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A Sesquicentennial Celebration, hosted by the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, IN, with contextualized performances, cross-disciplinary talks, and conversations exploring Charles Ives and his place in American history and culture.

All events at the festival are FREE of charge. Registration is recommended so we can be in touch about important details.

REGISTER HERE!

The leading American concert composer of his time, Charles Ives (1874-1954) is also an iconic American genius whose story links to Transcendentalism, the Civil War, camp meetings, and Wall Street. Charles Ives at 150 will furnish a unique opportunity to freshly explore Ives’s significance in framing the ever-elusive American experience. Too often, he has been viewed as an outsider, an oddball, an accident, an avant-gardist ahead of his time. The central premise of the festival is that Ives vividly exemplifies his own American time and place: the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era.

Curated by eminent Ives scholar J. Peter Burkholder and cultural historian Joseph Horowitz, and supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, this cross-disciplinary festival will be by far the most ambitious celebration of Ives’s Sesquicentennial.

Festival performances will showcase the breadth of Ives’s output, including the Second and Third Symphonies; the symphonic poems Three Places in New England, The Unanswered Question, and Central Park in the Dark; both piano sonatas; major works for band and chamber orchestra; choral music from The Celestial Country to Psalm 90; both string quartets; all four violin sonatas; and innumerable songs.

Pianists Jeremy Denk, Gilbert Kalish, and Steven Mayer; violinist Stefan Jackiw; and baritone William Sharp will join Jacobs School of Music faculty — musicologist J. Peter Burkholder; conductors Dominick DiOrio, David Dzubay, Arthur Fagen, Jeffery Meyer, Jason Nam, Eric Smedley; mezzo soprano Mary Ann Hart; and members of The Pacifica Quartet. IU students in Voice, Piano, and Orchestral, Choral, Wind, and Chamber Ensembles — including two bands, two orchestras, the New Music Ensemble, and the NOTUS contemporary choir.

All the concerts will be framed as public humanities events, incorporating commentary and discussion.

Participating guest scholars include art historian Tim Barringer, historians Allen Guelzo and Alan Lessoff, musicologist Denise Von Glahn; music theorists David Thurmaier, Chelsey Hamm, and Derek J. Myler; cultural historians David Michael Hertz and Joseph Horowitz; editor James B. Sinclair; biographer Jan Swafford; and others to come — watch this space!

Charles Ives at 150 is brought to you in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the IU Public Arts & Humanities Project, and the Jacobs School of Music; with support from the Charles Ives Society, the Five Friends Master Class Series, and the IU Departments of Musicology, Piano, Strings, American Studies, Art History, Comparative Literature, English, and History. Media sponsorship by WFIU Public Radio.

Photo from the Charles Ives Papers in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University.

For information about all the NEH sponsored Ives Festivals, click here.

PRE-FESTIVAL EVENTS

SATURDAY, SEPT. 21

3:00-4:30 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Voice master class on Ives songs with Mary Ann Hart

SUNDAY, SEPT 22

7:00 pm | Sweeney Hall (SM 015)
Charles Ives’s America
Documentary film featuring Joseph Horowitz, J. Peter Burkholder, Steven Mayer, William Sharp, James B. Sinclair, and Judith Tick, produced by Joseph Horowitz for Naxos with visuals by Peter Bogdanoff

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

Use these links to view the Ives Festival Program and Program Companion online.

MONDAY, SEPT. 30

8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Festival Opening Event
Charles Ives: A Life in Music
Song recital with narrative and readings

William Sharp, baritone
Steven Mayer, piano
Caroline Goodwin, actress

Post-concert discussion with the performers
Voice Department Five Friends Master Class Series

TUESDAY, OCT. 1

5:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Voice master class on Ives songs with William Sharp

Voice Department Five Friends Master Class Series

7:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Piano master class with Steven Mayer

8:00 pm | Musical Arts Center
Band Showcase: An Ives Extravaganza!

