‘American music offers nothing better than Ives at his best’?

The headline is  taken from a New Yorker opinion by Alex Ross on the composer’s 150th birth anniversary.

We beg to disagree.

Ives has fallen out of favour in the 21st century, and justly so. The best of his works are cranky, the worst Ancient Mariner. Ives was a self-made multimillionnaire insurance agent who believed he discovered American music. But American music, before and after Ives, is more vital than any of the gimmicks Ives devised. Ives is a dead end, marginal and unrewarding. He is not the Great American anything, any more than the 47th P might be.

America has a richer abundance of musical invention.

Consider:

1 Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag

2 John Cage’s Concerto for prepared piano

3 Bernstein Candide Overture

4 Barber’s Adagio

5 Varese’s Ameriques

6 Steve Reich’s Different Trains

6 Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel

7 Amy Beach’s piano quintet

8 Copland’s 3rd symphony

9 Gershwin, Concerto in F

10 Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd

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