Charles Ives Remembered

Charles Ives was an extraordinary personality as well as a brilliant composer and insurance genius. The publication of this unique work, based on Ives's manuscripts and papers from the Charles Ives Collection in the Yale Music Library and on extensive interviews with people from all aspects of his multifaceted life, coincides with the centenary of Ives's birth. Integrating all this material into a highly readable narrative, Vivian Perlis has woven a vivid portrait of a fascinating man. An unconventional man, Ives did not choose ordinary friends and associates, as illustrated by the people interviewed for this book. They range from elderly Danbury residents, who remember Ives as a boy, to insurance executives, who describe his innovations in the life insurance business. Members of the Ives family reminisce about "Uncle Charlie's" vigorous and athletic youth, and his classmates from Yale ('98) recall the early musical accomplishments of his college years. A complete picture of Ives the composer is provided by numerous composers and performers who worked with Ives during his lifetime. The anecdotes recounted by Ives's friends and neighbors--and even his barber--bring Charles Ives to life for the reader. In addition to fifty-eight edited interviews, each prefaced with an introduction by Mrs. Perlis, the book includes over eighty illustrations, many of them reproduced here for the first time--unique photographs of Ives and his family and associates, original music manuscripts, rare programs of per-formances of Ives's works, and handwritten letters both to and from Ives. These combine to form an in-depth picture of one of the most original and creative minds of the twentieth century [Publisher description]

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.