Hello all,

For our fourth and final week listening to the Emerson String Quartet, we will be hearing them perform the first string quartet composed by the 20th-century American composer Charles Ives, nicknamed “From the Salvation Army.” Like their recordings of Bartok and Mozart, the Emerson’s recordings of the two Ives string quartets became immediate sensations. Before the Emerson’s recordings, Ives’ chamber music was almost unheard of.

Ives was a through-and-through New Englander. He was born and lived his entire life in Concord, Massachusetts. He began composing music at age eleven, building little tunes out of the folk music he heard in his hometown and the songs he heard sung at revivals and spiritual gatherings in his family’s church. Later, after graduating from Yale with a graduate degree in music composition and realizing he had few options for a career as a composer, he moved back to Concord and began working as an insurance salesman. He would wake up in the early hours of the morning and compose for two or three hours every day before work. Even after his music became nationally famous, Ives kept his job with the insurance company and continued his weekly role as the church organist. And he never lost his love for the small-town American music that had defined his childhood: spirituals, hymns, and folk tunes.

Enjoy!

T

P.S. Ives has been a great inspiration for me in my personal journey as a composer. My compositional interest, like Ives, is based on my desire to bring American music (folk, jazz, classical, ragtime, etc.) into the concert hall. My first violin sonata (linked below) thus incorporates elements of American hymns, American fiddle tunes, and American jazz music.