Mad Music: Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.56 (770 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1611683998 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 324 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"Eminently insightful and engagingly written. The writing is exceptionally clear and enjoyable to read--the absence of musical jargon means that any reader can understand and enjoy every chapter. The content and style of this exhaustively researched biography combine to provide a compelling narrative of a unique figure." -- Choice"Mad Music is the provocative, but historically and musicologically correct title for Stephen Budiansky's biography of Charles Ives Budiansky has made significant new discoveries about the composer, finding previously unknown correspondence revealing the physical and mental impact of Ives' 1918 diagnosis with diabetes" -- San Francisco Classical Voice"A superbly written narrative of a life and a calli
A New Biography of Charles Ives Robin Friedman "Mad Music, Charles Ives, the Nostalgic Rebel" by Stephen Budiansky is a highly engaging, absorbing, and thoughtful biography of the great American composer Charles Ives (1874 -- 1954) and a story of the lost America of his era. Although Ives' music remained obscure during much of his life, the composer has not lacked biographers, including, for example, recent studies by Jan Swafford Charles Ives: A Life with Music and Gayle Magee Charles Ives Reconsidered (Music in American Life). Unlike these and other Ives biographers,. Judd Parkin said A Composer to be Cherished. Outstanding in every way. Accessible to the non-musician, while still be insightful enough to satisfy serious Ives students and scholars. Easily the best balanced of the Ives biographies I've read. A generous portrayal of a generous man who dragged music into the modern era. The best book of its kind I've read in years.. Five Stars Karen de la Cuesta Bought as a gift and is a great read.
Ives was also a famously wealthy crank who made millions in the insurance business and tried hard to establish a reputation as a crusty New Englander. While many of his best works received little attention in his lifetime, Ives is now appreciated as perhaps the most important American composer of the twentieth century and father of the diverse lines of Aaron Copland and John Cage. Deeply researched and elegantly written, this accessible biography tells a uniquely American story of a hidden genius, disparaged as a dilettante, who would shape the history of music in a profound way.Making use of newly published letters—and previously undiscovered archival sources bearing on the longstanding mystery of Ives’s health and creative decline—this absorbing volume provides a definitive look at the life and times of a true American original.. Though Ives steadfastly remained an outsider in many ways, his life and times inform us of subjects beyond music, including the mystic movement, progressive anticapitalism, and the initial hesitancy of turn-of-the-century-America modernist intellectuals. To Stephen Budiansky, Ives’s life story is a personification of America emerging as a world power: confid