Ives

Contempoary music

And then there was Charles Ives, a mid twentieth century American composer. For some reason his father encouraged the young Charles to play the piano in different keys simultaneously in each hand. Perhaps it was a way of developing acute awareness of harmony.
Charles became good at it. Then one day out in the street a military band came along playing a familiar tune. Just then a religious ensemble appeared from the opposite direction, playing a different melody in a different key.
Ives was overwhelmed by the effect and set out to write his piece called The Fourth of July. In it two full orchestras are assembled, each playing a different popular melody, in a different key, and each trying to drown the other out.
Somewhere among my eight feet of vinyl records up in the loft here I have a recording of this.
The raucous, strident and calculated cacophony, incrementally increasing in volume as the work progresses would send almost any listener fleeing from the room.
Nowhere else in the history of western music has this piece an equivalent.
I recommend it.