Charles Ives Quotes

Quotes about:

• Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

  Charles Ives

  Men, Dissonance

  "Charles Ives' Rambunctious 'Fourth Of July'". "Weekend Edition Sunday", www.npr.org. July 3, 2008.

  30 Copy quote

• Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently, when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.

  Charles Ives

  Beautiful, Confused, Lying

  Charles Ives (2004). “Essays Before a Sonata”, p.125, 1st World Publishing

  44 Copy quote

• The future of music may not lie entirely in music itself, but rather in the way it encourages and extends, rather than limits the aspirations and ideals of the people, in the way it makes itself a part with the finer things that humanity does and dreams of.

  Charles Ives

  Dream, Lying, People

  27 Copy quote

• Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.

  Charles Ives

  Awards, Mediocrity, Badges

  5 Copy quote

• Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.

  Charles Ives

  Nice, Trying, Want

  "The Rest is Noise festival: what's your favourite piece of 20th-century music?" by Imogen Tilden, www.theguardian.com. November 29, 2013.

  27 Copy quote

• The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.

  Charles Ives

  Fabric, Existence, Whole

  Charles Ives (2004). “129 Songs”, p.30, A-R Editions, Inc.

  51 Copy quote

• I don't write music for sissy ears.

  Charles Ives

  Music, Writing, Ears

  25 Copy quote

• Everyone should have the opportunity of not being over-influenced.

  Charles Ives

  Opportunity, Should Have, Should

  Charles Ives, Stephen Drury (2012). “Piano sonata no. 2: "Concord" : with the Essays before a sonata”, p.42, Courier Corporation

  14 Copy quote

• Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?

  Charles Ives

  Music, Lying, Confused

  Charles Ives (2004). “129 Songs”, p.72, A-R Editions, Inc.

  19 Copy quote

• You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

  Charles Ives

  Art, Reality, Vitality

  Charles Ives (2004). “129 Songs”, p.30, A-R Editions, Inc.

  17 Copy quote

• A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?

  Charles Ives

  Music, Song, Rights

  19 Copy quote

• My God! What has sound got to do with music?

  Charles Ives

  Sound

  Charles Ives (2004). “129 Songs”, p.39, A-R Editions, Inc.

  13 Copy quote

• If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.

  Charles Ives

  Horse, Poetry, Heaven

  23 Copy quote

• Every great inspiration is but an experiment.

  Charles Ives

  Music, Inspiration, Experiments

  15 Copy quote

• In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense

  Charles Ives

  Children, School, Men

  Charles Ives (2004). “Essays Before a Sonata”, p.88, 1st World Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• It is more important to keep the horse going hard than to always play the exact notes.

  Charles Ives

  Horse, Learning, Play

  16 Copy quote

• Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration.

  Charles Ives

  Inspiration, Experiments, Knows

  13 Copy quote

• The word 'beauty' is as easy to use as the word 'degenerate.' Both come in handy when one does or does not agree with you

  Charles Ives

  Doe, Use, Degenerates

  Charles Ives (2004). “Essays Before a Sonata”, p.96, 1st World Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity

  Charles Ives

  Long, Confusion, Unity

  Charles Ives, Stephen Drury (2012). “Piano sonata no. 2: "Concord" : with the Essays before a sonata”, p.20, Courier Corporation

  21 Copy quote

• There can be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life.

  Charles Ives

  Art, Live Life, Thinking

  Charles Ives (2004). “129 Songs”, p.30, A-R Editions, Inc.

  13 Copy quote

• If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?

  Charles Ives

  Love, Children, Nice

  15 Copy quote

• But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

  Charles Ives

  Men, May, Language

  Charles Ives, Stephen Drury (2012). “Piano sonata no. 2: "Concord" : with the Essays before a sonata”, p.34, Courier Corporation

  22 Copy quote

• The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized

  Charles Ives

  Believe, Sound, Possibility

  34 Copy quote

• Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

  Charles Ives

  Perfect, Vagueness, Indication

  Charles Ives (2004). “Essays Before a Sonata”, p.35, 1st World Publishing

  28 Copy quote

• If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven'

  Charles Ives

  Horse, Father, Men

  11 Copy quote

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