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There are very few composers of whom it can be said that they gave the world not just a new music, but a new kind of music \u2013 a phenomenon whose existence would otherwise have been impossible to predict, on the evidence of what had come before. Step forward Charles Edward Ives \u2013 bandmaster\u2019s son from Connecticut, gifted athlete and sportsman, Yale University graduate, and insurance agent in the New York firm of Ives and Myrick.<\/strong> <\/p> The still young American nation in the late 19th century had not yet built up a classical musical tradition that it could truly call its own. American concert halls and the repertory performed there were dominated by European example. So were American composers such as Edward MacDowell and Ives\u2019s main teacher, Horatio Parker.<\/p>