"Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and
terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if
there be that many souls in the world" (Essays 8).
"The word 'beauty' is as easy to use as the word
'degenerate.' Both come in handy when one does or does not agree with you"
(Essays 77).
"Emerson is . . . America's deepest explorer of the spiritual
immensities-a seer painting his discoveries in masses and with any color that
may lie at hand-cosmic, religious, human, even sensuous; a recorder freely
describing the inevitable struggle in the soul's uprise, perceiving from this
inward source alone that 'every ultimate fact is only the first of a new
series' . . . who would then discover, if he can, that 'wondrous chain that
links the heavens with the earth-the world of beings subject to one law'. . .
We see him-standing on a summit at the door to the infinite . . . , peering
into the mysteries of life, contemplating the eternities. . . We see him-a
mountain-guide so intensely on the lookout for the trail of his star that he
has no time to stop and retrace his footprints" (Essays 11-12).
"Emerson wrings the neck of any law that would become
exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite
one of mechanics. He hacks his way up and down, as near as he can to the
Absolute, the oneness of all nature, both human and spiritual, and to God's
benevolence. To him, the ultimate of a conception is its vastness, and is
probably this rather than the 'blind-spots' in his expression that makes us
inclined to go with him but half-way, and then stand and build dogmas. But if we
cannot follow all the way-if we do not always clearly perceive the whole
picture-we are at least free to imagine it; he makes us feel that we are free
to do so. Perhaps that is the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through
and beyond mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its
immensities, throwing back to us whatever he can, but ever conscious that he
but occasionally catches a glimpse . . . (Essays 14).
"Thus is Emerson always beating down through the crust
towards the first fire of life, of death, and of eternity. Read where you will,
each sentence seems not to point to the next but to the undercurrent of
all" (Essays 15).
"Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect
truth" (Essays 22).
"An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become
orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in
nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it
is part of the day's unity" (Essays 22-23).
"It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or
composer may of necessity be formless to his audience" (Essays
23).
". . . It seems that so close a relation exists between
[Emerson's] content and his expression, his substance and his manner, that if
he were more definite in the latter he would lose power in the former. Perhaps,
some of those occasional flashes would have been unexpressed-flashes that have
gone down through the world and will flame on through the ages--flashes that
approach as near the divine as Beethoven in his most inspired moments--flashes
of transcendent beauty, of such universal import, that they may bring, of a
sudden, some intimate personal experience, and produce the same indescribable
effect that comes in rare instances to men from some common sensation.
In the early morning of a Memorial Day, a boy is awaked by martial
music--a village band is marching down the street--and as the strains of Reeves
majestic Seventh Regiment March come nearer and nearer--he seems of a sudden
translated--a moment of vivid power comes, a consciousness of material
nobility--an exultant something gleaming with the possibilities of this
life--an assurance that nothing is impossible, and that the whole world lies at
his feet. But, as the band turns the corner, at the soldier's monument, and the
march steps of the Grand Army become fainter and fainter, the boy's vision
slowly vanishes-his 'world' becomes less and less probable-but the experience
ever lies within him in its reality.
Later in life, the same boy hears the Sabbath morning bell ringing
out from the white steeple at the 'Center,' and as it draws him to it, through
the autumn fields of sumach and asters, a Gospel hymn of simple devotion comes
out to him--'There's a wideness in God's mercy'-an instant suggestion of that
Memorial Day morning comes--but the moment is of deeper import-there is no
personal exultation-no intimate world vision-no magnified personal hope-and in
their place a profound sense of spiritual truth-a sin within reach of
forgiveness. And as the hymn voice dies away, there lies at his feet--not the
world, but the figure of the Saviour-he sees an unfathomable courage-an
immortality for the lowest--the vastness in humility, the kindness of the human
heart, man's noblest strength--and he knows that God is nothing--nothing--but
love!
Whence cometh the wonder of the moment? From sources we know not.
But we do know that from obscurity and from this higher Orpheus comes measures
of sphere melodies, flowing in wild, native tones, ravaging the souls of men,
flowing now with thousand-fold accompaniments and rich symphonies through all
our hearts, modulating and divinely leading them" (Essays
30-31).
"In some century to come, when the school children will
whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones-when the diatonic scale will be as
obsolete as the pentatonic is now-perhaps then these borderland experiences may
be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not
intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope
that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant
sense" (Essays 71).
"If local color, national color, any color, is a true pigment
of the universal color, it is a divine quality, it is part of substance in
art-not of manner. . . .Whatever excellence an artist sees in life, a
community, a people, or in any valuable object or experience, if sincerely and
intuitively reflected in his work-his work, and so himself, is, in a way, a
reflected part of that excellence. Whether he be accepted or rejected, whether
his music is played or never played-all this has nothing to do with it; it is
true or false by his own measure" (Essays 81).
On the Distinction Between Sound and Music
"A MS. score is brought to a concertmaster-he may be a
violinist-he is kindly disposed, he looks it over, and casually fastens on a
passage: 'That's bad for the fiddles--it doesn't hang just right--write it like
this, they will play it better.' But that one phrase is the germ of the whole
thing. 'Never mind, it will fit the hand better this way-it will sound better.'
