PERSPECTIVE — Boisterous, uncategorizable, and unapologetically American, the music of Charles Ives is as confounding and provocative as it is revolutionary — even now, in the year of his 150th birthday. Yet according to pianist and noted Ives interpreter Jeremy Denk, a closer look reveals “a restless search to discover more in America than we ever expected, or even hoped, to find.”
Denk will guide such a journey on Dec. 12 at the 92nd Street Y New York (92NY), where the MacArthur “genius award” recipient will present a curated program anchored by Ives’ monumental Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord). The performance celebrates the composer’s milestone anniversary while offering an eclectic portrait of American classical and popular music. It also coincides with the October release of Denk’s album IVES DENK on Nonesuch Records, featuring the two piano sonatas and four sonatas for violin and piano performed with Stefan Jackiw.
Ives, described by Alex Ross as “the craggy patriarch of American music,” looms large in the canon for his singular, groundbreaking approach. He was born in Danbury, Conn., in 1874, the son of the town’s director of marching bands, a pioneer of polytonality whose influence planted the seeds of Ives’ deep connection to all the sounds of Americana. Ives led a dual life as a successful insurance executive by day and an avant-garde composer by night.
Equipped with Western classical traditions from his studies at Yale, Ives nonetheless forged his own musical path, embracing polytonality, polyrhythm, and a bold mashup of “high” and “low” art. He relished found music and smashed together everything from hymns and marches and ragtime to classical references — often simultaneously and in opposing keys. His music brims with heaps of dissonance, humor, and exploration of the American identity. In 1947, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his hymn-infused Third Symphony.
Despite its significance, Ives’ music remains far from universally loved. Major composer anniversaries often spark widespread retrospectives, yet his sesquicentennial has seen limited recognition, aside from a weeklong festival at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and programs at Carnegie Hall and Juilliard.
Criticism of Ives stems only in part from his music: dense, modernist scores fraught with rampant dissonance, and a preference for open-ended ambiguity over resolution — traits at odds with the conservative, Eurocentric tastes of his time and that drew accusations of “amateurism.” Personal flaws also contribute, as some of Ives’ beliefs and writings reflect troubling undercurrents of sexism, homophobia, and unbridled nationalism.
Denk acknowledges Ives’ complexities but remains a passionate advocate for his music, having explored it deeply through decades of performance and writing. In his best-selling memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk vividly describes having written Ives off as “the crazy uncle of American music,” during his undergraduate studies; his perspective changed after collaborating on Ives’ String Trio, S. 86 with violinist Gregory Fulkerson, whose masterful understanding and authoritative recordings of the music revealed the composer’s depth. His appreciation bloomed further when taking courses with Ives scholar J. Peter Burkholder at Indiana University.
For Denk, Ives’ music transcends discord to a core of warmth and humanity. “You have to be willing to embrace the kind of massive, dissonant splat that he loves — gigantic chords like an organist throwing every stop.” Denk says Ives’ signature move is to “melt those unbelievable dissonances into the most tender, homespun melody.” Above all, he believes Ives was committed to musical truth, a pursuit that also defines Denk’s artistry.
The cornerstone of the 92NY program, the Concord Sonata, is a sprawling, 45-minute work and one of Ives’ most highly regarded pieces. Denk describes it as the composer’s “attempt to synthesize all his thinking — about music, art, and life — in a single vast statement.” The four programmatic movements are inspired by the writings of towering New England transcendentalists: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The title nods to the fact that they are buried in close proximity in the “Author’s Ridge” section of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Mass.
Central to the piece is Ives’ use of cumulative form, an unconventional technique where themes gradually emerge from fragments and improvisations, coalescing fully at the end “out of what seems like chaos,” Denk says — a reversal of traditional Western compositional progression. Ives mixes in a frenzy of American tunes, including parlor songs, circus marches, and church hymns.
The first movement, “Emerson,” opens with an overt reference to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, evoking one of Ives’ greatest musical heroes — in the left hand. Denk describes it as a collection of inspirations around a fundamental idea, reflecting the author’s sweeping, exploratory style.
The second movement, “Hawthorne,” draws inspiration from the author’s darkly funny, satirical story “The Celestial Railroad,” in which characters board an express train to heaven, believing they can bypass the trials of moral salvation. The movement includes a passage requiring a wooden board to depress a multitude of quiet notes far beyond a pianist’s reach.
The fleeting third movement, “The Alcotts” (meaning Louisa May and her father Bronson), is the emotional heart of the sonata, depicting the family gathered at their spinet, a small keyboard. In what Denk describes as a “male-dominated” sonata, it is “the most ravishing, heartfelt moment of the whole piece, with the women at the piano.” It begins with a tender quotation of Beethoven’s Fifth and culminates with the sonata’s first full statement of the theme — a magnificent phrase Ives called the “human faith melody.” Before this, Ives weaves permutations of the theme with echoes of the Fifth and Wagner’s “Wedding March” from Lohengrin.
Ives prescribed a concrete narrative for the final movement, which meanders through the woods before what Denk calls “an absurdly moving” ending, with a surprise: a solo flute dreamily musing on the human faith melody, performed at 92NY by Claire Chase. True to Ives’ penchant for unanswered questions, the sonata evaporates into ambiguity.
To complement the Concord Sonata, Denk features iconic American works that blend classical and popular styles. The program, which the pianist performed in November at Yale, Ives’ alma mater, is framed by two late Beethoven sonatas, Nos. 27 and 31; like the Concord, these evoke a philosophical nature and “connect in this ridiculous, unmanageable quilt,” Denk says. Also featured is William Bolcom’s The Poltergeist Rag, Scott Joplin’s Bethana, Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s The Banjo, and Ethan Iverson’s arrangement of Jule Styne’s “Just in Time,“ inspired by Nina Simone. These works highlight ragtime’s deep influence on Ives’ music and quintessentially American sounds.
Denk’s program and album emerge at a profound moment in the evolution of American identity and expression. For him, Ives’ work remains a joyful voice for pluralism, “hoping always that America is aspiring upwards and looking outwards.” He points to what Ives calls the “Theme of Tolerance” in the Concord Sonata’s first movement. “Most people don’t like to tolerate tone clusters,” Denk says, laughing. “All these notes are happening at once. We have to just hear them.”
