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In this Violin Sonata in particular he varies suddenly, even within a single movement, the compositional system of relations-tonality, atonality, syntax, setting, motivic-the-matic developments, athematicity - allowing musical expression to veer unpredictably. This Sonata is capable of adopting the character of purely "late Romantic" music, of anticipating the neo-classicism of the twenties, of portraying a disreputable march or ragtime music, of taking up the style of wild fiddling familiar from American folk music, of masquerading as simple, naive songs without words, or of ascending into the ethereal spheres of church music.
"The first movement," according to lves,"kept to this idea fairly well, but the second got way away from it, and the third got about in between. Moss White couldn't play the last two, and neither could his teacher. It is called 'Children's Day' because it is based principally on the church hymns sung at the children's services. At the summer Camp Meetings in the Brookside Park, the children (more so the boys) would get marching and shouting the hymns... And the slow movement [recalls] a serious time for children. Yes, Jesus loves me - except when old Stone Mason Bell and Farmer John would get up and shout or sing - and some of the boys would rush out and throw stones down on the rocks in the river. At the end of the slow movement, sometimes a distant Amen would be heard.. ."
For Ives, the traditional methods behind such compositional advances were always evident.
There are substantial quotations from the music of other composers, sometimes conspicuously quoted and sometimes inconspicuously integrated: above all, marches and religious songs, but also a fugue theme written by his father in the first movement of this violin Sonata.
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