Charles Ives Quotes & Sayings

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. — Charles Ives

The future of music may not lie entirely in music itself, but rather in the way it encourages and extends, rather than limits the aspirations and ideals of the people, in the way it makes itself a part with the finer things that humanity does and dreams of. — Charles Ives

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 — Charles Ives

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind. — Charles Ives

A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens ... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly ... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it? — Charles Ives

For the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considerd with his devotion to his art. — Charles Ives

All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees. — Charles Ives

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience. — Charles Ives

My God! What has sound got to do with music? — Charles Ives

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized — Charles Ives

Most of the forward movements of life in general ... have been the work of essentially religiously-minded people. — Charles Ives

If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances? — Charles Ives

There can be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life. — Charles Ives

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole. — Charles Ives

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. — Charles Ives

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance. — Charles Ives

Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity. — Charles Ives

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. — Charles Ives

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. — Charles Ives

I don't write music for sissy ears. — Charles Ives

Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ear lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently - possibly almost invariably - analytical and impersonal test will show that when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep. — Charles Ives

Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have
I want it that way. — Charles Ives

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. — Charles Ives

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man. — Charles Ives

Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration. — Charles Ives

Music is one of the ways that God has of beating in on man. — Charles Ives

Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth. — Charles Ives

Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair? — Charles Ives

It is more important to keep the horse going hard than to always play the exact notes. — Charles Ives