A Connecticut Yankee Fifty Years Later

Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Fall 2004 by Thurmaier, David

If you listen to Ives's music, you are bound to hear quotes from hymns, popular songs, marches, patriotic tunes, and more. The conflict between the past and the present is exemplified most clearly through quotation. Other composers before Ives borrowed existing music (somewhat analogous to "sampling" in today's rap and hiphop music) and incorporated it into their own - G. F. Handel was notorious for doing this - but the way that Ives borrows music remains special and imbues his own music with a uniquely American flavor. To take two examples: the wonderfully evocative Central Park in the Dark contains numerous tunes woven into a patchwork quilt, yet boisterous statements of "Hello! Ma Baby" drift in and out of the texture unmistakably; and his orchestral tone poem The Fourth of July combines two patriotic tunes - "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" - in a wonderfully playful and skillful manner. These tunes are not chosen arbitrarily or to be funny; instead, Ives's musical borrowing goes to the heart of his musical sensibilities. Within the context of a chaotic, frantic musical landscape containing all kinds of strikingly new musical sounds, Ives has one foot in the past and the other foot in the future.

This unique human ability to evoke both past and present allows Ives's music to resonate today. Some might say that all composers do this - Beethoven's early music pays homage to his predecessors Haydn and Mozart, for example - but in Ives's case, he overtly extols the culture and traditions of late nineteenth-century America with his choices of quotations and descriptive writings that accompany each piece. One truly gets the impression that Ives felt that his music should speak to events both past and present. That is why much of his music sounds wistful, sad, joyous, raucous, controlled, and stirring, all at the same time. It reflects the beliefs of a composer working in two centuries simultaneously - a conflict between the past and the present that affects all of us at some point. In the fiftieth year since his death, we should welcome the opportunity to become (re)acquainted with the music of Charles Ives, who still remains one of our most fascinating and influential American composers.

David Thurmaier is an assistant professor of music theory at Central Missouri State University, His musical interests include Charles Ives, American music of all types, and the Beatles. He is also an active composer and performer on horn and guitar.