Ives and His Time: Uplifting the “Gilded Age”

Description

In the festival’s second interdisciplinary panel, cultural historian Joseph Horowitz links Ives to other late-nineteenth-century American cultural figures. American historian Alan Lessoff reconsiders our image of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, the so-called Gilded Age. Art historian Tim Barringer, American historians Allen C. Guelzo, Eric Sandweiss, and Wendy Gamber, and Ives biographer Jan Swafford offer brief responses, followed by a wide-ranging discussion.

Recording

Date

October 5, 2024

Location

Ford-Crawford Hall

Personnel

Joseph Horowitz, chair
Nate Paul, tenor
Soroush Sadeghi, piano
Alan Lessoff (History, Illinois State University)

Discussants
Tim Barringer (Art History, Yale University)
Allen C. Guelzo (History, Princeton University)
Eric Sandweiss (History, Indiana University)
Jan Swafford (Ives biographer)
Wendy Gamber (History, Indiana University)

Program

Panel 2 

Ives and His Time: 

Uplifting the “Gilded Age” 

Joseph Horowitz, chair 

Charles Ives presents a singular opportunity to curate the American past. He is himself a master practitioner of cultural memory. That cultural memory is today increasingly erased from the American experience makes remembering Ives all the more necessary. He both re-interprets the Gilded Age and is himself re-interpreted by Gilded Age culture—provided we can rid ourselves of outdated caricatures of Gilded Age snobs and robber barons. 

Charles Ives (1874-1954) 

Memories (Charles Ives, 1897) 

   Nate Paul, tenor   
   Soroush Sadeghi, piano 

Introduction 

Joseph Horowitz: “Moral Fire”: Charles Ives and America’s Fraught Fin-de-Siècle 

Keynote 

Alan Lessoff (History, Illinois State University) 

What the Gilded Age Has Meant, and What It Means 

Discussants 

Tim Barringer (Art History, Yale University): Reclaiming Pre-Modernist American Visual Art 

Allen C. Guelzo (History, Princeton University): Forgotten Voices of Pre- WWI American Philosophy28 

Eric Sandweiss (History, Indiana University): Charles Ives’s New York City 

Jan Swafford (Ives biographer): Resituating Ives in His Own Time and Place 

Wendy Gamber (History, Indiana University), Respondent 

This program is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Citation

“Ives and His Time: Uplifting the “Gilded Age”,” Charles Ives at 150, accessed June 7, 2025, https://charlesivesat150.iu.edu/items/show/15.