IVES AND THE ESTABLISHMENT

JENNIFER PAULL compares the American visionary composer with Spanish architect Antonio Gaudí

'He developed.. a startling new style.. and incorporated colour as well as odd bits of material'

This quotation is drawn from The American Heritage Dictionary. They summarise exactly what many have said of Ives.

He was outrageous to many, eccentric even mad to others. There were always so many levels of thought, of energy, existing simultaneously, juxtaposing their different reflections on life, on essence, on movement.

About whom were these words written ? No, not of Charles Ives (1874-1954), but of the great genius of Spanish architecture, Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926).

There are so many parallels to be drawn in the boldness and force behind their muses; yet, one was in New England, USA, and the other mostly in Barcelona, Spain.

Although Gaudí was born 22 years before Ives, both artists saw the dawn of the 20th Century and its first decades.

Ives was one of the most extraordinary and individual figures in the history of Western music, just as Gaudí was one of the most extraordinary figures in Spanish architecture. One can transfer both from a national to an international platform. Their Art belongs to the expression and liberation of thought from the Romantic corset of convention into the freedom of expression we take for granted today

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