A Perfect Day, song for voice & piano, S. 326 (K. 6B18c)

• Date: 1902 12
• Composer: Charles Ives
• Period: Modern (1910-1949)

Review

Ordinarily when Ives omitted an early song from his all but comprehensive collection of 114 Songs (1922) one is not sure whether the omission is a mistake (stemming from his having forgotten the song or being unable to find it in his stacks of manuscripts) or the result of a value judgment that the song was of too poor quality to include.

While he was deprecating of some of his songs in notes he included in that publication -- sometimes, for instance, saying that certain songs are better left unperformed -- these are usually defensive statements, meant to disarm criticism that such songs are naïve or unpolished when Ives had included them to represent his worthy youthful efforts.

Here the evidence is strong that Ives decisively rejected it. Over one spot in a manuscript he had paid to have prepared by a professional copyist he wrote "bad...bad" and wrote in the margin "probably the worst song composed in USA." (For course, this was at least 30 years before rock & roll.)

Ives' judgment is understandable; if not nearly as bad as he stated it is one of his own poorest efforts. The text (by an "author unknown") is arch and conventional. Ives makes some gauche slips including uncharacteristically ignoring the natural rhythmic pattern of English.

The poem also includes such unmusical lines as "The vagueness in the undulant hill line," (which Ives sets with an accent on the syllable "-lant" and relegating "hill" to a mere sixteenth note) and "glad brook laughter like mirth of spring."

Not surprisingly, Ives did not reuse this music in any form. ~ Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

Albums with Complete Performances of the Work

Title	Date
Ives: Songs, Vol. 5	2008
The Complete Songs of Charles Ives, Vol. 1	1992

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