Essays Before a Sonata

Essays Before a Sonata book serves as an introduction to Ives’ composition, the Concord Sonata. In the essays, Ives explains his own perspective of and understanding of music and art. They also serve as an analysis of music itself as an art form and provide a critical description of the Concord and the role that the philosophies of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the Alcotts play in forming its thematic structure.