Happy Birthday in Two Different Keys Simultaneously!

Today is the birthday of Charles Ives, as I was reminded when driving into work by hearing his second symphony on the radio. Jan Swafford, who wrote a biography of the composer, summed up the role Ives played in American cultural history by calling him the "Walt Whitman of sound." Yesterday, the Ives Day celebrations in Danbury, Conn., were disrupted, however, because a large section of the roof collapsed in the composer's childhood home. The house is normally opened to visitors only on this day, meaning that there are probably some people who have traveled all the way to Connecticut only to be disappointed. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Some of our Ives posts from the archives:

• Ives songs (CD review)
  
• Gerald Finley, Ives songs (CD review)
  
• Concord sonata (CD review)
  
• Second string quartet (Concert review)
  
• First string quartet (Concert review)

If you want to hear some Ives in concert, you have to wait only until next month, when pianist and notorious masochist Jeremy Denk will play both the second Ives sonata, Concord, Mass., 1840-60, and Beethoven's Hammerklavier, in the Barns at Wolf Trap (November 7, 8 pm).