CHARLES IVES: FATTH HERO Gerald J. Gregg
Romans 12;1-8 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

June 22, 1980 Columbus, Ohio

Charles Edward Ives is not an obvious choice for this intermittent series on
“Faith Heroes’, men and women who contributed to our faith and whose lives inspire. You
have to know a good bit about Ives in order to appreciate his real worth, That situation
was true throughout his life: few people recognized the importance of the person and the
faith of Charles Ives. JI want to begin by suggesting that he embodied the description of
a Christian given by the Apostle Paul in today's New Testament lesson, in the twelfth
chapter of Romans:
"Tt appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be trans-
formed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of
God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of
himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judg-~
ment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.
For as in one body we have many members, and ali the members do not have
the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and in-
dividually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to
the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our
faith: if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who
exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives
aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness."

Not conformed to this world, but transforming; not thinking of himself more highly
than he ought to think, in fact extremely modest and retiring; having gifts that differ
and fulfilling them - those are major themes in the life of Charles Ives.

He was born in 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, the son of the town bandmaster. He
composed music mostly from 1895 to 1915, when a disabling illness made further composing
impossible. Yet he lived to be eighty years old, until 1954. During that long lifetime,
his music was so ignored that Ives never heard a full performance of any of his major
works. In 194? he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his Third Symphony which was com-
posed in 1904 - the prize was forty-three years late, to give an idea how long Ives had
to endure apparent failure.

In the early part of this century his music was completely unknown, and yet Ives
was famous worldwide. Very early he realized his peculiar style of music would never
support a family, so he turned to selling insurance. He was known as the first to
approach insurance in order to help common people rather than primarily te guard the
wealthy investors' assets. "Estate Planning" was his invention, the process of helping
people plan for and meet their financial needs. Ives pioneered in training insurance
agents to work with plain people, to develop and tailor financial security rather than
merely hard-selling another policy. So well was his emphasis received that his agency,
Ives and Myrick, became the largest life insurance brokerage in America, the most famous
in the world.

During all the years of his insurance work, Ives was composing in his spare time,
although very few people knew anything about that side of his life, not even most of
those working closely with him in the insurance firm. One associate, who only later
found out about Ives' musical radicalism, said of him that Ives was "no Bohemian, not
avant-garde; in every way except one, he was the stereotype of a gentle, genial,
generous upper-middle-class American".

-~72.

Music interest had begun very early for young Charles Ives. His father, the
bandmaster, was quite a musical innovator with very strong ideas. He trained the family
to sing hymns in one key while he played the accompaniment in another, usually a halftone
different - "to stretch their ears to hear new sounds," he used to say, In many ways
young Charlie learned the “rules'' of harmony by learning what it was like to break the
rules, an important foundation for his later creativity.

Father George devised a system of twenty-four violin strings and another of water
glasses filled to different levels - ali so he could play quarter tones and not be bound
to the halftone standard, On one occasion he arranged for two bands te march aroun’ the
town park in opposite directions, playing different tunes in different tempos and differen
keys in order to see the effect when they came together at the far side of the park. When
son Charles later recreated that effect in a major orchestral work, the conductor had to
direct two beats simultaneously. Four bars with the left hand for half the orchestra
equalled three bars with the right hand for the other half. One critic wrote that it was
absolutely required that the conductor be an evangelical Christian: he couldn't let his
right hand know what his left hand was doing. Now, balanced against this information,
you need to know that the woman Ives married was named Harmony.

Throughout his life, Ives insisted that music must not just be pretty and sentimental
He scorned the idea of what he called “men in skirts", composing or playing sugary tunes
for sweet old ladies. During his teen years his interest was divided sharply between
music and baseball ~- he was a natural athlete. A sweet old lady was once admiring one of
his musical compositions, gushing over the young musical prodigy, and she asked, "What
do you play, young man?" To which Charlie brusquely retorted, "Shortstop!" The convictior
that his music must be full-blooded, not pale and anemic, and had to stand for something
important - that was a lifelong concern.

