Charles Ives was an eighteen-year-old organ virtuoso when he composed his celebrated variations for organ on the patriotic hymn “America.” He would not enter Yale until two years later, and his primary musical influence was his bandmaster father George. When he first performed the Variations on “America” on February 17, 1892, at the Methodist church in Brewster, New York, he was still improvising parts of it, as he recalled, and his father had something to say about what he could and could not include.

Apparently the piece sometimes contained an interlude of canons (exact or close imitation as one part overlaps another) in three different keys, which George had ruled out because it “made the boys laugh out loud.” Furthermore, he had forbidden the polonaise (a Polish-style dance in 3/4 time) on account of the conflict he perceived between a European form and an American tune. (He later reinstated it as Variation 4.) As with many of Ives’s works, the Variations on “America” were not published until long after they were composed, in this case 1949, but the piece was one of his first to become widely known and played.

As it stands, the work features an introduction, a theme, Variations 1 and 2, an interlude, Variations 3 and 4, a second interlude, Variation 5, and a coda. Influences of pieces Ives studied around the time of composition certainly play a role—particularly those by John Knowles Paine, Dudley Buck, and Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck—but the work also manifests Ives’s great streak of originality. In the variations themselves he constantly fragments, reorders, and recomposes his source tune in quite sophisticated ways. Further, the interludes, which were added around 1909–10, show the bold use of two keys at once—F major and D-flat major in the first and A-flat major and F major in the second.

Many casual listeners have supposed Ives to be poking fun at the patriotic main theme, whereas those more familiar with his sense of humor have suspected him rather of mocking the more stodgy variation forms of his time. His sense of humor is certainly evident, but he was most likely earnest in showing his mastery of the variation form and of his given instrument.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe