It is well known that Ives went into business after graduation from Yale University in 1898. His father's famous advice to Charles, as paraphrased by the composer years later explain why he did not make a career as a professional composer, was "Assuming a man lived by himself and with no dependents … [he] might write music that no one would play … or buy. But—if he has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances. … So he has to weaken (and as a man he should weaken for his children) but his music more than weakens—it goes "ta ta" for money—bad for him, bad for music, but good for his boys!"

When Ives went out into the world, he took a job as an insurance company clerk in Manhattan, but also part time positions as organist in churches. During these years he worked on a project begun while he was still a student of Horatio Parker at Yale, the full-sized cantata The Celestial Country.

Ives, the chorus of the Central Presbyterian Church, and the Kaltenborn String Quartet performed it on April 18, 1902, the only performance of a large-scale work by Ives during his active composition career.

The music was politely received by the New York press, who found it earnest, scholarly, spirited, and melodious. However, it failed to achieve what may have been Ives' purpose in finishing at playing it at this point, for he did not get an appointment to a new faculty position then opening up at Yale as assistant to Parker teaching composition.

Ives now had a choice: Build on the positive reviews and try to make a musical career, or quit professional music. He chose the latter path, resigning from Central Presbyterian two weeks after the performance. Clearly, The Celestial Country represented that path that was "bad for him, bad for music."

The text is by Henry Alford, deriving from a sententious hymn text called Forward! Be Our Watchword. (Ives thought the author was St. Bernard de Morlaix, who had provided the text for Parker's own cantata Hora novissima, on which Celestial Country was all too obviously based. Ives' work does not rise above the level of the dull religiosity of its words.

In 1922 Ives published 114 Songs, obviously intended as the major retrospective of his entire career as a vocal. In that volume Ives essentially let it all hang out: He included silly juvenilia, derivative student assignment works, interesting conservative (even commercial) songs, and visionary new sounds, and included two arias from The Celestial Country (including this one) to represent the great amount of work he put into it. Although it is one of Ives' largest published songs, it is entirely ordinary, and almost entirely uninspired.



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