Charles Ives's Symphony No. 4, S. 4 (K. 1A4) was written between 1910 and the mid-1920s (the second movement "Comedy" was the last to be composed, most likely in 1924). The symphony is notable for its multilayered complexity—typically requiring two conductors in performance—and for its large and varied orchestration. Combining elements and techniques of Ives's previous compositional work, this has been called "one of his most definitive works";^[1] Ives' biographer, Jan Swafford, has called it "Ives's climactic masterpiece".^[2]

The symphony is in four movements:

Although the symphony requires a large orchestra, the duration is only about half an hour.

I. Prelude: Maestoso

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Watchman, Tell Us of the Night

This movement and the second movement were first performed in the Town Hall, New York City, on January 29, 1927, by 50 members of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on a Pro Musica International Referendum Concert conducted by Eugene Goossens. While 50 players are sufficient for the chamber-like scoring of the first movement, the second movement in reality requires almost twice as many players, yet this was Ives's only experience of hearing any parts of the Symphony performed live. In contrast to Ives's other works for large orchestra, which begin in quiet and meditative moods, the first-movement Prelude starts with a strong, maestoso, fortissimo bassline, immediately followed by a rising trumpet fanfare. A quiet passage follows. The movement ends with chorus singing John Bowring's Epiphany hymn "Watchman, Tell Us of the Night". Unlike the bold beginning, the movement dies away, quadruple-pianissimo, at the end.

In Henry Bellamann's program note to the 1927 premiere of the first and second movements of the symphony (a program note that seems to be ghost-written by Ives, as his tone of voice and use of language is obvious throughout), the program of the symphony is described this way:

The aesthetic program of the work is that of many of the greatest literary and musical masterpieces of the world—the searching questions of What? and Why? which the spirit of man asks of life. This is particularly the sense of the prelude. The ... succeeding movements are the diverse answers in which existence replies.

In his Memos, Ives misquotes Bellamann's program note by attributing to it the famous description of the Finale (hence providing further proof that he had supplied descriptive text to Bellamann for the note, with Bellamann dropping the Finale's description because of its absence on the 1927 performance): "The last movement is an apotheosis of the preceding content, in terms that have something to do with the reality of existence and its religious experience."

The symphony is distinguished by its use of multimetrics (i.e. simultaneous use of different meters) as well as temporal dyssynchronies (i.e. simultaneous use of different tempos). For example, in the second movement there is a passage (famously called the "Collapse Section") in which the orchestra divides into two groups, one playing in a slow ³
₂ meter, the other in ⁴
₄. Initially, the two groups are synchronized (with one measure of ³
₂ equaling one measure of ⁴
₄), but then the ⁴
₄ group accelerates on top of the ³
₂ group and collapses, thereafter waiting for the ³
₂ group to catch up with them, at which point the orchestra resynchronizes as a single unit. This is but one of many extremely novel temporal effects in this work.

The fourth movement is distinguished by a rhythmic plan in which there is a division between the main orchestra and a separate group of percussion; the two groups play in precise temporal ratios to one another, and obtaining the temporal ratios between the two groups is one of the chief challenges of performing the movement. Also novel in the symphony is the use of quarter tones, heard both in the strings as well as in a dedicated quarter-tone piano that assumes 24 notes per octave. In the second movement, the quarter-tone piano noodles a filigree pattern in quarter and regular tones to accompany a solo violin that intones the hymn "Beulah Land". (Ives here was anticipating a double-manual keyboard, with one manual at regular pitch and the other a quarter tone higher.)

The symphony is scored for a very large orchestra:

The mixed chorus performs a setting of the hymn "Watchman" in the first movement and a wordless intonation of the hymn "Bethany" in the last movement.

The first and last movements employ a spatially-separated ensemble of 5 violins and harp. The last movement employs a spatially-separated group of percussion.

The size of the orchestra is so large that if a maximum force of musicians were required, you would need 131 musicians in the orchestra (+offstage) and an extra two choirs.

The symphony did not have a complete performance until Leopold Stokowski conducted it with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on April 26, 1965,^[5] 11 years after Ives's death.^[6]

It was soon recorded by the same forces for the first time for the Columbia label.^[7]

The 1965 performance score, published by G. Schirmer (AMP), has been supplanted by a new Charles Ives Society Critical Edition, 2011 (ed. by William Brooks, James Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton, Wayne Shirley, and Thomas M. Brodhead), which presents the music in the largely unperformable but compositionally intriguing state in which Ives left it in his manuscripts, and then a necessary corresponding Performance Score (edited by Thomas M. Brodhead), which was premiered at the Lucerne Festival, August 26, 2012, under the baton of conductor Peter Eötvös.