Ives, Charles Edward

(1874-1954)

   One of America’s greatest composers, Charles Ives was born to a musical family in Danbury, Connecticut. He studied at Yale University from 1893 to 1997 and then entered the insurance business. His business was very successful, and he retired a wealthy man in 1930. Ives sold insurance by day and composed at night. Strongly influenced by his bandleader father and by church and folk music, he wrote complicated pieces combining hymns, gospel, folk, and other influences in a variety of pieces ranging from music for piano or organ, string quartets, and full symphonies. He published his “Concord Sonata” and a collection of 114 other pieces in 1922. Ives wrote little after that, and it was only in the later 1930s that he gained recognition for his “Second Piano Sonata.” In 1947 his “Third Symphony” (1904) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.