The Italian futurists are technically the first avant-garde music. When they were doing what they were doing, they were funded by Ferruccio Busoni. Who himself was an extremely conventional piano player(and virtuoso) but a massive advocate of music experimentation. Including microtones, and electronic music. He also is responsible for funding Varese.
The most important of he two futurists are probably Luigi Russolo, and Antheil. Antheil obviously for La Ballet Mechanique. Russolo for pretty much inventing noise music in the 1910s against a backdrop where the only musics in Europe were folk, and classical(which is based off folk). Setting up the framework for electronic music, creating avant-garde music, home made instrumentation, and non-melodic music(Which one could argue is the template for a lot of modern rock, hip-hop, electronica, and pop).
I honestly think that Luigi Russolo is, bar none, the most important musician of the 1900s, and the most important musician since. He's really probably the first composer ever to bridge out of acoustic music into modern electric music.
Ives probably predates them, but maybe not as technically 'avant-garde' as really what he did was add dissonance to classical moreso. He also may have been one of the first composers to explicitly write microtonally. Best of my knowledge, he didn't really experiment in electronic music.
Varese is simultaneous with the futurists. Him, and Russolo actually were friends early on in both of their careers. Varese's purpose was to create music which more represented the feeling, and tone of Gregorian chant, but really is the first to fully orchestrate electronic music. He also extensively used sirens, and other means. He borrowed a lot from the futurists but was strictly more known in the American dada circle(and ironically mostly for his post WWII works). He was actually a heavy critic of the futurists later on.
Schoenburg deserves a nod, as serialism was quite radical for it's time(and before he had serialism his style was fiercely atonal. Edgard Varese later, in a Varesian fashion heavily criticized him for inventing a system.) By extension Webern should be counted. Both I believe slightly predate/run simultaneously with Varese.
Cage, Partch, and Pierre Schaeffer were technically pre-WWII composers. Schaeffer is another thread that Varese connects with the futurists.
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Terence Hill, as recently confirmed during an interview to an Italian TV talk-show, was offered the role but rejected it because he considered it "too violent". Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta declined the role for the same reason. When Al Pacino was considered for the role of John Rambo, he turned it down when his request that Rambo be more of a madman was rejected.
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Al Pacino = God
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