Lucas Brogdon

Dr. Veltman

MUS 423

Book Review

Charles Ives Reconsidered: Towards A More Humane Scholarship

Charles Edward Ives is one of the foremost composers in American history. He was born

and lived most of his life in New England, where he studied at the prestigious Yale. Ives

developed a style that many consider to have been far ahead of its time and anticipated some of

the biggest innovations in 20th century music such as the use of polytonality, polyrhythms, and

microtonal intervals. He anchored himself to his homeland as well, never studying in Europe and

titling many of his pieces with explicit references to places like Central Park and Concord,

Massachusetts. This combined with his apparently anti-European, nationalistic philosophy of

music and composition led generations after him to hold him up as a uniquely American

innovator. If any American composer could be granted legendary status, Charles Ives would be a

top contender.

And this is exactly the issue examined in Dr. Gayle Sherwood Magee’s Charles Ives

Reconsidered. Legends tend to be smoothed out and simplified for ease of transmission and

potency of message. Facts and details that do not fit nicely into the monochromatic picture often

painted by history are downplayed or even ignored altogether. This can be especially

troublesome when the legend in question involves an influential artist. Magee claims that such a

disingenuous image of Charles Ives has become popularized to the point of being considered

truth. To combat the myth that has spread throughout academia, Magee carefully constructs in
Charles Ives Reconsidered a wholistic and detailed narrative of Ives’ life that strives to remain

true to life.

Dr. Magee is quite an appropriate author for such a book. Her rich career in musical

scholarship had been going strong for over a decade at the publishing of Charles Ives

Reconsidered. She earned her PhD in Music from none other than Yale University, Ives’ alma

mater, in 1995, and now serves as Professor and Chair of Musicology at the University of

Illinois. Much of her work has been in the realm of American music since the late nineteenth

century and on issues of gender in music history. The former is obviously relevant to the book at

hand, while the latter shows itself in Magee’s discussions of Ives’ aptly named wife Harmony at

various points. Notably, she is also the author of Charles Ives: A Research and Information

Guide, which, although published two years prior to Charles Ives Reconsidered, demonstrates a

concern for the composer’s history in a purely academic context. For Reconsidered, Magee

blends the two worlds of scholarship and storytelling. She had backing for the endeavor as well:

Charles Ives Reconsidered was funded by a Summer Fellowship Grant from the National

Endowment for the Humanities, a signal that Magee’s intellectual faculties are widely

recognized.

The NEH made a wise monetary decision. Magee provides a gentle and thoughtful

antidote to the plague of sloppy storytelling that has marked the legend of Ives. She delivers a

thorough, sincere depiction of the fascinating life of one of America’s foremost composers. It is

also a work that refuses to dishonor his legacy by removing the contradictions. She proves the

importance of academic integrity combined with human authenticity to paint an incredibly

compelling portrait of a complicated man in all his brilliance. Far from a takedown piece or one-

sided attack on the credibility of Ives, this effort shows a much more potent and truthful respect
for the composer by fighting back against oversimplifications that water down the important

intricacies of his story. In Charles Ives Reconsidered, Magee powerfully asserts that the widely-

celebrated but misremembered composer is worthy of a complicated legacy.

To accomplish this, she centers in on a multi-faceted target. According to Dr. Magee, the

prevailing historical narrative of Charles Ives’ life has been neatly trimmed to follow a

“trajectory of rejection, struggle, acceptance, and redemption” and “remains incredibly

attractive” to many, especially those who take it upon themselves to defend modern American

music (Magee 3). The author’s mission is to offer a more holistic alternative to the

oversimplified, inspiring tale which has allured many. She claims that this so-called “Ives

Legend” is built upon multiple demonstrably false assumptions and neglectful oversights. In the

book, Magee builds on previous research conducted alongside a colleague into the true

timeframes of some often misdated Ives compositions to provide a well-informed picture of the

composer’s life. In her own words,

“this book can be seen as a reconsideration of the foundation of Ives scholarship which

has emphasized Ives’s musical experimentation, precedence over European

contemporaries, isolation, and American identity above all else. In conjunction with

rethinking the dates, this book focuses on redefining Ives’s relationship to his American

origins, particularly the malleable meaning of his Euro-American education, from his

earliest works through evaluations of his music through the end of the twentieth century.”