Ives was deeply immersed in the church and in church music. At age fourteen he was
the youngest regular church organist in the state. In his college and young adult years,
he served as organist successively for Baptists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and
finally, Presbyterians - definitely an upward progression. His own faith was based on
John Caivin and he regularly attended Congregational and Presbyterian churches all his life

But the summer camp meetings, the revivals which were a strong feature of late
nineteenth century rural America, made a strong impression and remained with him. In his
memos, Ives wrote: "I remember, when I was a boy - at the outdoor Camp Meeting services
in Redding, all the farmers, their families and field hands, for miles around, would come
afoot or in their farm wagons. I remember how the great waves of sound used toa come
through the trees - when things like Beulah Land...Nearer My God To Thee...In the Sweet
Bye and Bye and the like were sung by thousands of ‘let out’ souls." Later, Ives de-
scribed in theological terms the inspiration he found in Christian hymns. Writing about
his own boyhood he said; "And as the hymn voices die away, there lies at the (young Ives‘)
feet - not the world, but the figure of the Saviour - he sees an unfathomable courage -
an immortality for the lowest - the vastness in humility, the kindness of the human heart,
man's noblest strength - and he knows that God is nothing - nothing - but love." In his
own composing Ives constantly incorporated those old hymn tunes that were so important
to his life,

Ives always said he simply wrote the music he heard - the sounds of America and
his hopes for America, People found his harmonies very strange and considered him
eccentric, but he was following the Apostle Paul's advice to fulfill his own differing
gifts. Far from being conformed to the world, Ives refused to compromise his integrity
as a composer in order to achieve popular acceptance. There is tragedy in the lack of

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recognition during his life, tragedy that he was forced to compose in a vacuum with no
responsive audience at all, but he kept a sense of humor about it. Each time he completed
a musical composition, a professional copyist had to be hired to put it into form for
printing. But copyists often changed notes here and there to make harmonies work better,
thinking Ives had made a mistake. So, in the margin of one of his manuscripts Ives wrote
to the copyist: "Mr. Price: Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes

are right!"

How does one evaluate the genius of Charles Ives? Aaron Copeland compares Ives to
the giants of American thought in mid-nineteenth century - Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau - and
Copeland says that, not until more than a half-century later, "not until Charles Ives can
we point to a comparable figure in the world of symphonic literature in America." Other
authorities simply state flatly that Ives is America's greatest composer.

That is a musical judgment, of course. But I consider Ives one of the heroes of our
faith for two other reasons. One is related to the quetation he especially loved from
Thoreau: "The example of one sincere life...has benefitted society more than ali the
projects devised for its salvation." Ives lived by that creed. We have seen his integrity
in music. We saw how his example turned the insurance business upside down as he worked to
make insurnanc2 serve common human needs. Ives believed that no one should have exorbitant
wealth and so he lived very simply, seeing that the bulk of his income was given away. He
wrote, "Does a person have a moral right to all the property he cam acquire legally and
honestly?" The example of his Life is extremely strong. He did what he believed was right
in music and in business even though it cost him dearly in terms of fame and wealth.

My second reason for preaching on Ives is that he was a national prophet, vitally
concerned about the relation between America and God. Ives saw America as potentially a
new Israel, God's new land. His music constantly reminds us that this nation is called by
God to serve him faithfully. Picking up strains from the past, Ives speaks of a present
faith and a future hope for our “one nation under God". He was already a vet@ran composer
when at age eighteen Ives wrote Variations on America for organ. Betty has played the
first three variations. Now listen to the fourth. It is a polonaise in a minor mode. I
hear Ives speaking about America and telling us that there is a lot to be done. The music
was written nearly ninety years ago, but its message is very up-to-date, Not everything
is right; there are strains of discord and strife. But he pictures our nation on the move
and there are promising hints at the end,

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Ives also had a third career: he was a well published essayist. His purpose was to
encourage this nation to operate its life on the principles of Ralph Waldo Emerson. During
the First World War and after, Ives repeatedly wrote to urge what he called "the United
States of the World", a “People's World Union under whose constitution each country will
be free to live its own life, no country shall try by force to capture another country.”

To bring about such a United States of the World he saw to be America's divine respon-
sibility. Ives wrote five organ variations on the tune of America. When he was well into
his seventies, organist Ives wrote to organist E. Power Biggs, "I enjoyed playing the

fast pedal part in the last of the Variations on America almost as much as playing
baseball." An indomitable character to the end!

I want to let Ives have the last word in this sermon, to have you listen to his
fifth variation. I hear him picturing vividly the sound of a nation whose majesty and
power come from faithful service. Ives is deseribing the fulfillment of America's
dastiny under God.

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