This Month's Feature: Charles Ives

This month is slipping away and I haven't posted a feature. I personally didn't truly listen to Charles Ives' music until grad school. Perhaps there is a maturity required for many to really listen and find the deep beauty. It may be that by that older age, an author like Henry Thoreau would be familiar and one might have taken the time to read and understand him. It was at that time that I read Essays Before a Sonata as required reading for a piano literature class. From that point, I was hooked. No, I didn't truly understand the composition, but perhaps like Thoreau discovering complexity in simplicity, I found the opposite--simplicity in complexity.  This Sonata stands as a true masterpiece of American music.