(5)

This is the most concise thesis statement given in the book. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as

Magee argues for nuance and a broadening of the lens with which we see Charles Ives, her

argumentation becomes multi-layered and difficult to pin down. The level of complexity shown
to be so important in Ives’ life is unavoidably mirrored in the author’s descriptions of it. In spite

of this, the book does not feel scattered or unstructured. Rather, the thread which ties all

seemingly incongruous elements together is the chronologically presented biography of Ives that

carries the book along. It is helpful to view the book as a biography with a point to make. The

driving principle of the book is to pick apart the problematic “Ives Legend” and inject it with

some truth. Magee carefully and impressively weaves an insightful timeline for Ives, referring

back to this driving principle when she enters into an area of particular relevance or controversy.

What we are left with is a much more complicated but satisfying way to think about the life of a

complicated man. A few of the most important arguments and themes used to deconstruct the

legend are Ives’ lifelong struggle to reconcile his father’s influence with that of his Yale

professor, the amount of energy put in to publishing his own works, and the benefits of his ever-

comfortable spot in the upper class of America.

The first major thread encountered in the book is the huge importance of George Ives,

Charles’ father. Chronologically ordered as it is, the book begins before the birth of Charles with

a description and analysis of his father. Immediately, Magee asserts her revisionist scholarship to

sharpen up once blurry lines. As pointed out multiple times, Charles’ father has been historically

remembered as a daring musical visionary who at once possessed an expert knowledge of the

European tradition and fought back at it with forward-thinking compositions. All of this

knowledge was thought to have been imparted to the young Charles who, of course, was a

prodigy.

Not so, says Magee. In reality George was a modest professor and bandleader. He had a

notably communal philosophy of music that led him to be much more interested in the informal

qualities of music than the formal. While he showed a definite interest in experimenting with
sound in ways far ahead of his time, George did not have much more than a rudimentary and

secondhand grasp of theory. Magee pieces together from newspaper excerpts and recorded

stories a charming profile of a music lover who would make his band stand on opposite sides of a

park because he liked the clashing sounds. His formal music education was probably limited to

completing part-writing exercises out of a textbook, but this did not seem to inhibit his activity.

The inclusion of details such as his wife’s “acceptance of George’s unassuming ambitions”

leading to their “cheerful marriage” adds to Magee’s correction of history, displaying George

Ives as the genuine, passionate man he was (11). Charles may not have had a scholarly

upbringing, but he was drenched in rich folk music.

Dr. Magee gives a similarly thorough biographical section to the significant character of

Horatio Parker, Ives’ composition teacher. Parker was the recently appointed Chair of Music at

Yale upon Charles’ arrival to the university and had created a dense curriculum for new students.

Herself a graduate of the same department of this university, Magee’s research feels especially

thorough and lively in this section. She includes rich details from Parker’s aspiration and

struggle as a composer all the way to a summary of his weekly schedule. The level of

personability here, as in descriptions of George, seem purposeful on the part of Magee to firstly

display academic prowess and secondly (perhaps more importantly) ensure that readers are not

simply encountering faceless characters in the narrative of Charles’ life but storied persons with

individual motives who interacted with the composer.

The rest of the book returns again and again to the impact these two most important

musical influences had on Ives. As previously pointed out, the received wisdom is that Parker

was almost below Ives as a musician and had little to offer him and that the heartfelt folk

influence of his father’s music was never challenged by the cold European tendencies thrown at
him by the Yale professor. This is simply not true. Magee shows that there existed a great

tension from “Ives’s need to pit Parker against George”, strongly arguing that Ives thought of

them as opposing forces in his musical consciousness. It is also pointed out that “despite their

considerable differences, Horatio and George had much in common” (55). This further suggests

that Ives overlooked the ways these two worlds overlapped and preferred the competitive view

where one man was the villain.

It is later shown how Charles went back and forth between linking himself to Parker and

denying any meaningful connection depending on the situation. For example, when advertising

his own Concord Sonata, it behooved the composer to identify himself as a former student of

Parker’s at the esteemed Yale (148). Later on in his life when compiling his Memos with Henry

Cowell, Ives heavily emphasized the genius and impact of his father while downplaying and

outright ignoring Parker’s impact. At one point, he recounts a time when he received negative

feedback on a composition from the professor and tells of going to his father for wisdom. Ives

writes that his father supplied a quotable folksy adage which pushed back against the stuck-up

academic. The only problem is, as the author here points out, George Ives passed away three

years before this incident reportedly took place (54). Magee does not present Ives in all his

flakiness and shifting loyalties to expose or shame him. Rather, the contradictory and sometimes

dishonest behavior highlighted here serves to enrich the portrait of a man who struggled with

disparate influences and went through many musical stages in life.

