Song Quotes by 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…

— Charles Ives

I don't write music for sissy ears.

— Charles Ives

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…

— 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

A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it…

— Charles Ives

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

— 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…

— 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…

— Charles Ives

An apparent confusion, if lived with long enough, may become orderly . . . A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something…

— Charles Ives

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

— 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…

— Charles Ives

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

— 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…

— Charles Ives

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

— 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…

— Charles Ives