I just love the "Pop-Think" here, the need to pigeon-hole music as "great" or "shit." I notice that Bartok is in your list of interests. I can play "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste" in my head from memory, but I gave up years ago finding very many folks who shared that passion, and I'm fine with that. As I've stated, there are plenty of folks out there who don't get a lot out of Charles Ives. As far as the date accuracy of his innovations, I don't know enough to comment.

All I know is that, in the eyes of a pretty significant number of classical critics, theorists, and performers, the jury is not still out on Charles Ives - he has his place and importance, and the ruminations of participants in an on-line synth forum won't have much impact on that. The chamber chorale of which I'm a member has performed only a small number of American performers over the last few years, one of which is Ives.

Frankly, if we were going to hope for some 20th Century composer to go away, we could aim lower...Dvorak comes to mind...But no amount of trashing of his music is going to change the fact that every major orchestra includes "From the New World" amongst its repertoire. Just the fact that you and I both know who Ives is and what he did has a lot to say about his significance for the question of this thread.