Major works of Western classic music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Major works of Western classic music - Essay Example Piano played an important role in this nationalistic era of music composers and Charles Ives is an important person who inspired other composers in filling the nationalistic music with folk, march tunes as well as Piano rhythms. The composers of Nineteenth Century composed to nationalistic songs, thus giving rise to nationalistic tones to be famous. Significant among them is Charles Ives, born on 20th October 1874, who has composed music using experimental techniques and ideas. He has been considered as the first true great American Composer, as he composed for American hymns as well as songs and dance tunes. In addition to that he used polyrhythms and poly tonality in his composing that make use of dissonant harmonies and tone clusters. Though his works became famous in 1930 after he ceased to compose music, he received Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his Symphony No. 3. The use of brass band, march tune, out of tune piano and all of them occurring at same time resulted in a path for a n ew breed of twentieth Century. Many young composers in 19th Century had nationalistic ideas regarding composing in contrast to their seniors who concentrated on romantic music. The composing of tunes by pioneers like Charles Ives had the sense of nationalism in them. The radicalism in the music of Europe influenced the composers in United States of America and resulted in a nationalistic era of music composing. Though the musical training of Ives is not much systematic, he learnt from his father, experiments and has become an eclectic musician. (Broyles, Michael (Author), 2004). The important fact in the career of Ives is that his tunes caught fame when he ceased composing by finding his fortune in insurance business. The reason might be that he did not have systematic training in music and might have lacked confidence in marketing his own music. That can be assumed from his own words "As a boy I was partially ashamed of my love of music an entirely wrong attitude". He convinced himself later that most of boys in America too felt the same and considered music as emasculated art and that might have forced him to quit music career after composing some tunes and symphonies (Hubbs, Nadine (Author), 2004). The nationalistic tones in his tunes and symphonies is due to his idealistic and democratic views and his quest to represent the unified American voice with the forms and traditions of European Classical Music. The musical sense and his interest in music came from his musician father, who settled in Danburry as a musician after the Civil War. As Charles Ives grew in aftermath of Civil War patriotic feelings that are popular in those days made him attract towards them and he mixed those feelings with his musical caliber to produce a pioneering tunes and symphonies. The nationalistic tone in his tunes came from his radical view of creating tone clusters. As a child he used Piano as a drum and his father sent him to drum classes. As he grew up his radicalism reflected in creation of tone clusters thus reflecting the quest of people for democracy and patriotism. Tone clusters are suitable tunes to represent the patriotic and nationalistic songs. His radical way of representing democracy