Charles Sprague "Carl" Ruggles (March 11, 1876 – October 24, 1971) was an American composer. His pieces employed "dissonant counterpoint", a term coined by Charles Seeger to describe Ruggles' music. His method of atonal counterpoint was based on a non-serial technique of avoiding repeating a pitch class until a generally fixed number such as eight pitch classes intervened. He wrote painstakingly slowly so his output is quite small.
