Critical responses 1920–1938

Remarkably, the Concord Sonata was the first work Ives had offered to the public since five short compositions were published in 1896 and 1897 during his college days at Yale University. Throughout the intervening years, Ives's most active composing years, few subsequent works were even rehearsed by professional musicians. When Ives's magnum opus (or at least a strong candidate for this distinction), the Concord Sonata, along with its elaborate philosophical program notes, the Essays Before a Sonata, arrived unannounced and unheralded to Musical Courier subscribers and other musicians in 1921, Ives was virtually unknown.

Within a few months after Ives began to distribute his Essays and sonata in January 1921 the pair of offerings was reviewed briefly and condescendingly in two established music journals, the Musical Courier and Musical America. Both reviews commented derisively on Ives's perspicacity in enclosing a slip that reads “Complimentary: copies are not to be sold.” “At last a composer who realizes the unsalable quality of his music,” wrote A. Walter Kramer in Musical America. The anonymous Musical Courier reviewer similarly remarked with assurance that Ives's fear of profiting from his work was psychosomatic.

Each reviewer quoted and responded to Ives's self–deprecatory preface: “These prefatory essays were written by the composer for those who can't stand his music – and the music for those who can't stand his essays; to those who can't stand either, the whole is respectfully dedicated.” The Musical Courier replied that no one will be able to react to the music, “for nobody else [other than perhaps the composer] will ever be able to play it for us, since the musical nomenclature of Charles [sic] is entirely a personal affair.”