Music of the United States of America

How many songs did Charles Ives (1874-1954) write? For years the songs of this iconoclastic American composer have only been known in imperfect editions of his 114 Songs (privately printed in 1922) and two collections published in Henry Cowell's New Music series: Thirty-Four Songs (1933) and Eighteen [recte Nineteen] Songs (1935), which include mostly reprints from 114 Songs (some with revisions) plus nine new songs. Virtually every page of these three standard songbooks reveals musical and textual errors, problematic notation, and puzzling inconsistencies.
     The MUSA collection of 129 Songs is a critical edition of the 114 Songs, thirteen songs first published later, and two unpublished "songs without words"—in other words, all of Ives's solo songs except the fifty-four already published in critical editions by the late John Kirkpatrick (Eleven Songs and Two Harmonizations, Sunrise, and Forty Earlier Songs). The MUSA edition is based upon a comparative study of Ives's manuscript sketches and fair copies; his many copyists' scores; songs he revised for the New Music imprints; annotations by him in personal copies of those imprints and of 114 Songs; and manuscript and published text sources (by Ives, his wife Harmony Twichell Ives, and many other authors).

Complete detailed critical notes and commentaries for all the songs, as opposed to the briefer "Reports" based on them that are in the published volume, can be found on the Charles Ives website (www.charlesives.org) in PDF form.

Music Sample

Contents:

    1. Slow March
    2. A Song—For Anything:
        a. Hear My Prayer, O Lord
        b. When the waves softly sigh
        c. Yale, Farewell!
    3. At Parting
    4. Abide with me
    5. When stars are in the quiet skies
    6. Nature’s Way
    7. Mirage
    8. Canon
    9. Song for Harvest Season
  10. Waltz
  11. The Circus Band
  12. A Night Song
  13. A Christmas Carol
  14. Rosamunde
  15. Night of Frost in May
  16. Songs my mother taught me
  17. Amphion
  18. My Native Land
  19. A Son of a Gambolier
  20. Kären
  21. The World’s Wanderers
  22. The South Wind / Die Lotosblume
  23. A Night Thought
  24. Marie
  25. An Old Flame
  26. In the Alley
  27. I travelled among unknown men
  28. Dreams
  29. Qu’il m’irâit bien
  30. Memories:
        a. Very Pleasant
        b. Rather Sad
  31. There is a lane
  32. Feldeinsamkeit / In Summer Fields
  33. Ich grolle nicht / I’ll not complain
  34. Chanson de Florian
  35. Naught that country needeth
  36. Forward into Light
  37. Rough Wind
  38. Harpalus
  39. Evidence
  40. Tarrant Moss
  41. Slugging a Vampire
  42. The Waiting Soul
  43. Flag Song
  44. Where the eagle cannot see
  45. Omens and Oracles
  46. Allegro
  47. Romanzo (di Central Park)
  48. Berceuse
  49. Du alte Mutter / My dear old mother
  50. The Children’s Hour
  51. Élégie
  52. Ilmenau / Over all the treetops
  53. Weil’ auf mir / Eyes so dark
  54. Walking
  55. Those evening bells
  56. The Light That Is Felt
  57. The Cage
  58. The World’s Highway
  59. Spring Song
  60. Soliloquy
  61. Autumn
  62. Tolerance
  63. A Farewell to Land
  64. Mists
  65. Religion
  66. Requiem
  67. Vote for Names! Names! Names!
  68. The Camp Meeting
  69. His Exaltation
  70. Watchman!
  71. The New River
  72. The See’r
  73. December
  74. Like a Sick Eagle
  75. Luck and Work
  76. Lincoln, the Great Commoner
  77. Old Home Day
  78. General William Booth Enters into Heaven
  79. Thoreau
  80. Swimmers
  81. At the River
  82. The Innate
  83. In Flanders Fields
  84. He Is There!
  85. They Are There!
  86. The Things Our Fathers Loved
  87. Tom Sails Away
  88. To Edith
  89. Down East
  90. Serenity
  91. Cradle Song
  92. Afterglow
  93. The Collection
  94. Grantchester
  95. La fede
  96. August
  97. September
  98. On the Counter
  99. Maple Leaves
100. Charlie Rutlage
101. At Sea
102. Hymn
103. Remembrance
104. The “Incantation”
105. The Last Reader
106. The Housatonic at Stockbridge
107. The Indians
108. West London
109. Two Slants (Christian and Pagan):
         a. Duty
         b. Vita
110. Walt Whitman
111. The Rainbow (So May It Be!)
112. Majority
113. Premonitions
114. Nov. 2, 1920 (An Election)
115. The Side Show
116. “1, 2, 3”
117. Paracelsus
118. Ann Street
119. Immortality
120. Two Little Flowers
121. The Greatest Man
122. Resolution
123. Disclosure
124. The White Gulls
125. Evening
126. Aeschylus and Sophocles
127. On the Antipodes
128. Song without words [I] 
129. Song without words [II]