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 More Quotes by Charles Ives More Quotes From Charles Ives Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears 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, 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 confusedbeautifullying The fabric of existence weaves itself whole. Charles Ives fabricexistencewhole Stand up and take your dissonance like a man. Charles Ives dissonancemen 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 dreamlyingpeople 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 nicewanttrying I don't write music for sissy ears. Charles Ives musicearswriting Everyone should have the opportunity of not being over-influenced. Charles Ives shouldshould-haveopportunity Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity. Charles Ives badgesmediocrityawards You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance. Charles Ives vitalityrealityart Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair? Charles Ives confusedmusiclying 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 Charles Ives unityconfusionlong 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 horsepoetryheaven 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 Charles Ives menchildrenschool Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration. Charles Ives experimentsinspirationknows The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized Charles Ives possibilitysoundbelieve 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 languagemaymen It is more important to keep the horse going hard than to always play the exact notes. Charles Ives horselearningplay If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances? Charles Ives nicelovechildren 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 degeneratesusedoe 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 live-lifeartthinking