Another repeated blow against the one-dimensional “Ives Legend” is Magee’s

discussions of how much and how often Charles Ives worked to publish, advertise, and put on

performances of his own pieces and indeed how successful he was. The popular narrative was

that Ives was something of a quiet genius who kept his work to himself until it gained attention
on the sheer merit of how good it was. John Kirkpatrick, himself responsible for much of the

“Ives Legend”, remarked that “for nearly half a century he has been experimenting with musical

sounds, and writing them down on paper, working quietly and obscurely (as revolutionary spirits

in the regions of the mind so often work), known only to a few inquisitive students and

observers” (168). These sentiments are still common, even a glance at Ives’ Wikipedia page

reveals claims that his works “w[ere] largely ignored during his life”.

While he was not the most widely celebrated or popular composer until the end of his life

and posthumously, Ives was no outsider to the musical landscapes of the day. He himself made

sure of it. Magee points out through narratives of both musicians and observers that Ives

regularly invited and hired talent to read through or perform his compositions. Later on, when

these attempts proved mostly unfruitful, he took another route and paid to self-publish his

Concord Sonata with its accompanying essays and then personally worked to distribute it to

anyone and everyone who may have been interested. A later commentator is quoted who

observed after the composer’s death that Ives “has literally lived with no performances of any

sort for almost all of his life, in utter loneliness” (138). Magee points out that while this has some

truth to it, Ives worked more or less for all his life to get his music into the ears of people who

would want to hear it. She also includes mention of his winning a Pulitzer Prize for his Third

Symphony and a successful performance of Three Places In New England for his colleagues in

insurance.

Simultaneously identifying Ives as someone who deeply wanted to have his works

performed more than they were and who worked to accomplish this but only moderate success in

his life will generate pathos with any audience. The image of a promising composer forced to

make a living with a backup plan in spite of his efforts is at the least pitiable to most. Add on to
this the details Magee includes about Ives’ reputation for generosity with younger composers and

an appealing character takes shape. Charles used his own funds to support promising peers such

as Henry Cowell quite often. It seems an act of humble servitude that testifies to his genuine

nature. Once again, then, Magee does not accuse Ives of musical treachery and offer him up to be

condemned, but makes note of the more human elements of struggle present in Ives’ career to

reveal a passionate man who cared deeply about music and wanted desperately to be a valuable

contributor.

Another more unbecoming thread of Ives’ career which Dr. Magee makes sure to

acknowledge frequently is the fact that he often benefitted from positions of privilege.

Discussions in the book of a certain era or event from the composer’s life are interspersed with

examinations of cultural and historical context. The author demonstrates a desire to present her

subject holistically by including information about not only what Ives did, but what allowed him

to do it and how it was done. Examples of this can be found in the many places in which Magee

describes Ives taking time away from work and financing his own music. In 1918, Ives suffered a

breakdown historically remembered as a heart attack, but Magee makes the case that it was

probably a violent resurgence of his cardio neurasthenia. Two chapters before, she described

how this condition was seen as “a badge of honor among the higher classes” (83) due to the

abundance of prominent, educated men who were diagnosed with it. After the interruption by

this “distinguished malady” (84), Ives and his wife took an eight-week leave to the mountains for

a “rest cure” during which he finished his Concord Sonata. Upon returning, he took another six

months off from his work to pay for a private printing of his newly accomplished work. He

would later pay for a larger printing and for distribution. Underlying all of this is the message
that Ives’ abundant financial security made it possible for him to take the time he needed for

music.

One of the most obvious examples of privilege and position in Ives’ life was his

prestigious education at Yale. Although the revised portrait of his father would make it appear

that Charles did not come from an affluent family, Magee observes that his uncle and brother

were also Yale alumni, and that the Ives family had planned for Charles to attend even before the

young man himself agreed.

An alumnus of the school herself, Magee takes an honest and critical approach to the

culture in which Ives thrived during his college years. When writing about his discovery of and

interest in ragtime music, the author links his experience with this style to “what was then the

foundation of American popular music: the fascination with and imitation of African-American

culture” (57). Magee notes that Ives “excitement” over the African-American styles being

appropriated around him was typical of a white Ivy League student from an influential family

(excepting his father). She goes on to say that blackface performances of this style would have

been a part of the musical entertainment in Ives’ fraternity at Yale to which he contributed

music. About this fraternity and the other secret society with which Ives was associated, Magee

says, “If Yale itself was a bastion of white male privilege, DKE and Wolf’s Head… formed part

of the core of that privilege” (58). All of these descriptions and more amount to an image of a

very comfortable Ives in an institution which provided ample opportunities and easy access to

the latest musical trends.

