Quotes by Charles Ives

I don't write music for sissy ears.

Reber [Johnson; a violinist] also got off another one, after I'd played over the Second Violin Sonata for him-that harmless piece. "After stuff like that"-he said-"if you consider that music, and like it, how can you like Brahms or any good music?" That is a very common attitude among almost all the well known lilies. They take it [i.e., that attitude] for granted-a kind of self-evident axiom, a settled-for-life matter, ipso facto, admitting of no argument. The classical is good for all time, the modern is bad for all time-so if you like one, you can't like the other. Describing the reaction of a typical professional musician to his, and other twentieth-century, compositions. "Lilies" was one of Ives' names for most of the concert goers of his era, who expected all music to be conventional and pretty.