Charles Ives

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For the New Zealand international football (soccer) player, see Charles Ives (footballer).

Charles Ives
Background information
Birth name	Charles Edward Ives
Born	October 20, 1874 Danbury, Connecticut
Died	May 19, 1954 (aged 79) New York, New York
Occupation(s)	composer, insurance agent

Charles Edward Ives (/aɪvz/; October 20, 1874 – May 19, 1954) was an American modernist^[1] composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown,^[2] though his music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, he came to be regarded as an "American original".^{[3][dubious – discuss]} 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,^[4] foreshadowing many musical innovations of the 20th century.
Sources of Ives' tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.