(Credits: Far Out / National Portrait Gallery / Yale University)

You might think that classical music and all of its variations can be a little stuck up, pretentious and serious, but in reality, composers have always been creating unusual and experimental works. Music may well have been something enjoyed by the upper classes for a long time, and therefore created with the intention of being a sophisticated art form, but that doesn’t mean that it always had to abide by a strict set of rules.

Yes, some composers would have followed tradition and created works in what would have been considered a respectable manner that made no attempts at bastardising the art. Think of these as being your pop stars of the period – they made music that was designed to appeal and be accessible to its audience, but it wasn’t in any way challenging. However, on the other hand, you would have composers with a drive to innovate and usher in new styles – the underground, if you like.

The thing is, due to historical music discovery relying on the preservation and dissemination of sheet music, or if recent enough, there being archived audio recordings that prove their existence, some of the most inventive composers are often buried in time, and if they weren’t considered to be among the greats of their era, then it’s highly unlikely that their works would have been preserved at all.

This, unfortunately, is how the works of incredibly talented yet avant-garde composers like Charles Ives end up flying under the radar until long after their deaths, although Ives was fortunate to just about avoid ever being completely ignored and forgotten forever. Born in the late 19th century in Connecticut, Ives would have been around at a time when technology was rapidly advancing, with it becoming possible for people to listen to music privately at home rather than just in concert halls. However, Ives’ music was a little too peculiar to be mass marketed, so he was never hailed as the genius he was until much later.

Incorporating features such as polytonality and polyrhythm long before they became common features of classical music, Ives’ work was at once maddening and extraordinary. The possibility of creating works with these features was known about, but it wasn’t something that many composers thought worthwhile to utilise until the 20th century, when the likes of Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt and Alfred Schnittke began to dominate in the world of modern classical. 

This innovative style has led to Ives being referred to as an “American original”, but it took until the later years of his life for this to be recognised even in the slightest. Perhaps his most famous piece, ‘The Unanswered Question’, was written in 1908 and revised in 1934, but it was never performed until 1946, just eight years before his passing. The song is notable for how it often requires three conductors to command the string, woodwind and brass sections simultaneously, as they are playing in tempos independent from one another. The strings form a slow backing, while a solo trumpet will perform an atonal treble line which is then ‘answered’ by the woodwinds in equally dissonant fashion.

20th-century composer Aaron Copland has referred to the piece in the past as “among the finest works ever created by an American artist”, and his work was significantly inspired by the inventiveness of Ives. Some of his other works, such as ‘Central Park in the Dark’, are chaotic in as much as it switches from dour and dreary orchestral movements to frolicking carnival music on a whim, while his Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Symphony No.3’ is surprisingly simple – you can never quite predict what you’re going to get with him.

Other notable figures who have praised Ives include Gustav Mahler, Frank Zappa, and Bernard Herrmann, demonstrating that his ideas are not just heralded by those writing symphonies but also by conductors, arrangers, and contemporary musicians. Ives’ work may have been so far ahead of its time and otherworldly in its presentation, but it’s frankly a relief that his music was preserved.