Modernist composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) is considered one of the first American composers of international significance. Noted for his individual and iconoclastic harmonic style, Ives’ music employs a range of innovative musical techniques such as polytonality and polyrhythm, and displays the influence of varied musical styles including American popular and sacred music.

Although he was an accomplished pianist and organist and studied composition at Yale, Ives did not make music his profession. Instead, he enjoyed a successful career as an insurance executive, claiming that he did not want his children to “starve on his dissonances.” Ives’ wide-ranging body of work includes music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments. He is perhaps best known for the orchestral piece The Unanswered Question (1906).

Ives’ music was largely unknown during his lifetime, and many of his works went unperformed for years. His complex harmonies and rhythms made widespread acceptance of his work difficult, despite the fact that it was championed by several of the 20th century’s leading musical figures, including Schoenberg, Mahler, and Bernstein. Today, Ives is remembered as a brilliant composer whose work foreshadowed many of the great compositional innovations of the 20th and 21st centuries.