There are several reasons Ives published "only" 114 songs in his 1922 volume of that name. In several cases he omitted songs he had written for church service performance, likely on the grounds that these songs had achieved performance and did not need further exposure at his expense. In other cases he chose only one variant of a song he had written in different versions, either with minor musical changes or substitution of different texts (or both).

Another prevalent reason is in cases where he could not obtain copyright permission to reprint the texts. One of his greatest works, "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" was omitted for that reason.

Song No. 72 of the book is a special case. Ives apparently wrote it in 1898 as a setting of Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tarrant Moss," a tale of ill-judged revenge. The song actually made it into the volume. Then, apparently at the last minute, it became clear that approval of Kipling's agents would not come, at least in time. The words of the song were omitted from the engraving, except for the first few, "I closed and drew...," which is followed in the score with "etc...." and the note included concerning the lack of permission to print more.

The few words make it clear that the setting of "Tarrant Moss" was syllabic, so it is easy to go get a copy of the Kipling poem and sing the song therefrom.

After getting 114 Songs safely to press, Ives turned to "Tarrant Moss" again, writing his own words to the melody and parodying Kipling. With the success of the turn-of-the century novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and its film adaptation Nosferatu by the German Expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau, vampires were sufficiently in the public attention to draw the attention of Ives, who was, reportedly, not a filmgoer. He added the following note: "...as copyright permission was not obtained, the nice poetry above was written later (not by Mr. Kipling)."

Ives directs that the song be played Allegro con fuoco—Fast with fire—and ("or as fast and hard as possible"). Ives dated the song to "1902" when he published the "Slugging a Vampire" version several years later; others have suggested it may have originated as early as 1898. Either way, its music is astonishingly polytonal in such a way that there are frequent dissonances of tritones, major sevenths, and minor ninths, and other such dissonant effects. The final cadence, for instance, superimposes an inverted C major chord in the left hand under an open fifth sonority of E and B. The left hand then plays the open fifth sonority of C and G (implying an "empty" C major chord) while the right hand has an open fifth sonority of F# and C# The song, as a result, sounds gruff, angry, and somehow off-kilter, yet with a sense of bravado as the narrator apparently decks the blood-sucker with a good left-right combination.

© All Music Guide