Since Leonard Bernstein declared him "our first really great composer," Charles Ives (1874-1954) has been portrayed variously as "an American pioneer of musical modernism," "a symbol of American freedom," "a victim of the sociosexual mores of Gilded Age American culture, "the patriarch of a line of maverick composers," and even "the perpetrator of one of the greatest musical hoaxes of all times." All of these images of Ives and more are the subject of this book by Paul (musicology and theory, U. of California at Santa Barbara), who examines the reception of Ives by critics, composers, performers, and scholars, considering them both as varying images of Ives but also, more importantly, as a mirror to the changing picture of how Americans understand themselves. Accordingly, he places as much emphasis on understanding the interpretive communities in which people have spoken about Ives, including the ways in which ideas transfer from person to person and issues of constituency, as he does about their specific ideas about Ives. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)