Heinrich Heine's poem "Ich grolle nicht" is well-known to fanciers of the repertory of the classical art song or Lied as number 7 in Robert Schumann's song cycle Dichterliebe, Op. 48. Charles Ives came to write his song setting of the "lyrical romance," as Heine designated it, as an assignment from Horatio Parker, his composition professor at Yale University.

Though only about a decade older than Ives, Parker, with a background of German-style training, was much more conservative both as a teacher and a composer. One of the methods used in teaching composers is to assign them poetic texts to set, selecting words that had been set by major composers of the past.

This was a teaching method that was more effective in the days before recordings made it east to become acquainted with a wide range of musical literature. Once the young composer completed his composition without reference to the famous version, the song would be critiqued and then compared to the solution written by the "great master."

Ives' songs of this sort are often quite good, with one of them, Feldeinsamkeit, rising to the level of being truly worthy of comparison with its predecessor by Johannes Brahms. Although this song is not quite as good as Feldeinsamkeit (although Parker stated his preference for the Heine setting because it did not depart as far from the Schumann ideal of song composing) it is a very good song for a student work, and is one of Ives' most-performed songs.

To this writer, the instant song is just a little too observant of the goal of staying on Parker's good side. It is rather prim and reserved, which might reflect (besides Ives' wish to stay in Parker's good graces) the fact that Ives simply was not naturally drawn to expressing the sentiments usually found in love poetry. (Feldeinsamkeit, on the other hand, is about looking into the dome of heaven and contemplating eternity, a very Ivesian notion.)

Ich grolle nicht is still a good song, and among his most often performed. It did not need the note of apology Ives appended to it in 114 Songs:

"The writer has been severely criticized for attempting to put music to texts of songs, which are masterpieces of great composers. The song above and some of the other, were written primarily as studies. It should be unnecessary to say that they are not composed in the spirit of competition; neither Schumann, Brahms, or Franz will be the one to suffer by a comparison; another unnecessary statement. Moreover, they would probably be the last to claim a monopoly of anything—especially the right of man to the pleasure of trying to express in music whatever he wants to. These songs are inserted not so much in spite of this criticism as because of it."

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