Perhaps the most troubling instance of Ives’ privilege in action comes when Magee

examines Charles and Harmony’s adoption of a little girl. The Iveses spent their third summer in

a row staying at their own property in Redding during 1915 and had a poorer family, the
Osbornes, staying with them as part of a program which gave urban poor the chance to have their

own “rest cure”. During their time together, Harmony Ives grew particularly attached to the

youngest Osborne, a toddler named Edith, and eventually she and Charles arranged to adopt the

child from the Osbornes. At this point that Magee grimly observes, “There is no evidence that

Edith ever saw her birth family again” (121). Members of the Ives’ family maintained that Edith

was a sickly, even handicapped child and that this impediment was main reason for her adoption

by Harmony the nurse. Magee scrutinizes these claims and offers an alternative perspective.

Edith’s childhood friend never mentions any pervasive illness in her descriptions of the girl. In

fact, no one outside of the family ever did. Edith was eventually married and had children of her

own and by all accounts lived a perfectly normal and fulfilling life.

Magee goes on to point out that if the girl had indeed been somewhat ill in some way and

that illness was the incentive for the Ives’ adoption, the child’s eventual good health would

invalidate that reason. Furthermore, she says they also “might have taken other, less intrusive or

drastic steps to aid both Edith and her family” such as a visiting nurse to help the other Osborne

children and their “certainly overworked” mother (122). The author argues against various

similar motivations before positing another: the Ives simply wanted desperately to raise a child

and found a convenient way to adopt one. Magee explains, “Edith’s rescue from illness and

poverty hid the Iveses’ very personal motivations”. She supports this with the evidence of Ives’

personal secretary testifying to Charles being bothered for and eventually giving money to the

Osbornes multiple times “out of fear of losing Edith”.

Overall, Magee’s effort is incredibly well-researched and mostly airtight. Her deep

knowledge of each aspect of the goings-on around Charles Ives is displayed time and time again

throughout the book as she expertly hypothesizes about unknowns. She goes about demystifying
ambiguous situations with a fair and level-headed treatment of every concern that might show

itself. A pristine example of this is found in her breakdown of Elliot Carter’s eyewitness account

of Ives’ altering and updating a previously composed work (159). After eliminating any

suspicion that Carter may have been misremembering the event or fabricating it altogether,

Magee carefully lays out an impressive consideration of possible motives. She takes the readers

through a detailed account of why the revision probably took place, showing how Elliot can be

correct in his observation while Ives can have pure motivations for his editing by shifting the

focus to “emphasis rather than content” of the revision (159).

However, there are two minor potential weak spots in the argumentative armor. These are

not critical to the central purpose of the book and therefore do not detract from the total

effectiveness of Magee’s remarkable work. Rather, they are simply inevitable failures to reach

spotless academic perfection, and these shortcomings themselves mirror the book’s emphasis on

human inconsistencies. The two that stand out most obviously are first of all Magee’s sometimes

stretched and inaccurate interpretation of hymn texts in Ives’ works and secondly her unfortunate

depiction of Henry Cowell as a one dimensional villain in the narrative.

Firstly, her breakdown of hymn texts. On page ninety-eight when Magee is analyzing

Charles’ quotation of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”, she states “Despite its optimistic tune

and title, ‘What a Friend’ deals with the bearing of ‘sins and griefs’”. In the context of the

passage, she gentle argues that the idea of bearing sins and griefs is at odds with an “optimistic

tune”. For the Christian singing this hymn, however, that is not the case. The stanza in question

reads, “What a friend we have in Jesus/ All our sins and griefs to bear/ What a privilege to carry/

Everything to God in prayer”. At first glance, the mention of “sins and griefs” seems

incompatible with an “optimistic” mood, but the text is actually speaking quite cheerily of the
way that the friend Jesus has taken those sins and griefs. Singing of their absence in fact

increases the optimism of the singer!

On the next page Magee also makes brief mention of a stanza from “There is a Happy

Land”. She makes the claim that the hymn’s “‘far, far away’ land invokes the past” (99). This

claim is made in support of her drawing links from the material Ives quotes in a passage of his

Third Symphony to his recalling the simpler, happier days of the past. While that connection

certainly holds up, the example provided is off-base. The entire stanza reads, “There is a happy

land, far, far away/ Where saints in glory stand, bright, bright as day./ Oh, how they sweetly sing,

worthy is our Savior King,/ Loud let His praises ring, praise, praise for aye.” The “happy land”

in question seems quite clearly to be describing the Christian idea of heaven, often associated

with a gathering of bright saints and ongoing praise. Therefore, to a congregant singing these

words in a church service, these words most likely do not evoke the past at all, but the present

and also the future.

