For the mythical American, physical loneliness means spiritual pilgrimage. What's around the corner might very well be closer to heaven itself. The American artistic radicals, therefore, tend to differ from their European opposite numbers. Schoenberg, for example, took great care to construct a vision of Austro-German musical tradition and to show how his experiments conformed to and extended that vision. Ives didn't bother.
Most American radicals emphasize the hieratic.
They practice mainly a negative art, kicking over what has gone before and then erecting their bit of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. It reminds me a bit of the wholesale razing of Victorian mansions in favor of the large, Fifties-style ranch house or Le Corbusier's nightmare vision of Paris as a series of what's always struck me as gargantuan parking structures. These radicals reject the multitude in favor of the few hardy souls with the courage to join them in the wilderness. Ives and Henry Cowell stand as major exceptions. Although both have their priestly moments, they want to express everything - as far as Ives is concerned, frequently in the same piece.