Charles Ives was an American composer, renowned for his systematic experimentation in music. He was the first person to combine elements of American popular music as well as church-music traditions with European art music to produce a unique style and experiment with different musical techniques like polytonality, polyrhythm, and tone clusters. The son of a musically inclined father, he inherited his penchant for experimental music from his father, who chose to be a bandmaster in spite of being born in an influential and rich family. Although Charles would have liked to follow his father and become a composer, he was more pragmatic and knew that he could not make a living out of music if he wanted to experiment with it. Therefore on graduating from Yale University, he became a successful insurance man and wrote a number of books on the subject. Concurrently, he continued working with music in private, producing a large oeuvre of work, which was largely ignored during his active years. It was only towards the end of his life that he began to get noticed. Today, he is regarded as an ‘American Original.’