Ives' 1922 volume of 114 Songs is a retrospective of the vocal compositions of his entire life. No doubt compiled because he was seriously ill with heart damage called by then-untreatable diabetes and feared an early death, 114 Songs includes Ives' most recent and radical works, juvenilia, student works, and many other songs that provide a fascinating picture of Ives' development as one of the most radical composers in the world.

He also managed to make reference to works that were originally written in other forms: Some of his short experimental works were transformed into songs for publication in the volume, and there are excerpts from the "Concord" Piano Sonata, violin sonatas, and symphonies represented in 114 Songs.

It also included two arias from the only large-scale work that Ives had penned to have received a full-scale public performance.

This was The Celestial Country (Ky 23 in John Kirkpatrick's catalog of Ives' music). Ives began the work while he was in the last part of his apprenticeship as a composition student at Yale University under Professor Horatio Parker, a highly conservative composer despite his relative youth. He was only 10 or 11 years older than Ives, and arrived at Yale the same year (1894) as Ives.

But Parker was now famous for his cantata, Hora novissima, widely praised after its premiere in Boston that year and soon to be played often around the country and in Britain. He wrote it in the spirit of consolation following some family deaths, and uses the visionary text of St. Bernard de Morlaix about the joys of heaven.

Ives clearly intended to emulate Parker. His cantata is also about the joy of heaven, and is equally conservative in style. Ives even thought he was using the words of the same writer, translated into English, but here he was wrong, perhaps fatally so.

The poem is by Henry Alford. It is a processional hymn called Forward! Be Our Watchword. Ives set it in seven large sections with organ interludes. The latter parts are often interesting; the vocal parts of it rarely so. The poetry is dreary, conventional, and saccharine in its religiosity. Unfortunately, Ives' music rarely improves on its alleged inspiration.

The opening verse is typical of Alford's dense exhortatory poetry:

"Naught that country needeth of these aisles of stone;

Where the Godhead dwelleth, temple there is none."

In contrast to Ives' other large-scale works, his available manuscripts show little signs of revision and second thoughts. He worked on it during his first years as an insurance company clerk in New York City, while he was also working as a church organist (part time positions).

He premiered the cantata at the Central Presbyterian Church in April 1902, where he then worked. There is little in it that could have bothered the regular congregation; little, alas, that could have uplifted them. For the most part, it was stale before it was created, and this excerpt is sadly representative of the whole.

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