Panel 1: Ives and Nature

Description

In the festival’s first multidisciplinary panel, cultural historian Joseph Horowitz contrasts Ives’s more realistic musical portrayals of nature with his predecessor’s more conventional ones. Art historian Tim Barringer examines Ives’s ways of conveying visual impressions through music, linking them to American painting, photography, quilting, and other visual arts of his time. Derek J. Myler shows how Ives’s musical rendering of the Housatonic River accurately represents the way it flows. Two IU art historians and two visiting Ives scholars join the concluding discussion.

Recording

Date

October 4, 2024

Location

Ford-Crawford Hall

Personnel

J. Peter Burkholder, chair
Tim Barringer (Art History, Yale University)
Derek J. Myler (Music Theory, East Carolina University)

Discussants
Cordula Grewe (Art History, Indiana University)
Melody Barnett Deusner (Art History, Indiana University)
Denise Von Glahn (Musicology, Florida State University)
Jan Swafford (Ives biographer)

Program

Ives and Nature 

J. Peter Burkholder, chair 

Charles Ives (1874-1954) 

Feldeinsamkeit (Hermann Allmers, ca. 1898) 

   William Sharp, baritone   
   Steven Mayer, piano 

Joseph Horowitz: “Mud and Scum” 

Charles Ives 

The Housatonic at Stockbridge (Robert Underwood Johnson, arr. 1921) 

   William Sharp, baritone   
   Steven Mayer, piano 

Tim Barringer (Art History, Yale University): Ives and the Visual 

Derek J. Myler (Music Theory, East Carolina University): Ives’s Housatonic and the Hydrology of River Flow 

Discussants 

Cordula Grewe (Art History, Indiana University) 

Melody Barnett Deusner (Art History, Indiana University) 

Denise Von Glahn (Musicology, Florida State University) 

Jan Swafford (Ives biographer) 

Derek J. Myler’s presence is made possible by the Music Theory Five Friends Master Class Series honoring Robert Samels. 

Citation

“Panel 1: Ives and Nature,” Charles Ives at 150, accessed June 7, 2025, https://charlesivesat150.iu.edu/items/show/12.