This is avant-garde/experimental. Ives is definitive avant garde and extremely experimental. He practically single-handedly introduced extreme dissonance, a hundred years ago.

I don't mind, people can categorize things however they want (I'm not arguing over issues like that), it just seems an interesting thing to look at. Experimental can cover all genres, just like at the other extreme perhaps pop can too. Every genre has a more experimental side, but also a more pop side.

And on this particular thing I suppose it depends how you define extreme dissonance, others had used harsh dissonance before him. Whatever his influence may or may not be the music still has to stand on it's own merit of course. And I tend to more interested in that than who may have done something first or who influenced others or not.

Damn... I would've voted for this if it was in the poll.

i won't be able to participate for a few more weeks due to particularly taxing obligations, but it's still nice to read up on the most recent threads. i'm jealous of the selections i'll likely be missing out on :/

Just catch up on them a few weeks later or whenever you have the time. Bump the old threads; that's what they're there for!

Name one Western musician who used that level of dissonance before before 1910.

And how do you measure dissonance? Some pieces I like by Ives aren't dissonant really anyway. So all I care about is whether I like the music not some technical details.

Whatever. You said that others used harsh dissonance before him but you can't back that up because he pioneered its use in that form. I never said he only uses dissonance and it's not a 'technical detail'. It's crucial knowledge for anyone interested in avant garde music.

But in what form? The use of dissonance in music could go back to Jean-Fery Rebel's The Elements, Haydn's Creation, Mozart's Dissonance Quartet. Ives uses it apparently as a contrast to tonal elements in some of his pieces as well. Prokofiev may have done some early dissonant piano pieces.

One area Ives may have been original - if it really matters - is polytonality. Not sure many composers since have really used that technique (again, if it really matters whether it's influential or not).

I think the crucial knowledge for people listening to experimental music is really just getting used to a style a piece of music is in That could be classical, jazz, electronica or other kinds of music

The form I mean is traditional instruments for an orchestra.

Those are good examples, especially Rebel (I need to learn more). Haydn, too, has really surprised me. Still, I don't think these composers made anything like the clashing dissonances of Ives but we should probably save it for when my nomination wins the vote.