Ragtime took the United States by storm in the early twentieth century, and Charles Ives incorporated ragtime elements into numerous works. Nevertheless, a closer examination of musical and biographical evidence reveals the composer’s ambivalent and even contradictory attitude towards the genre. On the one hand, Ives demonstrates an enthusiasm for ragtime through his bold embrace of a genre associated with African Americans in a racially divided era. On the other hand, this positive engagement is at odds with the tone of his writings, which often dismissed ragtime as inferior to art music and Protestant hymns. The disparity can be explained by considering the popularity of ragtime during Ives’s youth, how he reworked his early ragtime-based pieces later in life, and the significant time lapse that often occurred between composing a piece and writing about it. Four Ragtime Dances also reflects this ambivalence, and the work can be interpreted either as a statement of progressive inclusivity or of racial inequality. This diversity of hearings is possible because Four Ragtime Dances engages with many types of musical friction—sacred and secular, classical and popular, and racial—and in this regard the work reflects the inherent “messy quality” of Ives’s music in general.

Works: Ives: Four Ragtime Dances (24-46), Central Park in the Dark (46-47).

Sources: George Minor: Bringing in the Sheaves (26, 31); Edward Rimbault: Happy Day (26); Lewis Hartsough: I Hear Thy Welcome Voice (26, 31); Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson: Hello! Ma Baby (46-47).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Matthew G. Leone, Daniel Rogers, David G. Rugger

Beneath the radical heterogeneity of Ives’s style runs a strong undercurrent of moral ambivalence which reinforces the regressive hierarchies—especially those of gender, race, and class—inherent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. By placing certain tunes, such as Protestant hymns, at the top of this hierarchy, Ives musically articulates his nostalgia for his idealized America, where traits such as white-ness, rural-ness, and masculinity dominate social order. In multi-movement works especially, Ives performs his ambivalence using three strategies. First, “Interplay” pits representations of heterogeneity against those of homogenizing idealism within a programmatic context. Second, “Excess” occurs in up-tempo second movements framed by soft, static music that contains and negates the hectic energy and suggests a transcendental truth. Finally, “Hierarchy” resolves the previous movements by privileging a single, often ideologically weighted, musical gesture, affording hegemonic status to white, rural Protestant culture. The recognition of this hierarchical structure leads to a more thorough interpretation of Ives’s music, its cultural context, and the composer’s ideals.

Works: Ives: String Quartet No. 2 (178-79, 187-91), Orchestral Set No. 1: Three Places in New England (182), Majority (185-87), Orchestral Set No. 2 (189-92), Song of Myself (191), Symphony No. 4 (192-94), Piano Sonata No. 2: Concord, Mass., 1840-60 (194-98).

Sources: David T. Shaw: Columbia, Gem of the Ocean (178); George Frederick Root: Battle Cry of Freedom (182); Henry Clay Work: Marching Through Georgia (182); Stephen Foster: Old Black Joe (182); Lowell Mason: Watchman, Tell Us of the Night (188); Joseph P. Webster: In the Sweet Bye and Bye (191-92); Lowell Mason: Bethany (194).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Matthew G. Leone, Daniel Rogers, David G. Rugger