Charles Ives, a New Englander, was taught first by his father, then at Yale by the German-trained Horatio Parker. Ives was unique for his time as an American composer who wrote works in the “classical-music” tradition but also drew on American popular and traditional music idioms. A life-insurance executive professionally, he created an extraordinary body of compositions only later recognized as a treasurable legacy. Among Ives’s chamber works are multi-movement “sets” for small ensembles, string quartets, piano sonatas, and other pieces. He also completed (ca. 1902–1916) these four sonatas for violin and piano—conventional in external structure (each in three contrasting movements) but unconventional in being musically rooted in Protestant American hymnody.