ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explains music by two composers who represent a contrasting stylistic position: Charles Ives and Ruth Crawford Seeger. The music of these composers can best be understood in the context of what they know as the American ultramodern movement. Charles Ives is broadly considered one of the most idiosyncratic and original composers in the first half of the twentieth century. The first is the use of existing music, which Ives quotes or integrates into his own music in a variety of ways. The other trend, which best defines Ives as an ultramodern composer, results from his interest in experimentation, often into technical and compositional realms that turn Ives into a musical pioneer, a maverick who in many ways was well ahead of his time. Seeger’s compositional thinking is essentially melodic. Independent melodies are combined together in polyphonic textures (following principles of “dissonant counterpoint”).
