towards the end of his life that it began to be played frequently and appreciated.

In selecting its name, The Ives Quartet wanted to reflect the spirit of Ives' consuming private passion for his art, his individuality, and his uniquely American perspective on life, music, and art making. The Quartet invokes Ives’s personal and creative spirit in engaging its audiences with an exciting and varied repertory of standard and neglected music of the past as well as the newest music of today.