Library co-hosts weekend celebration of composer Charles Ives to mark his 150th year

The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library is co-hosting a weekend of special events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Charles Ives, one of the most prominent and influential modernist composers of the 20th century.

“The library is so pleased to share sponsorship of this weekend-long celebration of Charles Ives with Yale’s School of Music, Department of Music, and Schwarzman Center,” said Ruthann McTyre, the Music Library’s director.

“It is a truly collaborative event that has something for everyone—from an exhibit of materials from the Ives archival collections, a Saturday celebration of his organ music at the Center Church where he served as organist, panel discussions focusing on Ives and his influence on popular music, and on Sunday afternoon, immersion in the composer’s vocal music.”

On Saturday evening, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk will perform several works including Ives’s “Concord Sonata” at Battell Chapel. The free performance is co-sponsored by the Yale School of Music in partnership with the Schwarzman Center.

The Weekend Celebration

Here’s the lineup of the Ives weekend events taking place on campus and in New Haven. All events are free and open to the public.

Saturday, Oct. 26             

11:00 a.m. Curators’ talk and exhibition opening and reception: “150: Charles Ives in Context,” Irving S. Gilmore Library
Presenters: James Sinclair (executive editor, Charles Ives Society, and Music Director of Orchestra New England) and Suzanne Lovejoy, music librarian for Research and Access Services

2:00 p.m. “Charles Ives’s Organ Music,” Center Church on the Green, 250 Temple Street
Speaker:  Jan Swafford, composer and writer; Organist: David Preston

4:00 p.m. Panel discussion: “150: Charles Ives in Context,” Sudler Hall, William L. Harkness Hall (sponsored by the Department of Music, the Department of the History of Art, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office at Yale)
Speakers: Timothy Barringer, Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art, Yale University; Denise Von Glahn, Curtis Mayes Orpheus Professor and Coordinator of Musicology, Florida State University; Thomas Kint, Ph.D., Ghent University
Moderator: Ara Guzelimian, special advisor to the Julliard School

7:30 p.m. Jeremy Denk in recital, Battell Chappel, 400 College Street (presented by Yale School of Music in partnership with Yale Schwarzman Center)
Program: Beethoven, “Sonata in E minor, Op. 90”; Joplin, “Bethana Waltz”; Gottschalk, “The Banjo”; Nina Simone, “Just in Time” (transcribed); William Bolcom, “Poltergeist Rag”; Beethoven, “Sonata in A-flat, Op. 110”; Ives, “Sonata No. 2” (“Concord”)

Sunday, Oct. 27

1:00 p.m. Panel discussion:  “Ives’s Influence on Jazz, Pop/Rock, Big Band, and So On,” Sudler Hall (sponsored by Gilmore Music Library)
Speakers:  Paul Winter, saxophonist, composer, and bandleader; Thomas Kint, Ph.D., Ghent University; David Sanford, Elizabeth T. Kennan Professor of Music, Mount Holyoke College
Moderator: James Sinclair, executive editor, Charles Ives Society, and Music Director, Orchestra New England                  

3:00 p.m. “Ives Vocal Music,” Sudler Hall (sponsored by Gilmore Music Library)
Speaker:  Neely Bruce, John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Wesleyan University
Performers: the Yale Voxtet; Tomoko Nakayama, pianist; James Taylor, Professor in the Practice of Voice, Yale University, and director of the Yale Voxtet

The Charles Ives Papers

Charles Edward Ives, B.A. 1898, was one of the most prominent and influential modernist composers of the 20th century. Born in Danbury, Connecticut, on Oct. 20, 1874, he was the son of a U.S. Army bandleader and grew up in a musical family. He learned traditional music, folk tones, and hymns, all the while innovating musical forms. He wrote his first symphony at Yale, as his senior thesis. Ives studied composition with Horatio Parker, who became the first dean of the Yale School of Music in 1904.

The Gilmore Music Library Special Collections is the proud repository for Ives’s papers. The archival collection includes musical scores, manuscripts, correspondence, scrapbooks, diaries, and photos, documenting his life in music and his career as a businessman. Although Ives is best known for his achievements as a composer, he was also a successful life insurance agent. In 1907, he and his colleague Julian Myrick started their own life insurance company, Ives and Myrick. The AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company Papers Related to Charles Ives were transferred to the Music Library in 2018. 

Along with the paper-based archives, the library’s Oral History of American Music (OHAM) serves as the repository for a number of oral history interviews about Ives, recorded by OHAM founder, Vivian Perlis, who created this first documentary oral history of an American composer.  Interviews with 60 people who knew and worked with Ives were conducted between 1968 and 1971. This collection formed the nucleus of what was later to become OHAM. Likewise, the Historical Sound Recordings Collection (HSR) houses rare and unpublished recordings of Ives’s music, including multiple recordings of his Concord Sonata performed by John Kirkpatrick. The Gilmore Music Library holds more than 1,000 sound recordings of works by Ives.

Read more about Ives at Yale and hear excerpts of his “String Quartet No. 1.”

Listen to rare and unpublished sound recordings of Ives’s work in Archives at Yale.

—Deborah Cannarella

Image: Charles Ives, excerpt from manuscript“Variations on ‘America’ for Organ”(1891), Gilmore Music Library Special Collections