Ives: Orchestral Works

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Explore the complete catalog of Orchestral compositions by Ives. This curated list includes composition years, historical Wikipedia context, and interactive audio to add specific tracks directly to your listening queue.

Title Year Actions
A Symphony: New England Holidays

A Symphony: New England Holidays, also known as A New England Holiday Symphony or simply a Holiday Symphony, is a composition for orchestra written by Charles Ives. It took Ives from 1897 to 1913 to complete all four movements. The four movements in order are: The movements coincide with each season; winter, spring, summer, and fall, respectively. While together these pieces are called a symphony, they may be played individually and thought of as separate works. As Ives dictates in his Memos: There is no special musical connection among these four movements ... which leads me to observe that quite a number of larger forms (symphonies, sonatas, suites, etc.) may not always necessarily form, or were originally intended to form, such a complete organic whole that the breath of unity is smothered all out if one or two movements are played separately sometimes. Holiday Symphony exemplifies Ives's varied, unique use of dissonance that gave his works a more dynamic range of emotion. "Each [movement] expresses its particular scene and feeling ... [using] the mingling of stylistic voices, the meta-style, that had become second nature to Ives. They all contain the shared pattern of splicing introverted slow music and extroverted fast music."

Central Park in the Dark

Central Park in the Dark is a musical composition by Charles Ives for chamber orchestra. It was composed in 1906 and has been paired with The Unanswered Question as part of "Two Contemplations" and with Hallowe'en and The Pond in "Three Outdoor Scenes".

Charlie Rutlage, for orchestra and optional voice
Country Band March, for theater orchestra

Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". Ives was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.

Emerson Overture, for piano and orchestra

Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". Ives was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.

Fantasia on 'Jerusalem the Golden', for band

The compositions of American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) are mostly modern classical music. Ives was prolific, revised works multiple times, and left ambiguous fragments with no title or notes. A chronology of works is especially difficult because of missing and sometimes misleading dates; as Elliott Carter put it in 1939: "[Ives] has rewritten his works so many times, adding dissonances and polyrhythms, that it is impossible to tell just at what date the works assumed the surprising form we know now." This list follows James B. Sinclair's A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. It does not include fragments or projected works.

March 'Intercollegiate' with 'Annie Lisle', for band

The compositions of American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) are mostly modern classical music. Ives was prolific, revised works multiple times, and left ambiguous fragments with no title or notes. A chronology of works is especially difficult because of missing and sometimes misleading dates; as Elliott Carter put it in 1939: "[Ives] has rewritten his works so many times, adding dissonances and polyrhythms, that it is impossible to tell just at what date the works assumed the surprising form we know now." This list follows James B. Sinclair's A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. It does not include fragments or projected works.

March in F and C with 'Omega Lambda Chi', for band

The compositions of American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) are mostly modern classical music. Ives was prolific, revised works multiple times, and left ambiguous fragments with no title or notes. A chronology of works is especially difficult because of missing and sometimes misleading dates; as Elliott Carter put it in 1939: "[Ives] has rewritten his works so many times, adding dissonances and polyrhythms, that it is impossible to tell just at what date the works assumed the surprising form we know now." This list follows James B. Sinclair's A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. It does not include fragments or projected works.

March no. 2 with 'Son of a Gambolier', for band

The compositions of American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) are mostly modern classical music. Ives was prolific, revised works multiple times, and left ambiguous fragments with no title or notes. A chronology of works is especially difficult because of missing and sometimes misleading dates; as Elliott Carter put it in 1939: "[Ives] has rewritten his works so many times, adding dissonances and polyrhythms, that it is impossible to tell just at what date the works assumed the surprising form we know now." This list follows James B. Sinclair's A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. It does not include fragments or projected works.

March: The Circus Band, for orchestra and optional chorus

This list is of songs that have been interpolated by other songs. Songs that are cover versions, parodies, or use samples of other songs are not "interpolations". The list is organized under the name of the artist whose song is interpolated followed by the title of the song, and then the interpolating artist and their song.

Old Home Days, 5 suites for band

Come Taste the Band is the tenth studio album by English rock band Deep Purple, released on 7 November 1975. It was co-produced and engineered by the band and longtime associate Martin Birch. Musically, the record shows stronger funk influences than their previous albums. It was the last studio record Deep Purple made prior to their initial disbandment in 1976, and thus the only studio album by the band's Mark IV line-up, with Tommy Bolin on guitar, and the last of three albums to feature David Coverdale on lead vocals and Glenn Hughes on bass guitar/vocals. It is also the band's only studio album to feature neither vocalist Ian Gillan nor guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, with every other album featuring at least one of the two. Come Taste the Band was commercially less successful than the previous Deep Purple albums, and it was among the lowest in the American market compared to the band's 1970s albums. In the UK, the album peaked at number 19, and it reached #43 in the US. However, it received favorable reviews, and the band's stylistic renewal was praised. The album's reputation has been mixed. Members of Mark IV have questioned the extent to which that line-up can be called Deep Purple.

