The American Five is a collective name applied by some writers to the modernist American composers Charles Ives (1874–1954), John J. Becker (1886–1961), Wallingford Riegger (1885–1961), Henry Cowell (1897–1965), and Carl Ruggles (1876–1971).
According to Don C. Gillespie, "the first use of the phrase [an 'American Five'] seems to have been made by the composer John Downey in 1962, the year following Becker's death.
'"[7] Stephen Budiansky credits Becker, saying that he, "began insisting that he was one of the 'American Five' great modern composers.
[9] The music historian Richard Taruskin notes that a group of composers including Becker, Riegger and Ruggles, and also Dane Rudhyar and Ruth Crawford Seeger, became associated with Cowell during the period when he published the magazine The New Music Quarterly (1927–1936).
Taruskin (who does not use the term 'American Five' in his survey) comments that "the members [of this group] shared both a technical orientation and an expressive purpose which, like Ives's own may be jointly summed up as transcendental maximalism.