Early on, Ives’s music already had touched upon virtually every twentieth century musical innovation. Typically well in advance of others, these techniques would be found within some of the most daringly avant-garde compositions of his day, as his expression seemed to look ever-more Heavenward. Looking for a precise progression in the timeline up to this point is perplexing. Although the overall direction of Ives’s road to the stars is clear—and certainly no one ever would confuse a work from 1900 with one from 1920, for example—Ives, however, worked on countless works simultaneously, reworking existing music and ideas from one into another with uncanny flexibility and regularity. His materials would grow further as they continued to evolve, to the point that Ives often lost track of exactly what piece was written when. (His various attempts to catalog his work years later often were in slight disagreement, though they are not nearly so enigmatic as has been proposed by some.) The upshot is that sometimes works with elements belonging to different periods emerged at the same time. If a chronological and logical flow of musical evolution was not always to be, the destination itself, however, never was in doubt. Because Ives’s road to the stars also encompasses the years in which he built his hugely successful business, with both careers compressed within a mere two decades, his productivity could have filled several lifespans, his contributions in both fields being wide. Illness, disillusionment, and the Universe Symphony settled it; once the latter had formed in his mind (and to a large degree it did exist in sketch form), going further proved impossible, regardless, not only because Ives no longer had the energy, but also because he had reached the outer limits of his creative vision. Before completing a full draft of the work, his composing soon halted altogether. Many historians, psychoanalysts and musicologists have attempted to de-mystify the rapid cessation of Ives’s compositional activity, especially in regard to the mighty near-mythical symphony. Did most of them miss the clues, through too clinical an examination of Ives’s unique circumstances? Complex psychological and medical explanations sometimes belie simple truths, however. As alternate agendas have taken advantage of the innocent, benevolent genius of one of America’s most remarkably creative and defining figures, Ives has become totally unrecognizable. Often it seems the failings of his detractors are more on display than any of Ives’s making. Ives’s music emerged as the product of a brave new world, in which the cultural sophistication of the general public still was in its infancy. The arts were presumed to be European. Ives came to relish his status as one of American music’s “bad boys.” Wary of becoming too readily accepted, such an outcome would have meant that his music had become the status quo; Ives realized that such comfort levels spelled musical stagnation. He was not trying to shock or offend anyone, even more to scare his audience away, although he did not mind disturbing the “lily pads” (who could be men or women), who wanted to listen only to that which soothed and caressed their sensibilities and never presented anything new (see, too, discussion at the end of Chapter 2). For many, Ives’s music still baffles, mystifies and perplexes. If impressions of it are derived from brief exposure only to his more outlandish and daring compositions, it is probably too much to expect easy or immediate acceptance. Just as Ives’s music evolved alone, it follows no remotely parallel path to those others have taken. The music—often dismissed in Ives’s day it as the incoherent ramblings of a dilettante, of one who did not know what he was doing—journeys along its own road, but first, one has to find and recognize that road! Seldom encountering any positive support or encouragement, Ives endured callous rebukes by renowned musicians and reviewers, even some of his extended family and those he considered his friends. Ives’s rise to prominence followed a long road of discovery—mostly after he had ceased composing. For the enthusiastic new blood in American music, as well as by those in progressive movements abroad, it was a golden period of innocence that saw Ives heralded as a musical prophet. It would be followed by a time of disbelief that something so remarkable, seemingly out of musicological bounds at every turn, had to be explained away. Being an “outsider,” Ives’s religious, philosophical and political views were apparently untenable in any figure embraced as the “Father of American Music”! An over-eager inquisition would devolve into the outright shredding of Ives’s reputation, resulting in the reinvention that suited the status quo better. Persisting and further evolving even to the present day, the same attitudes that had dogged Ives during his lifetime still not have gone away. Despite clear refutations demonstrations of many of the one-sided judgments, a segment of scholarship has continued to cling steadfastly to a false picture of Ives and his music, even going so far as to impose artificial dates upon his entire catalog, in order to suit a musicologically-preordained model. One does, therefore, need persistence and openness to uncover the truth, as well as an understanding and willingness to think independently. Seeing through all the smoke shows this “Beethovenesque” figure to be not so different to the man most of his devoted followers thought they knew all along. Ives’s music and life stand proudly defiant of its recent revisionism, needing no justification or reason for its existence or contributions.