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 IvesIt is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.
Charles IvesYou cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.
Charles IvesIf a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?
Charles IvesIn 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