Charles Edward Ives was born 20 October 1874, in the town of Danbury, Connecticut, where his family, over the generations, had become prominent businesspeople. His father, George, who served as a bandleader for the Union Army during the American Civil War, played a central role in his son’s education, teaching him the basics of the classical tradition while at the same time encouraging Charles’ taste in bold musical experimentation. Around the age of twelve, Ives began composing, while also playing the drum in the marching bands his father led. He learned piano and organ, the latter of which would become his primary instrument. At the age of fourteen, Ives was hired as a church organist at the Second Congregational Church in Danbury, becoming the state’s youngest professional organist. He was also highly athletic, and a passionate and devoted baseball player.

In 1893, he began attending Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, and entered Yale University the following year, two months before the death of his father, which would affect him deeply. During this period he composed a series of settings for psalms as well as Variations on America for organ. During the four years Ives spent at Yale, he had an active social life, and was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and the Wolf’s Head Society. He studied Greek, Latin, mathematics, and literature, pursuing his composition studies with Horatio Parker, who helped him hone his knowledge of the European classical music tradition. Under Parker’s supervision, he composed his Symphonie n° 1 (1895-1898) as his senior thesis.

In 1898, Ives took a job with a New York insurance company, while continuing to play organ in different churches in the area. In 1906, he quit playing the organ professionally and gave up on the idea of a career as a musician. In 1907, he and his friend Julian W. Myrick, founded their own insurance agency, Ives & Myrick, where Ives worked until his retirement. It was during this period that Ives suffered his first heart attack, the precursor of other physical and mental health issues. His writings from the beginning of the twentieth century show his taste for experimentation, notably From the Steeples and the Mountains (1901-1902), for brass and bells; Hallowe’en, for string quartet and piano (1906); and his two Contemplations for small orchestra: The Unanswered Question and Central Park in the Dark (1906). In 1908, he married Harmony Twichell (the couple had met in 1905), who would remain a pillar for him throughout his life.

The insurance agency prospered during this time, and Ives spent evenings and weekends composing, sheltered from the major institutions and actors of the New York music scene, many of whom were unaware of his work. He was nevertheless prolific, creating daring and inspiring pieces such as the imposing Second sonata “Concord. Mass., 1840-60” (1911-1915) for piano; the Second string quartet (1911-1913); and orchestral pieces such as Three Places in New England (1911-1912) and Symphony n° 4 (1910-1916). In 1918, however, another series of heart attacks affected Ives’ health considerably; he fell into a period of depression and stopped composing almost entirely. His “Universe” Symphony (1911-1928), which he started during this period, remained incomplete. A private printing of Essays Before a Sonata was released in 1920, and, in 1922, a collection of 114 songs.

In 1930, Ives retired from his insurance agency and began revising his work. He championed the work of the rising generation of ultra-modern composers, financing their concerts and the publication of their scores. Between March and May of 1932, at the urging of his friends, he wrote Memos, a collection of his reminiscences and reflections, and then spent a year in Europe. Toward the end of the 1920s, Ives’ music had begun to attract attention in the music world, thanks in particular to Henry Cowell who published the second movement of Symphony n° 4 in New Music in 1927, and to Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted performances of Three Places in New England in the United States and Europe in 1930 and 1932. John Kirkpatrick’s premiere of Ives’s complete “Concord” Sonata in 1939, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for Symphony n° 3 (premiered in a performance by Lou Harrison in 1946) launched Ives’s reputation as a major composer of his time. Charles Ives died in New York on 19 May 1954.