Collections

The Charles Ives Oral History was the first documentary oral history of an American composer. Interviews with sixty people who knew and worked with Charles Ives were conducted between 1968 and 1971, and this project was the impetus for the founding of Oral History of American Music (OHAM). Family, friends, neighbors, business associates, and musicians reminisce about one of the most significant artistic figures of the century. The project formed the basis of the award-winning book by Vivian Perlis, Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974, and subsequently reprinted). Excerpts from the taped interviews were used in a five record package, "Charles Ives 100th Anniversary" (1974) and in a film documentary, "A Good Dissonance Like a Man" (1977).

This is an artificial collection of rare and unpublished recordings featuring music by Charles Ives, created as part of a project funded by the Grammy Museum in 2017 to digitize and preserve these recordings.

The collection consists primarily of handwritten or typed letters sent to Cole by fellow lawyers, businessmen and clients. There are a handful of letters from Cole’s siblings but these are mostly about business matters. The materials were donated in four file folders spanning the period between 1885 and 1893 and were arranged either by first or last name or the name of a company or business. Within each section the materials were not arranged alphabetically. The folders were marked 1, 2, 3 and 5 covered the periods 1885-1887, 1887-1889, 1889-1891 and 1891-1893. Missing from the collection is the bulk of the year 1891 (parts of January and December of that year are covered) which presumably would have appeared in folder 4. The materials have been kept in their original order and further alphabetized.