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This chapter examines how Charles E. Ives emerged as a Cold War icon, and more specifically as a champion of the liberating powers of individualism, during the period 1947–1965. It begins with a discussion of Lou Harrison's role in pushing Ives from the modernist peripheries of the American musical world toward its center, and in helping the composer win the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. It then considers how Ives and his music were drawn into a discussion about the nature of freedom against the backdrop of the Cold War. In particular, it explores how Ives's music was programmed on concerts designed to promote the artistic products of “cultural freedom,” citing the presentation of his work at an arts festival in Paris that was held under the auspices of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. It also looks at Henry Cowell's book Charles Ives and His Music, written in collaboration with his wife Sidney, and concludes with an assessment of Ives's musical legacy as a function of his commitment to transcendentalism.

This chapter examines the impact of musicology on Charles E. Ives's reception by focusing on the contributions made by musicologists to discourse about the composer during the period 1965–1985. It considers how musicologists portrayed Ives through their disciplinary practices and perceptions and shows that their image of Ives was deeply rooted in European music history. The chapter also explores how Ives became the subject of style history by looking at the work of William W. Austin, H. Wiley Hitchcock, and Robert Morgan. Finally, it discusses J. Peter Burkholder's discovery that Ives's commitment to transcendentalism was not so deep nor did it extend quite so far back as had previously been assumed.

This chapter examines how Charles E. Ives has been affected by the transformations in American musicology over the last twenty-five years. It begins with a discussion of Maynard Solomon's accusation that Ives had engaged in a “systematic pattern of falsification” to safeguard his claims at the patent-house of musical modernism. It then considers how Solomon's criticisms served as the catalyst for an explosion of scholarly activity centered on Ives in the 1990s. In particular, it describes the approaches taken by musicologists to rebut Solomon, including those associated with “New Musicology.” It also explores the etiology of the myth that Ives was a patriarch of a lineage of composers known as the American Mavericks, along with the vicissitudes of Ives scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century.

This chapter focuses on Charles E. Ives's self-promotional activities during the period from 1921 to 1934. Its point of departure is an analysis of Essays Before a Sonata, published by Ives as a prose prolegomenon to his Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840–60” in 1920. The chapter begins with a discussion of the literary context of Essays Before a Sonata and the inspirations for “Concord” Sonata. It then considers Ives's involvement with the Franco-American Society as well as his ambition in planning and executing the distribution of Essays, the “Concord” Sonata, and 114 Songs. It also examines how Ives staked his claim as the inventor of musical techniques that were on the cutting edge of musical modernism as opposed to transcendentalism. Finally, it concludes with an assessment of the unpublished autobiographical Memos.

This chapter examines the contributions made by “bright young academicians” to discourse about Charles E. Ives during the period 1965–1985. More specifically, it considers the impact that historians who worked under the “American Studies” rubric had on Ives's reception. The chapter first provides an overview of the 1965 premiere of Ives's Fourth Symphony before discussing the 1974 centenary celebrations of his birth. It then explores the convergence of Cold War politics and Ives's reception, along with the structure and assumptions of the field of intellectual history and its connection to American Studies. It also analyzes Ives's influence on American Studies and intellectual history and describes an approach that calls for a rethinking of America and of history “from the bottom up.” The chapter concludes with an assessment of Ives's prospects in American Studies in the late 1970s.

This chapter focuses on Henry Cowell's advocacy of Charles E. Ives and his music between the years 1927 and 1947. Cowell's ideas about Ives can be grouped into two periods: those produced prior to the sentence he served at San Quentin State Prison for a 1936 conviction on a morals charge, and those produced after his release in 1940. This chapter first considers Cowell's portrait of Ives as a New England musical ethnographer before discussing the views of anthropologists, folklorists, and musical modernists about folk music. It then examines how Cowell became interested in folk music, along with his influence on Ives. It also looks at the notion of a usable past, advanced by Van Wyck Brooks in his essay “On Creating a Usable Past,” in which he called for a rewriting of the history of American literature. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Ives's “Concord” Sonata and Ives's commitment to freedom (in the sense of refusing to impose a fixed final form on his works).

This book explores the changing images of American composer and music icon Charles E. Ives across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, paying particular attention to issues of agency (how an idea transfers from one person to another) and constituency (the nature and size of the audience to which a person speaks). Ives has been, at various times, considered a hero, victim, villain—sometimes singly, sometimes simultaneously. He had been portrayed, for example, as a pioneer of American musical modernism and a symbol of American freedom, but at the same time the perpetrator of one of the greatest musical hoaxes of all times. This book examines the way Ives has been imagined by the critics, composers, performers, and scholars who have had the most impact in shaping the various conversations about him, from Leonard Bernstein and Henry Cowell to Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter. It argues that the history of Ives's reception is not only a series of portraits of an unusual composer, but also a series of mirrors that reflect the way Americans have viewed themselves.

In this postscript, the author offers some thoughts about what Charles E. Ives has meant to him, and more specifically, why he decided to write a book about his reception. In particular, he reflects on the question “So what do you think about Ives?” that was first asked by an attendee at a meeting of the Pacific-Southwest chapter of the American Musicological Society. He also talks about how Ives left a strong impression on him while he was a student at the University of British Columbia, where he wrote a dissertation titled “Converging Paths to the Canon: Charles Ives, Gustav Mahler, and American Culture.” Furthermore, he explains how the narratives and methodologies of intellectual history can illuminate, and be illuminated by, Ives's reception history. The author concludes by citing Stanley Fish's concept of “interpretive communities” and suggesting that the scholarly community of musicologists is suffering from a dwindling constituency.