"A sound of a distant horn

O'er shadowed lake is borne

--my father's song."--Charles Ives

Charles Ives, perhaps the quintessential American composer of the twentieth century, drew on his childhood experiences in a small New England town in his music. Through his close relationship with his father, George, a Civil War bandmaster, Ives developed a powerful feeling for nineteenth-century rural America. This book--the first full-scale psychoanalytic biography of a major composer--examines the lives of the two men and shows how a knowledge of their relationship as father and son,...

Ives' life (1874-1955) spanned two centuries; he grew up in the nineteenth and composed chiefly in the twentieth. His nostalgia for a simpler life in the New England town of his youth is revealed in his frequent musical quotation of songs of that earlier time: parlor and patriotic songs, hymns and gospel music that he learned from his father, a village bandmaster, and the most important influence on his life and music. This book clarifies the complexity of the man and his music--music that is uniquely autobiographical and that itself illuminates the narrative.

Ives' life (1874-1955) spanned two centuries; he grew up in the nineteenth and composed chiefly in the twentieth. His nostalgia for a simpler life in the New England town of his youth is revealed in his frequent musical quotation of songs of that earlier time: parlor and patriotic songs, hymns and gospel music that he learned from his father, a village bandmaster, and the most important influence on his life and music. This book clarifies the complexity of the man and his music--music that is uniquely autobiographical and that itself illuminates the narrative.

The life of the brilliant composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was punctuated by crisis. His parents both died in 1889, leaving him the reluctant head of a household of siblings. He himself endured a nearly fatal medical ordeal in 1901. A beloved daughter died in 1907 and that same year, under pressure, Mahler resigned from the directorship of the Vienna Opera. In each case Mahler more than mastered the trauma; he triumphed in the creation of new major musical works. The final crisis of Mahler's career occurred in 1910, when he learned that his wife, Alma, was having an affair with the...