Charles Ives

Charles Ives sold insurance for a living, and did it very well: his New York firm was among the most successful in the country. Composing happened on nights, weekends, and commuter trains. Born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1874, he learned music from his bandmaster father, who liked experiments such as having two bands march past each other playing different tunes. That collision of sounds became Ives's signature.

His pieces weave in the hymns, marches, and parlor songs of his New England childhood, often stacked on top of each other in ways no one else was attempting at the time. Almost nobody heard this music when he wrote it. Recognition arrived decades later, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for a symphony he had finished some forty years earlier.

Start with the Symphony no. 2, his most welcoming work, then The Unanswered Question, a short, haunting piece for trumpet, winds, and strings.