-- times have changed,

Several months back Joseph Pehrson posted,

>"By 1910 he [Ives] was so thoroughly committed to such rash
adventures that everyone who knew him except his wife, Harmony
Twitchell, considered him a crank..." . . . Man, it's amazing what was
published in 1966. Would the same be published today?? I rather
doubt it -- times have changed,

And I responded,

> You really think so? I don't know, but I'd tend to think that Ives'
"respectability" will probably fall in and out of favor (or vogue) for
quite awhile to come.

This article, "The Many Faces of Ives" by David Schiff, offers a
pretty good account of what I was trying to get at.

<http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jan/ives/ives.htm>

Dan

[Joseph Pehrson:]
> Schiff has written some perceptive stuff this last year or so, some
of the articles having been included in prominent places in the New
York Times...

Interesting. I found that article at The Atlantic Monthly online
archive. And yeah I agree that he's definitely got a gift for offering
(often very insightful) commentary on these subjects in a way that is
also engaging and kind of, oh, I don't know... chatty I guess. Here's
another example:

<http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95sep/boulez.htm>

> I guess the point was whether anybody in the 21st century could
really make that kind of statement and be taken seriously as an
"evaluator" of Ives.

We might just have to agree to disagree here, because I have no
problem whatsoever -- none -- imagining William Austin's "without the
prose, unfortunately, much of the music fails to make any clear
effect..." falling out of the mouth of someone who knows (or is
supposed to know, etc., whatever) what they're talking about tomorrow.

> To me, anyway, it seems Ives insurance "stock" has gone way up...

I agree. And I guess that can only be a good thing... but I also have
a nagging feeling that when Schiff says, "Ives has been used to
authenticate everything from cowboy tunes to conceptualism," he's also
offering a glimpse into why this is... in other words, are a lot more
composers and critics (etc.) more willing to line up behind some
permutation of the Ives complex -- or quoting Schiff again, "a
bottomless grab bag of contradictory achievements and promises" --
than they are behind his actual music? Perhaps these really are just
one in the same? Who really seems like an extension of Ives, where
both the actual sound or shape of his music and some particular
visionary idea (or peculiarity) got a fair shake... Brant comes to
mind... ?

Dan