"He [Ives] put Milton to music, and Kipling. It was often in the past. Or he could take a scrap, a headline from a newspaper and somehow dignify it with music that surged over it. It could be a triviality, but somehow or other it fired his imagination and the music came spontaneously....He did it again and again. He took only part of a Kipling poem, part of Milton, too. Just a phrase would fire his imagination. It was extraordinary what he accomplished."
— Poet-anthologist Louis Untermeyer
"...in 1934, I published an article in the magazine Modern Music on the music of Charles Ives, based on a first acquaintance with the remarkable collection of his 114 Songs that he himself had published and had sent to me. The essay began: 'It will be a long time before we take the full measure of Charles Ives.'"
— Composer Aaron Copland
Both of the above quotes regarding the songs of Charles Ives are taken from Charles Ives Remembered, An Oral History, by Vivian Perlis.
Soprano Deborah Voigt will sing five Ives songs on her November 13 Celebrity Series recital at Symphony Hall.
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