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From the end of the nineteenth century a national musical consciousness gradually developed in the USA as composers began to turn away from the European conventions on which their music had hitherto been modelled. It was in this period of change that experimentation was born. In this book, the composer and scholar David Nicholls considers the most influential figures in the development of American experimental music, including Charles Ives, Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford, Henry Cowell, and the young John Cage. He analyses the music and ideas of this group, explaining the compositional techniques invented and employed by them and the historical and cultural context in which they emerged.