why certain notes have been written as they have (Ives on tuning)

Thus here the music naturally grows, or works naturally, to a wider
use of the twelve tones we have on the piano, and from (ever in an
aural kind of way) building chordal combinations which suggest or
imply (and of course to the aural imagination only, when plated on a
piano) an aural progression which physically is not in the piano
strings, [but] may be implied by the mind [and] ear as a thing [of]
musical sense. A part of or different parts of a movement may be based
entirely on the major or minor tonal scales as we know [them] in our
usual tonality system--then just as naturally, as soon as the ear has
had some acquisition and use, this and other tonal groups may be used
together in other passages, and find their natural part in the general
expression--then the other tonal groups may be used only--the ear,
with practice in listening and hearing, making reasonable and natural
chordal and melodic ways of expressing what is underneath the music.

As to the matter of implied changes in the tone of a note (usually
only one or two in a chord say of from six to eight notes) which when
played on a piano does not change, but which the player can think of
aurally as going higher or lower, as the case may be (see typewritten
chart of measured or tonal-difference beats, etc.)--in many cases (as
in the example above, p. 1){15} the accidental mark (call [it] key
index--though really not an accidental, [but] a sign for a different
ratio of overtonal vibrations) is made to suggest and conform to the
above theory--in other places so as not to bring to mind a tonality
which does not exist, and so not [to] feel or think about not having a
key. This is so it won't mislead the eye first, then as a result also
the ear and the mind et al.

Of course all this leads back to whether a man's ear, mind, etc. is
naturally willing or not naturally willing--rather whether he feels
that the system as we know it, that of tonality, is a field too
closely fenced in to be all it might be (that is, not entirely
natural)--whether the laws we all learned, to the point almost of
saturation, from Jadassohn, Goodrich, Richter & Co. didn't gradually
cave in and seem to grow into nice apron-strings--as a kind of feeling
that the field is getting smaller and smaller and with more and more
fences. As a specimen of just one fence, the picket--of the leading
tone, so called--instead of a leading tone, often more of a
withdrawing tone--its importance in the treatises was not (though
called so) because it was a natural process of tonal science, but
because it was easy for the ear to be led thusly. How thoroughly we
learned the nice rules and obeyed them (but sometimes didn't and
played hooky) or was it submitted to them, until one day, when a man
becomes of age, the ear begins to sit up and think some for
itself--and somehow that imperfect triad seems to grow less imperfect,
and those two leading tones (or rather being led by tonic supremacy)
get tiered of that, some of that, semitone groove back home, etc.--and
the melodic tendency scolds, for the smoothness and correctness of the
whole resolution is endangered. But the ear begins to look for more
trails up the mountain. Thus it's now more than a resolution that's
endangered--all music is endangered!--Rollo told me so.

So two notes standing alone a whole tone apart seem (to the nice
classroom) to be a nice sign that they are a part of the dominant
seventh, and must act obediently--but the ear sometimes doesn't feel
exactly that way--so we must be fair and change that sign. Suppose two
curves, an up and down, start on Eb and Db, and are held down hard
through the arpeggios and back, and we don't land in Ab major--that
sign isn't fair, Rollo, it points us the wrong way--so the sign-maker
makes it C# and Eb, and the music via the ear takes its own way up the
mountain better, and feels better about [it]. For instance, just as an
illustration or instance [of] wrong signs made nearer right, or at
least away from a misleading tendency-- see _Thoreau_, page 61, 2nd
brace, chord [at] beginning of 6th quarter-note beat--this is L.H.:
C#-F#-E,{16} R.H.: G#-F-Bb--if the right-hand G# had been put an Ab,
the eye would probably, to most, have suggested a resolution to a nice
Eb major tonic chord, even in spite of the C# in the left hand with F#
and E over [it] which may seem to lead towards a B gate--but it
doesn't get there, Rollo!

This is just one technical explanation of why certain notes have been
written as they have, in the Sonata and other music. No more technical
notes and explanations today, Rollo, for Edith and Susanna have their
own and better notes in the back yard!

Then, to my way of hearing and thinking, a sharp is a kind of
underlying sign of, or senses and reflects or encourages, an upward
movement, tonal and more perhaps spiritual, at a thing somewhat more
of courage and aspiration-towards than the flat carries or seems
to--the flat is more relaxing, subservient, looking more for rest
[and] submission, etc.--often used as symbols as such, when they're
not needed as the signs of tonality in the usual way. (Charles E.
Ives, _Memos_, pp. 193-95)

________________
{15} That is, on p. 1 of the manuscript--see note 4 above.

{16} Ives absent-mindedly wrote D instead of E, but he refers to it
correctly further on. In the new editions, this chord is on p. 59, in
the middle of the second brace.

PS - This is the text excerpt (p. 188) and footnote that Kirkpatrick
references ("see note 4 above") in note 15 (note 7, and the text it
refers to were contained in the post "missed by the unimaginative," TD
359.23):

And Ethelboy says--"Why that fellow doesn't understand music at
all--he writes B#,{4} then he doesn't know he must go nice to C#
minor--..."

{4} This "B#" is probably the same one as at note 7 below, or possibly
the one ending line 4 of p. 34 of the revised edition.