Symphonic Band and Concert Band
Eric Smedley and Jason Nam, conductors
with commentary by J. Peter Burkholder

Ives: March “Intercollegiate”
Ives: Old Home Days Suite, arr. Jonathan Elkus
Ives: They Are There!, arr. James B. Sinclair
Ives: Variations on “America”, arr. Tiffany Galus
Concert Band — Jason Nam, conductor

Ives: Fugue in C, arr. James B. Sinclair
Ives: Finale from Symphony No. 2, arr. Jonathan Elkus
Ives: Decoration Day, arr. Jonathan Elkus
Ives: March “Omega Lambda Chi”
Symphonic Band — Eric Smedley, conductor

Post-concert discussion with the performers

8:30 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Piano master class with Jeremy Denk

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 2

5:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Music Theory Colloquium
Ives and Current Music Theory

Chelsey Hamm (Christopher Newport University)
Reconsidering Charles Ives’s Problematic Language
Derek J. Myler (East Carolina University)
On the Paradox of Polymusic
David Thurmaier (University of Missouri-Kansas City)
A Letter from Charles Ives: Rhinemaidens, Chromaticism, and Wagnerian Influence

Music Theory Five Friends Master Class Series – honoring Robert Samels

8:00 pm | Auer Hall
The Four Ives Violin Sonatas

Stefan Jackiw, violin
Jeremy Denk, piano
with source hymns and songs performed by the First Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir
directed by Ryan Rogers
with commentary by Jeremy Denk and J. Peter Burkholder

Ives: Violin Sonata No. 4: Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting
Ives: Violin Sonata No. 3
Ives: Violin Sonata No. 2
Ives: Violin Sonata No. 1

Post-concert discussion with the performers

THURSDAY, OCT. 3

12:00-2:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Violin master class with Stefan Jackiw

5:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Piano Music: Recital and Panel

Faculty-Student Recital

Ives: Three-Page Sonata
Seri Kim, piano
Ives: Song Without (Good) Words, from Set of Five Take-Offs
Tarje Grover, piano
Ives: Study No. 9: The Anti-Abolitionist Riots in Boston in the 1830’s and 1840’s
Benjamin David Tufte, piano
Ives: Emerson, Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840-60
Christian Verfenstein, piano
Ives: The Celestial Railroad
Aaron Wonson, piano

Panel: Performing Ives’s Concord Sonata
Jeremy Denk, Gilbert Kalish, and Steven Mayer, pianists and panelists

8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Chamber and Chamber Orchestra Works

New Music Ensemble
David Dzubay, director
with commentary by James B. Sinclair, Paul Borg, and Derek J. Myler

Ives: Set for Theater Orchestra
Ives: Set No. 6 for Chamber Orchestra (comments by James B. Sinclair)
Ives: Three Quarter-tone Pieces for two pianos (comments by Paul Borg)
Ives: A Set of Three Short Pieces for string quartet and double bass
Ives: Central Park in the Dark (comments by Derek Myler)

Post-concert discussion with the performers

FRIDAY, OCT. 4

12:30 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Musicology Colloquium
Keynote Event: Ives and American Music

Joseph Horowitz (Cultural Historian)
Ives and Cultural Memory: A “New Paradigm” for American Classical Music
J. Peter Burkholder (Indiana University)
The Power of the Common Soul: Diversity, Music-Making, and Hope in Charles Ives’s Music

1:45 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 1
Ives and Nature

Joseph Horowitz
“Mud and Scum”
Tim Barringer (Art History, Yale University)
Ives and the Visual
Derek J. Myler (Music Theory, East Carolina University)
Ives’s Housatonic and the Hydrology of River Flow

Cordula Grewe (Art History, Indiana University), Melody Barnett Deusner (Art History, Indiana University), Denise Von Glahn (Musicology, Florida State University), and Jan Swafford (Ives biographer), discussants

5:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Song Recital

IU Jacobs School of Music Students

8:00 pm | Auer Hall
The Ives String Quartets

Pacifica Quartet
with commentary by J. Peter Burkholder

Ives: Scherzo for String Quartet
Ives: String Quartet No. 1
Ives: String Quartet No. 2

Post-concert discussion with the performers

SATURDAY, OCT. 5

9:00 am | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 2
Ives and His Time: Uplifting the “Gilded Age”

