The recent appearance of Tom Owens's Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives is welcome and gratifying. Congratulations are due to the University of California Press for bringing Ives's letters and Owens's thoughtful contextualizing remarks to light, and so handsomely, with a cover in Yale blues. The book contains clear reproductions of pertinent letters and photographs, pages that lie flat when opened, and generous margins around all sides of the text, which together make it attractive and ideal for note taking. The physical product is thoughtfully created and seems to have been designed with both the casual reader and the serious researcher in mind.

The register of the Charles Ives Papers that Vivian Perlis compiled in January 1983 exposed the surprising size and scope of Ives's correspondence, surprising because Ives had so often been characterized as isolated. Within the papers are over two thousand letters to and from myriad individuals, institutions, societies, journals, businesses, publishers, close colleagues, and family members. There are letters written in Ives's own hand and others he dictated to his wife, Harmony, or daughter, Edith. Although numerous scholars have made use of the Ives Papers since their organization and referenced individual letters in their works, it has been Tom Owens's decade-long task to investigate the collection systematically, decipher Ives's “snake tracks,” and make sense of this primary source material. The quantity and variety of its contents provide, according to Owens, “one of the most comprehensive sources of information about [Ives], second only to his music” (1), and after reading Selected Correspondence readers will not disagree.

Whether one discovers a wholly new morsel of information or, more likely, a deepened understanding and appreciation of Ives's complex and often contradictory being, Owens's edition of 453 letters selected from the Charles Ives Papers and from the John Kirkpatrick Papers, both housed at the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University, is a valuable and timely addition to the ever-growing and maturing body of Ives scholarship. We're ready to move beyond romantic readings of Ives; Owens allows us to see the man, fully human, with multiple, often competing personas. In arranging Ives's letters into eight thematic and chronological categories that move readers from “Childhood, Hopkins, and Yale (1881–1903)” to “Final Years (1945–1954),” Owens shows that Ives was “much more connected and engaged with the world around him than the isolated figure made famous in the Ives legend” (5).

Ives's correspondence becomes biographical in a way similar to his 114 Songs, and though it might be dangerous to press the analogy, in Owens's selection of letters we catch glimpses of the composer in various stages and settings of his life—as a child, college student, young professional, smitten lover, husband, business partner, champion of composers and causes—and with various concerns, just as we do in his songs. Selected Correspondence also becomes a partner to Memos, a quasi-autobiography, only this time with dozens of co-authors.Footnote ¹ Owens observes Ives crafting his legend; this is often the case, especially in his later correspondence. As early as 1921, however, Ives responds to Clifton Furness about the Concord Sonata and its connections with transcendentalism. We see Ives framing the work in ways that it would be talked about for decades to follow. Ives's oft-quoted denials that he was aware of contemporary musical developments are challenged by his 1924 discussions with Furness of numerous pieces by Scriabin, and his request of Carl Engel that Mr. Sonneck please be “[induced] to put the Musical Quarterly on a monthly basis?” Ives explains: “In three evenings we have read it through and most of it re-read” (144–45).

Whereas one can always question the veracity of what a subject tells his or her biographer, or the particular rationale a subject offers for an action taken years earlier, it is difficult, if not impossible, to assign a single agenda to a story that unfolds in letters written over a period of seventy-three years. To his credit, Owens never oversimplifies; he respects the complexity of his subject. Far from merely shaping others' perceptions of himself, Ives's letters may, as Owens observes of a particular series of exchanges, have served as “a scrapbook for him[self]” (221).

With dissertations, theses, critical editions, journals, monographs, and collections of studies dedicated to Ives now filling multiple shelves of an Ivesian's library, one does not expect to discover much new information. It turns out, however, that there are still a few surprises. In a letter written in 1934 by Charles Martin of the Florentine Bindery, a firm which Owens points out did work for Ives, readers discover that George Gershwin had been eager to speak with the composer. He had forwarded his address and private phone number expressing the hope that Ives would contact him. In pencil on Martin's letter Ives wrote: “G said my music has been a help to him.” On the back of a letter Ives jotted down Bill Verplanck's recollection of Gershwin's comments about his respect for Ives: “[Gershwin] said he had gotten more out of my music than of any other especially new chords and new rhythms and that he wants to ask about more copies etc. and that it had been a great help to him” (221). That Gershwin knew of Ives's compositions in 1934 suggests a wider circles of interested parties than have been recognized heretofore. One can only fantasize what such a conversation might have covered and where it might have led. But knowing just this much we learn something new about both Ives and Gershwin. Ives's hopes for a music that spoke across artificial boundaries, that drew from beloved tunes as well as high art forms, seem to have been recognized and appreciated by this other boundary-crossing musician, and Ives cared.

In the same year, soprano Radiana Pazmor, who had concertized with the futurist pianist/composer Leo Ornstein just a decade earlier, corresponded with Ives. His replies show his willingness to accommodate performers' inquires and to work within the limits of technology. When Pazmor suggested cuts in “General William Booth” to allow a recording within the four-and-a-half-minute limit of a 78-rpm disc, Ives responded with his usual deference to the performer and sincere gratitude for her interest in his music. In another letter to Ms. Pazmor, Ives includes a separate sheet with timings for several songs, perhaps just in case she was interested (226). Pazmor's letter of December 1934 refers to a chance meeting with Varèse, who expressed his hope that there was or would be a setting of “Booth” for a small orchestra (225). Such correspondence suggests Ives's reach by the mid-1930s. Those who were active making music were well aware of the composer's work even if it took critics another decade to acknowledge its worth.

While Owens's commentary is thoroughly informed and carefully expressed, he doesn't insist upon its unique truthfulness. Instead Owens invites readers to consider the range of implications and resonances of hundreds of letters. Owens shows us Ives in 1932 enchanted with Switzerland, which he calls “a place in eternity” (196), and shares Edie's touching letter to her “Dearest Daddy” a decade later. Quite aside from reinforcing and enhancing our appreciation of the composer, essayist, businessman, philanthropist, and political activist, Selected Correspondence takes us beyond the highly accomplished polymath and illuminates the uniquely gifted human being that was Charles Ives. Fleshing out the sensitive husband, father, and friend may be among the book's greatest achievements.