Charles Ives, in planning his self-financed publication called 114 Songs originally decided to begin the collection with this beautiful and visionary setting of some lines from John Milton's Paradise Lost. (Later he decided to thumb his noses at the soft-eared and moved his radically dissonant "Majority" to the opening position of the book.)

This confronts the casual browser with a vastly different impression than this song would have created. "Evening" is delicate, mystical, and beautiful. It has strange harmonies, but these are understandable in their context. It would have signaled the fact that much of the 114 Songs is relatively easy to play, sing, understand, or listen to, even while being (often) strange.

Of course, this misapprehension would occur to average browsers. Informed ones could readily spot the special qualities of this atmospheric depiction of the falling of night and silence (save for a nightingale's piping note) over creation. One who was not dissuaded from this song was Aaron Copland. The younger composer gave a pioneering concert in which he played (accompanying singer Herbert Lipscott) seven Ives songs on May 1, 1932, including "Evening." Copland's concert was a major step in the slow recognition of Ives as one of America's major talents.

"Evening" is one of Ives' trademark miniature masterpieces. Brief though it is (18 measures) it makes a strong emotional impression and moves through several distinct musical textures in depicting Milton's nightfall. A gently pulsing, syncopated inner voice opens the song in a simple texture that grows dense with more mysterious harmonies.

When Milton evokes the silence of the night, the texture changes and lightens. After the nightingale makes a poetic entrance, the staccato repeated notes of the bird's song dominate the texture in a high register. The syncopated pulse returns for two measures, then the accompaniment sings to near silence in the low register as the nightingale ascends to the top.

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