Charles Edward Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American composer, organist, and insurance executive whose music joined New England hymnody, popular song, marches, experimental harmony, and European concert traditions. Born in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1874, he received unusually adventurous musical training from his father, George Ives, a bandmaster and musical experimenter. Charles became a church organist while still a teenager and later studied composition at Yale University with Horatio Parker, graduating in 1898.

Ives pursued a highly successful career in life insurance while composing independently. With Julian Myrick he built the firm Ives & Myrick, and his financial independence allowed him to write music without relying on conventional concert institutions. His major works include the Concord Sonata, Three Places in New England, four numbered symphonies, the Holidays Symphony, numerous songs, and chamber and organ works.

His music often transformed familiar hymns, patriotic songs, and vernacular sounds into highly personal forms. Much of it received recognition only later in his life. Ives won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony. His achievement is now regarded as central to the development of American musical modernism.