[OKIEDOC]

Van Dyke Parks

Is he the one that sings or writes the music for Harold and the Purple Crayon?

Great kids music.

[pennboricua]

John Phillip Sousa no greater composer for all American music.

[Bigg Red]

I do not care for Ives — hurts my ears. As does Copeland.

[aristotleman]

Classical Mysic Ping: Ives Rocks!

The Ives songs for piano and voice are some of the most haunting and difficult to perform/comprehend in the literature of the time.

THanks for posting this. There aren’t many american composers of his generation that reach his level of complexity and uniqueness. He is barely known in europe though.

[mountn man]

Charels Ives. Any relationship to Burl Ives?

[mollynme]

My youngest brother would agree with you. He tried to turn me on to Ives when he was attending the NE Conservatory but I'm afraid it was a lost cause. My plebian ears still insist on some sort of recognizable tune.
I guess I'm just a Romantic gal.

[Savage Beast]

I love Ives. My wife, a concert musician of a unique combination of discipline, education, imagination, intelligence, wisdom, and raw talent, made magic with his Variations on America.

[RedRover]

Thanks for the post. Yes, Ives has given me enormous pleasure over the years. Especially “Three Places in New England” (and especially “Concord”).

And here’s to Van Dyke Parks as well. I loved the “Orange Crate Art” album he and Brian Wilson did some years back. Van Dyke is one of those people who should be treated as a national treasure.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I was in the NYU Glee Club, singing some of his music when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. His music was interesting, but left me cold.

[Geostorm]

I like Ives. I’m really beginning to love the American Composer
Leroy Anderson. He had such interesting tunes as the Typewriter and the Syncopated Clock. I just bought the iTunes Arther Fiedler and the Boston pops version with also the Irish suite tunes on it. It had 21 compositions for $9.99. That’s like $0.49 per composition. You also get Sleigh Ride a famous Christmas Tune.

[mozarky2]

I have a recording by the Kronos Quartet that has a song on it called “They Are There”, featuring an obviously inebriated Charles Ives singing and playing the piano. Strange stuff, to say the least...

[real saxophonist]

Are you aware of the Charles Ives Society? I've performed with James Sinclair a couple of times, and you'll have a long search to find someone more knowledgeable.

[Fiji Hill]

Ives’ “Variations on ‘America” is an interesting piece. My favorite American composers of classical music are Lowell Mason, probably best known for composing the Christmas carol “Joy to the World” (1836), and George Gershwin.

[stravinskyrules]

Count me in as an Ives fanatic. I went through a major Ives love fest in college and all these years later have all his work (on vinyl and CD).

The hidden gem of his recordings is the specially issued CBS Centennial Boxed set....absolutely fantastic collection including recordings of Ives himself at the piano...singing!

The Kronos quartet later "remixed" one of his vocals into a brand new composition. Ive's is a great American original.

[wideminded]

I recently read the autobiography of Nicolas Slonimsky in which he has a lot to say about Charles Ives.