Ives eperimented a lot with dissonance and atonality, which he regarded as masculine. Beautiful melodies were something he relegated to the feminine. He always referred to Sergei Rachmaninov as Rach-not-man-enough.
During the Thirties, Ives liked going to concerts conducted by Nicholas Slonimsky that featured "modern" classical music, full of dissonance. (I met Slonimsky in 1988, accompanied by his stunning 18 year old red-headed great-granddaughter, at a Los Angeles Philharmonic concert conducted by Pierre Boulez and dedicated to the moderns.) During the intermission of this Slonimsky concert in New York, a man sitting behind Ives complained to his wife that he didn't like this music because it didn't have any melodies he could hum-m-m-m-m-m. Charlie turned to the man behind him and hissed, "You goddam sissy!"
I think Ayn Rand used Ives as a model for composer Richard Halley in Atlas Shruged.
I agree with you about “Atlas Shrugged”.
And I DO appreciate a little bit of dissonance in music. I love Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and even Beethoven stretched the borders of harmony, much to the dismay of the musical “establishment”. But, in my very humble opinion, I find too much of that dissonance, for its own sake, annoying.
The three composers that I mentioned used discord discerningly and with intelligence, in order to provide contrast to some of the most exquisite melodies ever to grace the ears of humanity.