Orchestral Set no. 1: 3 Places in New England

Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". Ives was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.

Orchestral Set no. 2

Orchestral Set No. 2 is the title of a three-movement work by the American composer Charles Ives. A typical performance lasts around seventeen minutes. Composed between 1915 and 1919, it represents musical reminiscences of the composer. Like its predecessor, the First Orchestral Set, Three Places in New England, it was not conceived as a single entity but rather assembled from separate compositions.

Orchestral Set no. 3

Charles Edward Ives (; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist composer, actuary and businessman. Ives was among the earliest renowned American composers to achieve recognition on a global scale. His music was largely ignored during his early career, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Later in life, the quality of his music was publicly recognized through the efforts of contemporaries like Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". Ives was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century. Hence, he is often regarded as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Sources of Ives's tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.

Overture and March: '1776', for theater orchestra

The Three Places in New England (Orchestral Set No. 1) is a composition for orchestra in three movements by American composer Charles Ives. It was written mainly between 1911 and 1914, but with sketches dating as far back as 1903 and last revisions made in 1929. The work is celebrated for its use of musical quotation and paraphrasing. The movements (in Ives's preferred slow-fast-slow sequence, longest first and shortest last) are: Lasting just under twenty minutes, Three Places in New England has become one of Ives's most performed compositions. It exhibits signature traits of his style: layered textures with multiple, sometimes simultaneous melodies, many of which are recognizable hymn or marching tunes; masses of sound, including tone clusters; and sudden, sharp textural contrasts. Each "place" is in New England. Each is intended to make the listener experience a unique atmosphere, as if there. To this end, the paraphrasing of American folk tunes is an important device, providing tangible reference points and making the music accessible despite its avant-garde chromaticism. Three Places in New England aims to paint a picture of American ideals, lifestyle and patriotism at the turn of the 20th century.

Overture in G minor

The compositions of American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) are mostly modern classical music. Ives was prolific, revised works multiple times, and left ambiguous fragments with no title or notes. A chronology of works is especially difficult because of missing and sometimes misleading dates; as Elliott Carter put it in 1939: "[Ives] has rewritten his works so many times, adding dissonances and polyrhythms, that it is impossible to tell just at what date the works assumed the surprising form we know now." This list follows James B. Sinclair's A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives. It does not include fragments or projected works.

Postlude in F major

Horatio William Parker (September 15, 1863 – December 18, 1919) was an American composer, organist and teacher. He was a central figure in musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in the late 19th century, and is best remembered as the undergraduate teacher of Charles Ives while the composer attended Yale University.

Robert Browning Overture

The Grammy Award for Best Classical Album was awarded from 1962 to 2011. The award had several minor name changes: From 1962 to 1963, 1965 to 1972 and 1974 to 1976 the award was known as Album of the Year – Classical In 1964 and 1977 it was awarded as Classical Album of the Year In 1973 and from 1978 onward it was awarded as Best Classical Album The award was discontinued in 2012 in a major overhaul of Grammy categories. From then on, recordings in this category fall under the Album of the Year category. Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were presented, for works released in the previous year.

Runaway Horse on Main Street, take-off for band

Exile on Main St. is the tenth studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 12 May 1972, by Rolling Stones Records. The 10th released in the UK and 12th in the US, it is viewed as a culmination of a string of the band's most critically successful albums, following Beggars Banquet (1968), Let It Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers (1971). Exile on Main St. is known for its wide stylistic range and the strong influence of Delta blues, gospel music, and country rock. The album was originally met with mixed reviews before receiving strong reassessments by the end of the 1970s. It has since been recognized as a pivotal rock album, viewed by many critics as the Rolling Stones' best work and as one of the greatest albums of all time. The album was a commercial success, topping the charts in six countries, including Netherlands, Norway, Canada, Sweden, the US and UK. Recording began in 1969 at Olympic Studios in London during sessions for Sticky Fingers, with the main sessions beginning in mid-1971 at Nellcôte, a rented villa in the South of France, after the band members became tax exiles. Due to the lack of a professional studio nearby, they worked with a mobile recording studio and recorded in-house. The loose and unorganised Nellcôte sessions went on for hours into the night, with personnel varying greatly from day to day. Recording was completed with overdub sessions at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles and included additional musicians such as the pianist Nicky Hopkins, the saxophonist Bobby Keys, the drummer and producer Jimmy Miller, and the horn player Jim Price. The results produced enough songs for the Stones' first double album. The band continued a back-to-basics direction heard in Sticky Fingers, yet Exile exhibited a wider range of influences in blues, rock and roll, swing, country and gospel, while the lyrics explored themes related to hedonism, sexuality, and nostalgia. It included the singles "Happy", which featured lead vocals from Keith Richards, the country ballad "Sweet Virginia", and the worldwide top-ten hit "Tumbling Dice". The album's artwork, a collage of various images, reflected the Rolling Stones' prideful rebellion. After its release, the Stones embarked on an American tour, gaining infamy for riotous audiences and performances. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the album number 7 on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2003 and 2012, with it dropping to number 14 in the 2020 edition, consistently as the highest-ranked Rolling Stones album on the list. In 2012, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the band's fourth album to be inducted. A remastered and expanded version of the album was released in 2010 featuring a bonus disc with 10 new tracks. Unusual for a re-release, it also charted highly at the time of its release, reaching number one in the UK and number two in the US.

