page_title: Charles Ives
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Ives / Life / Early years
context_page_description: Charles Edward Ives was an American composer. He experimented with new ways of composing which many people did not understand at the time. These became more widely used later in the century. He used dissonant sounding intervals and techniques such as polytonality, polyrhythms and polytextures. Very few people listened to his music at the time he was writing it. Only much later did musicians start to realize the importance of his work. Ives earned his living as an insurance agent. He composed in his spare time.
context_section_description: Charles Ives was born in Danbury, Connecticut.  His father George Ives was a U.S. Army bandleader in the American Civil War.  His mother was a singer.  His father taught him a great deal about the music and encouraged him to experiment with new sounds.  As well as teaching him counterpoint and introducing him to the music of  J.S.Bach  he trained his son’s musical ear by getting him to sing a tune in one key while he played the accompaniment in another.  In this way the young Charles became used to modern sounds that were quite different from traditional, Romantic music.  Charles also listened in Danbury town square to his father's marching band and other bands that were playing on other sides of the square, so that he heard a mixture of several pieces of music at the same time.  His father also taught him the music of Stephen Foster.  
  Ives became a church organist at the age of 14 and wrote various hymns and songs for church services, including his Variations on 'America' .  At the same time he also enjoyed sport and was good at baseball, football and tennis.
  Ives spent four years at Yale University.  His teacher Horatio Parker was very good and taught him important basic techniques of composing, but he could not understand some of things that Ives was writing in his music.  Ives got annoyed when his teacher told him he could not finish a section of music on a dissonant chord, but Ives liked it like that.   The choirmaster at the Centre Church where Ives played the organ was John Griggs.  He had more understanding of what Ives was trying to do.  It was a terrible blow to Charles when his father died on 4 November 1894.  He always had a huge admiration for his father who had encouraged him in his musical experiments.  Charles kept busy composing.  He did not do any sport at Yale because his father had forbidden him to take part in sport so that he would spend his time on studying.  By the time Charles graduated he had composed more than 40 songs, several marches, overtures, anthems and organ pieces, a string quartet and a symphony.  However, most people thought of him as the composer of a simple waltz tune called The Bells of Yale.
caption: Charles Ives, ca. 1889
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