My God! What has sound got to do with music! The waiter brings the only fresh
eggs he has, but the man at breakfast sends it back because it doesn't fit his
eggcup. Why can't music go out in the same way it comes in to a man, without
having to crawl over a fence of sounds, thoraxes, catguts, wire, wood, and
brass? Consecutive fifths are as harmless as blue laws compared with the
relentless tyranny of the 'media.' The instrument!--there is the perennial
difficulty--there is music's limitation. . . . Is it the composer's fault that
man only has ten fingers? Why can't a musical thought be presented as it is
born--perchance a 'bastard of the slums,' or a 'daughter of a bishop'--and if
it happens to go better later on a bass drum than upon a harp, get a good bass
drummer. That music must be heard is not essential--what it sounds
like may not be what it is" [Ives' italics] (Essays
84).
"The humblest artist will not find true humility in aiming
low-he must never be timid or afraid of trying to express that which he feels
is far above his power to express, any more than he should be in breaking away,
when necessary, from easy first sounds, or afraid of admitting that those
half-truths the come to him at rare intervals, are half-true; for instance,
that all art galleries contain masterpieces, which are nothing more than a
history of art's beautiful mistakes" (Essays 97).
On the Role of Habit in Hearing Music
"There may be an analogy between . . . the ear, the mind, and
the arm muscles. They don't get stronger with disuse. Any art or habit of life,
if it is limited chronically to a few processes that are easiest to acquire
(and, for that reason, are said to be some natural laws), must at some time,
quite probably, become so weakened that it is neither a part of art nor a part
of life. Nature has bigger things than even-vibration-ratios for man to learn
how to use. Consonance is a relative thing (just a nice name for a nice habit).
It is a natural enough part of music, but not the whole, or only one. The
simplest ratios, often called perfect consonances, have been used so long and
so constantly that not only music, but musicians and audiences, have become
more or less soft. If they hear anything but doh-me-soh or a near cousin, they
have to be carried out on a stretcher (Memos 42).
On the Importance of His Influences
"One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything
good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my
wife" (Memos 114).
". . . . I'd played over the Second Violin Sonata for
him-that harmless piece. 'After stuff like the that"--he said--'if you
consider that music, and like it, how can you like Brahms or any good music?'
That is a very common attitude among almost all the well-known lilies. They
take it for granted--a kind of self-evident axiom, a settled-for-life matter,
ipso facto, admitting no argument. The classical is good for all time, the
modern is bad for all time--so if you like one, you can't like the other. They
don't always limit it to 'good and bad.' They, in a general way, throw (in
their nice little minds) all that fits into their accustomed habits of sound,
technique, etc., all together into a classical idiom, good or bad. Everything
not in it, they throw out as non-existent music, as such. Assuming that there
are some good things among the latter class, that can in essence and substance
compare with the better of the former, this type of mind then does the same
thing as to say--'Now if you look out of that window and enjoy the mountains, how
can you possibly look out of this window and enjoy the ocean?'" (Memos
121-22).
"The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have
never been fully realized" (Memos 124-25).
"If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the
things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one
man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him
something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of
superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his
constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than
he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the
horse may carry him into heaven'" (Memos 240).
"In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass
band with wings on it in back of my mind" (CI: A Life With Music
37).
"The fabric of existence weaves itself whole. You cannot set
art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.
There can be nothing exclusive [Ives' italics] about substantial art. It comes
directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and
living life" (CI: A Life With Music 207).
"Every great inspiration is but an experiment" (CI: A
Life With Music 335).
Ives' Rationale for Pursuing a Career in Insurance, Rather than
Music
If [a composer] has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he
let the children starve on his dissonances?" (CI: A Life With Music
143).
Ives' Rationale for Leaving His Position as Church Organist in
1902
"I seem to have worked with more natural freedom, when I knew
that the music was not going to be played before the public, or rather before
people who couldn't get out from under, as in the case of a church congregation
. . . .To a body of people who come together for worship-how far has a man to
do what he wants, if he knows that by so doing he is interfering with the state
of mind of the listeners, who have to listen regardless. . . . A congregation
has some rights" (CI: A Life With Music 160).
On Tonality and Dissonance
"Why tonality as such should be thrown out for good I can't
see. Why it should always be present I can't see. It depends, it seems to me. .
. on what one is trying to do, and on the state of the mind, the time of day or
other accidents of life" (Essays 117).
"An instance shows the difference between [Ives'] Father's
and [Ives' music teacher, Horatio] Parker's ways of thinking. In the beginning
of my Freshman year, and getting assigned to classes, Parker asked me to bring
him whatever manuscripts I had written (pieces, etc.). Among them, a song, At Parting-in
it, some unresolved dissonances, one ending on a [high] E flat ([in the] key of
G major), and stops there unresolved. Parker said, "There's no excuse for
that-an E flat way up there and stopping, and the nearest D sharp way down two
octaves."-etc. I told father what Parker said, and Father said, "Tell
Parker that every dissonance doesn't need to resolve, if it doesn't happen to
feel like it, any more than every horse should have it's tail bobbed just
because it is the prevailing fashion" (Memos 116).