Joseph Horowitz
“Moral Fire”: Charles Ives and Company
Alan Lessoff (History, Illinois State University)
What the Gilded Age Has Meant, and What It Means

Allen C. Guelzo (History, Princeton University), Tim Barringer, Wendy Gamber (History, Indiana University), Eric Sandweiss (History, Indiana University), and Jan Swafford (Ives biographer), discussants

10:45 am | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 3
Ives and American Wars

Allen C. Guelzo (History, Princeton University)
Charles Ives’s Civil War
Denise Von Glahn (Musicology, Florida State University) and Mark Sciuchetti (Geography, Jacksonville State University)
Sounding Concord: Ives’s Sonata and the Intersection of War, Memory, and Place
Chelsey Hamm (Music Theory, Christopher Newport University)
Dissonance and Democracy in Charles Ives’s World War I Songs

Jan Swafford, James B. Sinclair (Ives editor), and David Thurmaier (Music Theory, University of Missouri-Kansas City), discussants

12:30 pm | Lunch Break

2:00 pm | Ford-Crawford Hall
Panel 4
Ives’s Second and Third Symphonies

David Thurmaier (Music Theory, University of Missouri-Kansas City)
Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, and Two Ives Second Symphony Premieres
Allen C. Guelzo
Harmonies of the Let-Out Souls: The Serene Vision of Charles Ives’s Third Symphony
Ivan Shulman (Independent scholar)
An Unanswered Question: A Personal Tale About Luemily Ryder and Charles Ives

Tim Barringer, Alan Lessoff, Denise Von Glahn, and Chelsey Hamm, discussants

4:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives and Hymnody

Gilbert Kalish, piano
Chamber Orchestra
Jeffery Meyer, conductor
Zachary Coates, baritone
Allan Armstrong, piano
with commentary by J. Peter Burkholder

Ives: The Camp-Meeting
Zachary Coates, baritone, and Allan Armstrong, piano
Ives: Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting
Chamber Orchestra — Jeffery Meyer, conductor
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 1
Gilbert Kalish, piano

Post-concert discussion with the performers

7:00 pm | Musical Arts Center Mezzanine
Pre-concert Talk

Allen C. Guelzo (History, Princeton University) and Denise Von Glahn (Musicology, Florida State University)
Ives, American Places, and the Civil War

8:00 pm | Musical Arts Center
Charles Ives’s America

Philharmonic Orchestra
Arthur Fagen, conductor
William Sharp, baritone
Steven Mayer, piano
visuals by Peter Bogdanoff
with commentary by J. Peter Burkholder,

Ives: The Unanswered Question
Philharmonic Orchestra — Arthur Fagen, conductor
Ives: The Circus Band
Ives: The Housatonic at Stockbridge
William Sharp, baritone, and Steven Mayer, piano
Ives: Three Places in New England
Ives: Symphony No. 2
Philharmonic Orchestra — Arthur Fagen, conductor

Post-concert discussion with the performers

SUNDAY, OCT. 6

10:30 am | First Presbyterian Church
Communion Sunday service with Ives’s Communion Service, Variations on “America”, and other Ives organ music, celebrating his thirteen-year career as a church organist and choirmaster

First Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir
Ryan Rogers, choirmaster
Christopher Young, organist

2:00-5:00 pm | Auer Hall
Recital and Panel 5
Ives, the Concord Sonata, and American Literature

Steven Mayer, piano

Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass. 1840-60
Steven Mayer, piano
with readings from Emerson, Thoreau, and Ives, read by William Sharp

Joseph Horowitz, Laura Dassow Walls (English, Notre Dame University), David Michael Hertz (Comparative Literature, Indiana University), Christoph Irmscher (English, Indiana University), Jonathan Elmer (English, Indiana University), Allen C. Guelzo, and Denise Von Glahn, discussants

Summary discussion with audience and all festival participants

MONDAY, OCT. 7

8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Models and Sources
Recital of Ives songs paired with songs that inspired them

IU Jacobs School of Music Voice and Piano Faculty and Student

TUESDAY, OCT. 8

8:00 pm | Auer Hall
Ives Sacred Choral Music

NOTUS
Dominick DiOrio, director
with commentary by J. Peter Burkholder