I never thought about it before but if you believe the Fourth Turning generational theories, Charles Ives belonged to a "prophet" generation, equivalent to our boomers. As a pattern, the prophet archetype is born in a civic high (e.g. after World War II), becomes an adult during an awakening (e.g. the Sixties), leads during an unravelling era (e.g. the Nineties), and acts as an elder during a crisis (tbd). Here's the equivalent cycle during Ives' life:
The Missionary Generation (Prophet, born 1860-1882) became the indulged home-and-hearth children of the post-Civil War era. They came of age as labor anarchists, campus rioters—and ambitious first graduates of black and women’s colleges. Their young adults pursued rural populism, settlement house work, missionary crusades, “muckrake” journalism, and women’s suffrage. In midlife, their Decency brigades and “fundamentalists” imposed Prohibition, cracked down on immigration, and organized Vice Squads. In the 1930s and ‘40s, their elder elite became the “Wise Old Men” who enacted a “New Deal” (and Social Security) for the benefit of youth, led the global war against fascism, and reaffirmed America’s highest ideals during a transformative era in world history.
Although heavily influenced by his father, Ives, as ideologist (pdf), rejected the American musical orthodoxy more than say, Aaron Copland, who was part of the next, more pragmatic Lost Generation. And in later life, significantly younger composers held him in high esteem, presumably as a model of American accomplishment.
this post inspired by the sixties song in-a-godda-da-vida, as seen in a fidelity investments ad. simpsons version on youtube.
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