Symphony no. 1 in D minor

Charles Ives's Symphony No. 1 in D minor, written between 1898 and 1902, is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. There is also an optional part for a third flute. There are four movements: A typical performance lasts 35–37 minutes.

Symphony no. 2

The Second Symphony was written by Charles Ives between 1897 and 1902. It consists of five movements and lasts approximately 40 minutes.

Symphony no. 3: The Camp Meeting

The Symphony No. 3, S. 3 (K. 1A3), The Camp Meeting by Charles Ives (1874–1954) was written between 1908 and 1910. In 1947, the symphony was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Ives is reported to have given half the money to Lou Harrison, who conducted the premiere.

Symphony no. 4

Charles Ives's Symphony No. 4, S. 4 (K. 1A4) was written between 1910 and the mid-1920s (the second movement "Comedy" was the last to be composed, most likely in 1924). The symphony is notable for its multilayered complexity—typically requiring two conductors in performance—and for its large and varied orchestration. Combining elements and techniques of Ives's previous compositional work, this has been called "one of his most definitive works"; Ives' biographer, Jan Swafford, has called it "Ives's climactic masterpiece".

The General Slocum

PS General Slocum was an American sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions. On June 15, 1904, General Slocum caught fire and sank in the East River of New York City. At the time of the disaster, she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany, Manhattan) to a church picnic. An estimated 1,021 out of the 1,342 people on board died. The General Slocum disaster was the worst maritime disaster of the 20th century until the sinking of the RMS Titanic surpassed it eight years later in 1912. It remains the worst maritime disaster in New York City history, and the second-worst on U.S. waterways, after the explosion and sinking of the steamboat Sultana, and until the September 11 attacks in 2001 was the deadliest manmade disaster of any sort in the New York area. The events surrounding the General Slocum fire have been explored in a number of books, plays, and movies.

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Firemen's Parade on Main Street

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder or Firemen's Parade on Main Street, normally shortened as The Gong on the Hook and Ladder and also initially entitled Allegro moderato, is a short composition by American composer Charles Ives.

The Pond

Bingley St. Ives, or St. Ives Estate is a 550-acre (2.2 km2) country park and former estate between Bingley and Harden in West Yorkshire, England now owned by Bradford Council. The park has Grade II listing in the English Heritage National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Interest. The park has been given Accredited Country Park status by Natural England. As well as being a public country park the property is also used by Bingley St Ives Golf Club, the Sports Turf Research Institute, Bradford Independent Care Group, Bingley Angling Club, and Aire Valley Archers. Some 300,000 people per year visit the country park.

The Unanswered Question, for trumpet, winds, and string orchestra

The Unanswered Question is a musical work by American composer Charles Ives. Originally paired with Central Park in the Dark as Two Contemplations in 1908, The Unanswered Question was revised by Ives in 1930–1935. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, and was not performed until 1946. Against a background of slow, quiet strings representing "The Silence of the Druids", a solo trumpet poses "The Perennial Question of Existence", to which a woodwind quartet of "Fighting Answerers" tries vainly to provide an answer, growing more frustrated and dissonant until they give up. The three groups of instruments perform in independent tempos and are located separately, with the strings offstage.

Universe Symphony, for large orchestra divided in to smaller ensembles and percussion

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, songwriter, guitarist, conductor, actor, satirist, filmmaker, and activist. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His discography is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation, sonic experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. As a mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while simultaneously playing drums in rhythm-and-blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined satirical but seemingly conventional rock-and-roll songs with extended sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach throughout his career. Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas and characters reappearing throughout his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of recreational drug use, but supported decriminalization and regulation. Zappa was a highly productive and prolific musician with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth. He had greater commercial success outside the U.S., particularly in Europe. Though he worked as an independent artist, Zappa mostly relied on distribution agreements he had negotiated with the major record labels. He remains a major influence on musicians. His many honors include his posthumous 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Yale-Princeton Football Game

The Princeton–Yale football rivalry is an American college football rivalry between the Princeton Tigers of Princeton University and the Yale Bulldogs of Yale University. The football rivalry is among the oldest in American sports.