Reddit reviews Charles Ives: A Life with Music

Charles Ives: A Life With Music was an amazing read.

Thank you for posting this. While I have listened to Ives' symphonies at various times during my life, I am now just trying to really listen to them "hard" and try to gain a better understanding of the music. This essay is a wonderful entry point. I'm going to get Jan Swafford's book on Ives. His being an accomplished composer and a composition teacher who can discuss sophisticated musical concepts in clear, expository, English is a rare gift. None of the vague, subjective, woolly prose you so often see in reviews of Ives and other complicated music. Swafford is probably well-known to the people here who listen and study music less casually than me. I just mostly listen and attend concerts ... unless I happen to catch a fascination with some kind of music. Then I start to research a little.