# Composers similar to Charles Ives?



## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

I haven't listened to enough of his music, but I'm a big fan of what I've heard so far, particularly his sub-orchestral music. The first pieces I heard of his were the Violin Sonatas, which remain my favorite. I love the mixture of complex chromatic semi-tonality with folk-inspired melodies, as well as the richness and complexity achieve by 2 instruments.

Recommendations of composers/pieces similar to his style, as well as recommendations of his pieces to listen to next, would be appreciated.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

I'll take the risk of suggesting that Ives was a one-off. There's nobody like Ives in full flow.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

Pat Fairlea said:


> I'll take the risk of suggesting that Ives was a one-off. There's nobody like Ives in full flow.


Makes sense that 2 of my favorite composers are extremely unique. That makes me all the more inclined to try to compose in a way inspired by them.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I agree with Pat that Ives was truly unque. Nevertheless, if you like his violin sonatas, I would suggest Debussy's sonatas (cello; violin; flute/viola/harp), which are not exactly like Ives, but have a simiilar iconoclastic feel.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

MarkW said:


> I agree with Pat that Ives was truly unque. Nevertheless, if you like his violin sonatas, I would suggest Debussy's sonatas (cello; violin; flute/viola/harp), which are not exactly like Ives, but have a simiilar iconoclastic feel.


Thanks, I've been wanting to explore more of his music as well. I feel like Ives' music sounds like an impressionist interpretation of the folk tunes he's inspired by.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I've always seen some similarities with Stravinsky, particularly The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky modified Russian folk songs and played themes based on them simultaneously with other stuff going on in other keys (polytonality). Ives will have the Camp Bands and all kinds of stuff going on as well. Come to think of it, Mahler occasionally does stuff like that aswell, especially in his First Symphony


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## Guest (Jun 28, 2018)

Percy Grainger springs to mind.


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## Thomyum2 (Apr 18, 2018)

I agree with Pat that Ives is pretty unique - it's hard to find music that sounds like his. But I'd also agree with Triplets that some of Stravinsky is in the same vein. Petrushka comes to mind for me - there's a scene in the carnival where there are couple very different things going on at the same time that really sound like Ives, kind of make you feel like you're right there in the middle of it with two or more different musical ideas playing at the same time - very similar to his 'Putnam's Camp' from the _Three Places in New England_.

This might sound really off the wall, but another composer who I think uses ideas in a way that echoes Ives (although his music sounds totally different) is Michael Daugherty. Just as Ives uses hymn and folk songs that might have been familiar in his day, Ives uses popular sounds (e.g. from TV or movies in _Metropolis Symphony_) that resonate with American popular culture, albeit from more recent time instead of from 100 years ago. I think he plays with how those sounds evoke images in the listener's minds but rolls them up into a concert work in a similar manner as Ives did that take you off in a whole different direction, even if the musical language sounds very different. Some people will probably say I'm crazy for saying that, but it's a thought I've had while listening to his music.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Occasionally one hears something reminiscent of Ives in the music of John Adams. Not least in Adams's 2003 work _My Father Knew Charles Ives_.
[Narrator: He didn't.]


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Ives is simply too unique for composers to have any appreciative similarity with him. But the unabashed Americanism he exhibits puts to mind George Antheil? Perhaps Ruggles? 

Just a thought.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Ives is so iconoclastic (original) that his sound (with the possible exception of the First Symphony) is immediately recognizable. You don't find this sound anywhere before Ives, and you really don't find it anywhere after Ives, unless the composer is attempting to _sound_ like Ives. Many composers have utilized quotations from other musical works in their own original compositions, but none does so to the degree that Ives does. Too, when combined with seemingly off-kilter note selections and bizarre turns of orchestration, the entire fabric of the music turns unique. Refreshing and beautiful.

One finds these unique Ivesian qualities in the chamber music, the piano music, the songs, and the orchestral works. He may be termed an impressionist, but his is an impressionism different from that of Debussy. John Cage, in "classical music" and Nurse With Wound, in "avant garde rock/pop" dip into the Ivesian pot every now and then; and then we say "they are mirroring Charles Ives."

I mentioned that First Symphony, a lovely work in pure high Romantic vein, sort of like a Kallinikov or Borodin symphony: tuneful, harmonically conservative ... which springs a surprise at the end. It's a symphony that may not have the mature Ives sound, but I still wonder if it could have been written by anyone else, even if it lacks an original "sound palette".

I'm glad we have the music of Charles Ives. He is certainly one of a kind.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I would like to get to know Ives better. I like the idea of a creative artist of genius who lived a rather ordinary (not just in the rarified world of music) life - rather an American phenomenon, I think. But I do have a difficulty with music that brings popular or folk tunes into the mix. Once that has happened it just comes down to whether or not I like that tune and what it means to me. 

