When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a...

When, in 1922, Charles Ives published a volume entitled 114 Songs, he was indirectly drawing attention to the fact that the genre had played a central part in his output. 85 years on and, for all that his wider reputation may now rest on his orchestral, chamber and piano music, songs represent the heart of his creative thinking. Nor was that initial volume comprehensive; Ives having written almost 200 songs, of which this present edition includes all those he completed. The expressive variety encountered is accordingly vast: indeed, the gradual evolution of Ives's songwriting, from those drawing overtly on the Austro-German Lieder and English parlor-song traditions to ones that evince anarchic humor as keenly as others do a profound vision, is analogous to the evolution of American music over the last quarter of the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries. Although it would be possible to collate Ives's songs according to type, the alphabetic approach adopted by this edition ensures each volume (of which this is the sixth and last) contains a representative cross section of his achievement. A wide range of poets is set (Ives could be highly interventionist when it suited his purpose), including (mainly early) German settings as well as forays into French and Italian writers. Moreover, the temporal distance (1887-1926) traversed by the songs is as little compared to their stylistic diversity or their emotional range. The extent to which Ives reworked songs throughout his career is considerable, whether substituting a text or reworking the actual music. To this end, songs with a musical or textual connection are cross linked accordingly (i.e. in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraph). The setting of Rudyard Kipling's Tarrant Moss (1902) uses just two verses, treated in a peremptory fashion as if to suggest that the text was merely the nearest one to hand (see also Volume 5, track 27, Naxos 8.559273). Set to an anonymous text, There is a Certain Garden (1897) has a tripping and irregular piano part against which the vocal line unfolds a little awkwardly, though the charm of the song is undoubted. A revision of an earlier German song, now to Ives's own text, There is a Lane (1902) is a brief but winsome setting; the fond nostalgia of it's vocal line underscored by the piano (see also below, track 27). A late addition to his song canon, They are There! (1942) was Ives's contribution to the American war effort; setting his own (updated) text with a conviction aptly summed up by the subtitle 'Fighting for the People's New Free World'. It can be performed (as here) by unison voices, and with a lively ad lib instrumental part. Ives left a memorable, breathlessly enthusiastic recording.