Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown. But his music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. It took time for the quality of his music to be recognized, and he came to be regarded as an "American original". He combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music. He was also among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones. His experimentation foreshadowed many musical innovations that were later more widely adopted during the 20th century.
As noted, sources of Ives' tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.
Essays Before a Sonata (1920), p. 77.
“Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.”
Charles Ives' Rambunctious 'Fourth Of July', NPR Music http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92196531 (July 3, 2008).
“Music is one of the ways that God has of beating in on man.”
Newsletter, Institute for Studies in American Music, XXI http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/isam/NewsF91.pdf (November 1, 1991).
