New Ives Sources

by Carol K. Baron

In the fall of 1995, I searched in the study of Charles Ives’s West Redding, Connecticut home for theory notes Ives tantalizingly mentioned in Memos.¹ Although I never located the notes, I discovered documents that had neither been deposited in The Ives Collection at Yale University nor previously catalogued. Subsequently I prepared New Sources for Ives Studies: An Annotated Catalogue, which divides this material into four categories: I. Music-Related Materials, II. Politically Related Materials, III. Music, and IV. Librettos in English Translations. The listings in categories III and IV are an addendum to the catalogue prepared by Vivian Perlis's students.²

The documents in categories I and II consist of newspaper clippings, complete sections of newspapers, and periodicals that include journals, magazines, and bulletins, as well as several letters from the political organizations responsible for particular bulletins and journals. Some of this material was stored in the music-cabinet drawers; most was in a cardboard box on the floor. The political articles examine a limited number of issues by different writers, issues familiar from Ives’s own political writings.³ Comparing the themes in the materials Ives preserved to those in his own essays points to his focused approach to these issues. As Howard Boatwright noted in his introduction to “A People’s World Nation”: “Newspaper and magazine clippings saved by Ives (often with notes written in the margins) show that he followed eagerly any development that supported his general idea.”⁴

The dates of these documents show Ives to have been well-informed about newsworthy developments in national and international affairs until late in his lifetime: of the fifty-four music- and politically related items, forty-two are from the 1940s and 1950s, the final one dating from eight months prior to Ives’s death. Moreover, they testify to his concern about social problems that first commanded his attention in his younger years.

After Ives stopped working and composing, he contributed to organizations and subscribed to journals and bulletins through which he could continue to nurture his interests in democratic processes, the relationship between the distribution of wealth and political power, and the benefits of world government. Most of the items in the first two categories were acquired through subscription. Since this collection represents a very small and highly selective sampling of those periodicals Ives actually received, its careful preservation underscores the significance these publications held for him. There can no longer be any question about his ongoing involvement with contemporary political developments.

New Sources for Ives Studies: An Annotated Catalogue can be found on the ISAM website: New Sources for Ives Studies: An Annotated Catalogue.

–State University of New York at Stony Brook

Notes

Click on note number to return to its place in the text.

¹ Charles E. Ives, Memos, ed. John Kirkpatrick (Norton, 1972), 120.

² “Lists of West Redding books made by Perlis class,” 1979 (box 70, folder 3), MSS 14, The Charles Ives Papers, Music Library of Yale University.

³ See Charles E. Ives, “George’s Adventure” and “The Majority” in Memos, Appendix 9, 205-28, and Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata, The Majority, and Other Writings, ed. Howard Boatwright (Norton, 1962).

⁴ Quoted in Ives, Essays, 225.

ISAM home Who we are Contact us Spring 2000 Newsletter

Monographs ISAM Web Documents Newsletters Links