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OccultHawk · 07-10-2019, 05:48 PM

Elliott Carter on Charles Ives:

Quote:

Ives's dissonance differs from that of most other composers who use it to express physical excitement, sensations of pleasure and pain, or effects of distortion in the manner of the modern painters, or to reflect spiritual conflict, as in the works of Baudelaire. Ives is always in quest of the transcendental. On the surface of his work, the infinite complexity of nature, the rapidly changing moods of forest and plain, the web of counterbalancing forces appear confused and dissociated. But Ives's involved texture, while mirroring this superficial confusion, at the same time attempts to show the larger harmony of rhythm behind the natural process. Faith in the purpose and goodness of nature rather than concern over its savage conflicts and hostility determines his choice of moods.

Ives, with his exalted goal for musical expression, believes that composers should be free always to follow their highest instincts. Difficulty of performance is the performer's problem, not his. The quest for performances, for payment for music, for success, are beside the point. Ives himself makes his money in business and so has been free in his pursuit of music as one of his instrumental parts, whose barlines, rhythms, notes, and speed do not tally with the rest of the orchestra. He is as difficult to assimilate into the pattern of the organized musical world as such a part is into an orchestral texture. (He has persistently refused royalties, prefers not to have his music copyrighted so that performers may feel free to take liberties, and usually insists on paying for publication. Thus he strictly preserves his amateur status, while his reputationbased rather on what has been written about him than on the few performances of his musicconstitutes a threat to the professional world.)