Jack Sullivan on Charles Ives

From The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986):

IVES, CHARLES (1871—1954). American composer, one of the most original creators in the history of music, who in virtually total isolation experimented with nontonal, polyrhythmic, and aleatory principles long before they were "discovered" by more established European composers. Known mainly for raucous pile-ups ofAmerican hymns and popular lunes (sometimes requiring two conductors in performance). Ives used the same materials to compose a hazy, impressionistic type of slow music that is spectral in the extreme. The complex polytonal textures of this music, a forecast of the cosmic galaxies of LIGETI and other contemporaries, arc ostensibly a musical translation of the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau, but they seem much more like explorations of utterly new territory, both sonically and emotionally.

     Although Ives is not specifically known as a composer of spectral music, it is hard to think of anything in American music (or any music, for that matter) moren creepy and atmospheric than Halowe'en (1911), Central Park in the Dark (1898-1907), The Unanswered Question (1908), the Harvest Home Chorales (189S-19I2), the Orchestral Set No. 2 (1915), or the first and last movements of the Symphony No. 4 (1910-1916) and Three Places in New England (1905-1914). Ives spent several wild years as organist and choirmaster at New York's Central Presbyterian Church at the turn of the century. His shuddery organ dissonances and weird choral counterpoint must have raised his congregation's hair as much as its spirits.

J. S.

Jay

6 February 2023