Probably I am just showing, here, how ignorant I am of his music?


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> I would like to get to know Ives better. I like the idea of a creative artist of genius who lived a rather ordinary (not just in the rarified world of music) life - rather an American phenomenon, I think. But I do have a difficulty with music that brings popular or folk tunes into the mix. Once that has happened it just comes down to whether or not I like that tune and what it means to me.
> 
> Probably I am just showing, here, how ignorant I am of his music?


Have you listened to his violin sonatas? They sound very modern and chromatic, with fleeting allusions to folk tunes. Gentle and uplifting as well.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Fredx2098 said:


> Have you listened to his violin sonatas? They sound very modern and chromatic, with fleeting allusions to folk tunes. Gentle and uplifting as well.


Will do! I needed a pointer.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

If you haven't heard the Symphonies 2 and 3, do so. They are traditional and tonal. His Symphony 4 is serial and so difficult it requires two conductors. His Piano Sonata No. 2, "Concord," has elements of both.

The orchestral music Central Park in the Dark, The Unanswered Question and Three Places in New England straddle the line between Ives the traditionalist and Ives the serialist.

While Ives the serialist is unique there are a lot of American composers whose music is similar to Ives traditional, tonal music. I might recommend Thomson's *Symphony On A Hymn Tune*, very similar to Ives Symphony 3. Thomson wrote other orchestral music about America's Middle and South that are in a vein similar to Ives' New England-inspired music. They include the suites to The River, The Plow That Broke the Plain and his Louisiana Story.


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

Fredx2098 said:


> Makes sense that 2 of my favorite composers are extremely unique.


I think it depends on how "similar" you want your "similar" composers. It takes a measure of originality and independent thought to become even an above average composer, and a genius is always one of a kind. I don't think it'd be possible to list "composers similar to JS Bach", for example, or "composers similar to Schubert". (And whenever someone suggests Ravel is similar to Debussy or vice versa, it's making me feel depressed.)

If you're looking for superficial similarity - "music which sounds like Ives" - I don't think there is any. There was, however, a composer whose thought processes ran in a very similar way to Ives' - Anthony Philipp Heinrich - a 19th century self-taught composer who mixed Classical with music from the streets, often producing the strangest polystylistic works. Here's what Grove Online had to say:



> Heinrich's compositions are out of the ordinary and quite original. Although eccentric, occasionally rough, and unusually complex and elaborate, his works are truly expressive and never without interest. The sources of his musical style are found in Haydn and to some extent Beethoven, but they have the greater ornateness of Italian opera and often a freer use of chromaticism both melodically and harmonically. Heinrich's melodic style is strongly influenced by classical dance music, and melodic quotation plays an important role in his compositional technique, particularly self-quotation and the quotation of popular, patriotic tunes (e.g. Hail Columbia, Yankee Doodle, God Save the King). The forms Heinrich favoured most are those of the dance and the theme with variations. Generally, he did not develop material thematically or formally, but juxtaposed successive sections.


Some of his works are on Youtube, but the majority have never been recorded, and many remain unpublished. Yet you'll find people in the comments sections there complaining, not wholly without reason, about the fact that Heinrich hasn't had any recognition for inventing some of Ives' inventions almost a century earlier. Check out the 1823 toccatina for solo piano, famous for it's 1024th note - a sprawling work which includes everything from Beethoven to contemporary band music. It doesn't sound like Ives - but maybe it sounds like what Ives would've done had he been born a hundred years earlier.


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## Fredx2098 (Jun 24, 2018)

I'm listening to Elliott Carter's Cello Sonata and the tone reminds me very much of Ives!


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Why look for composers similar to Charles Ives when one hasn't heard that much Charles Ives? He was an American original, with some European influences, who took great joy in the natural clashing of sounds, in natural dissonances, unike the modern European composers, such as Schoenberg, who took their work very seriously and labored over it as a system of composition. There's a playfulness, a natural spontaneity, in much of what Ives wrote, a mystical side too, and he had a great influence on Elliot Carter and others such as John Adams. Ives wrote dissonances worth hearing as something completely natural in life, like the occurrence of two marching bands clashing in a parade is natural. He noticed the natural dissonances that most people missed and incorporated much of it in his music-an original way ahead of his time. Wonderful composer.

"In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind."

"Stand up and take your dissonance like a man."

"The future of music may not lie entirely in music itself, but rather in the way it encourages and extends, rather than limits the aspirations and ideals of the people, in the way it makes itself a part with the finer things that humanity does and dreams of." -Charles Ives


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