Now, these may be overlooked as inconsequential asides about text from a religious

tradition of which Magee herself does not seem to be a part. They are most likely the result of a

secular analysis of a sacred text. In fact, the argument could be made that Magee’s

interpretations are perfectly valid considering Ives, though he worked as a church organist and

occasionally attended church with his wife, was apparently not a devotee of any branch of faith.

Therefore the man himself may have had similar applications of the text in mind. The author’s

treatment of Henry Cowell, however, is a slightly more objective issue.

Throughout the end of the book, Cowell is portrayed in what is a best a neutral light. The

best thing Magee attributes to the younger composer is his part in establishing Ives as a relevant

modernist American composer, and this fact is negatively associated with ethnocentricity and
“pro-American, anti-immigration, and anti-European tropes” (156). On pages 164 and 165, as

well as elsewhere, Magee very nearly attributes all of the dishonest revisions of Charles’

influential Memos to Cowell’s impact on the man. She rarely examines a negative trait of Ives’,

including passages of explicit misogyny, without mentioning that it can be seen as an “echo” of

Cowell’s views or practices. This makes it seem as if Cowell was the toxic well from which Ives

drew his negative actions and if one is not careful could begin to absolve Ives of full

responsibility for his editing of his own life.

Lastly, the matter of Henry Cowell’s arrest is not given the same level of nuance and

attention to detail as many other events in the book. When Magee writes of Cowell being

convicted, serving his sentence, records Ives’ reaction, and speculates that he may have been

reluctant to become closer with John Kirkpatrick after being betrayed by Cowell, the momentum

of the narrative feels very much like the problematic Cowell finally got what he deserved while

Ives was heartbroken by his wicked friend. The details of the arrest are limited to the biting

conclusion that he “plead(ed) guilty to charges of child molestation” (165). In reality, even a

brief search for the facts of this arrest provide a more complicated picture than Magee paints.

True, Cowell did have a sexual relationship with an underage male, but the young man was just

under the legal threshold at 17 years of age and by all accounts it was quite a consensual tryst.

The affair was only brought to light because Cowell’s partner demanded money to keep it a

secret and the composer refused. As Michael Hicks lays out in an article titled “The

Imprisonment of Henry Cowell”, the boy was equally responsible for the relationship as the

young composer and only escaped a charge because of his age. Additionally, much of the

sentence hinged on an antiquated law which made a certain private sex act punishable by jail

time. Cowell even saw his bail raised by the judge upon completely misled fears that the
composer might try to commit suicide were he freed (Hicks, 95-97). Of course, this does not

excuse or justify any of what Cowell did, but Magee’s summary of “pleading guilty to child

molestation” hastily leaves a much more extreme and grievous image in the mind of the reader

than what actually happened.

Minor shortcomings included, Magee’s Charles Ives Reconsidered still stands as a

remarkable and important work of accessible scholarship. The fact that “this study is the first

full-length consideration of Ives’ life and works using the completed new chronology, and offers

a new perspective” is no insignificant feat, especially considering Magee herself helped complete

the chronology in question. The author is overall successful in her attempt at bringing together

the most honest research and evidence to hold up a more accurate representation of this

important figure of American musical history. The vast scope of this effort is executed with an

expert control and careful treatment of material. Magee sets herself and this book apart by a

refusal to oversimplify the complicated and messy aspects of real life. She offers correction on

the fronts of both Ives and his colleagues alteration and those of academia history itself with a

general concern for the authenticity of Ives’ story. Indeed, all of the ugly details brought in do

not constitute a takedown of the composer, but show a respect and admiration that desires him to

be remembered in all his occasionally flawed glory. Magee ultimately testifies to the brilliance of

the man by letting his timeless and inspiring music remain exactly that in spite of, or perhaps

because of, the humanity of its composer.

 Works Cited

Hicks, Michael. “The Imprisonment of Henry Cowell.” Journal of the American Musicological

Society, vol. 44, no. 1, [University of California Press, American Musicological Society],

1991, pp. 92–119, https://doi.org/10.2307/831729.

Magee, Gayle Sherwood. Charles Ives Reconsidered. University of Illinois Press, 2008.