Feldeinsamkeit, though dated 1900, was actually composed by November 1897. Brahms set this poem, by Hermann Allmers, as his Op 86 No 2, but Ives’s treatment is one of his most ravishing songs. Ives remembered with pride the established composer George W Chadwick’s visit to Horatio Parker’s Yale class: hearing Ives play over this setting, Chadwick said it was as good a song as Parker could write and almost as good as the Brahms, and composed from an ‘almost opposite approach … for the active tranquillity of the outdoor beauty of nature is harder to express than just quietude’.
from notes by Calum MacDonald © 2005
