Charles Ives

Born: October 20, 1874 (Danbury, Connecticut, United States) Died: May 19, 1954 (New York, New York, United States) Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer, one of the first American composers of international renown. He is widely regarded as one of the first American composers of international significance. Ives combined the American popular and church-music traditions of his youth with European art music and was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music. With musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatoric elements, and quarter tones he was foreshadowing virtually every major musical innovation of the 20th century. Ives's music was largely ignored during his lifetime as an active composer, but since then his reputation has greatly increased.