Why does Ives quote others tunes in his works?
Ives uses quotations much like modernists (and post-modernist) authors use allusions in their works. For example, when T.S. Eliot quotes Dante at the beginning of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Eliot uses the quote as a talisman to evoke all sorts of emotional associations that the reader had from reading Dante. What distinguishes Ives from Eliot and other “classical” modernists is that Ives does not limit his quotations to great composers like Beethoven or Wagner, he quotes everything, “high” and “low,” classical and popular. Whereas Eliot refers only to the touchstones of literature, Ives incorporates everything which affects him–regardless of it artistic context: classical music, folk music, marching band tunes, church music, even ambient sounds from life. In this regard, Ives’ approach to composition is more accurately post-modernist than modernist. But let’s muddy the waters even more. I believe that it is not really correct to label Ives a “post-modernist” for a variety
