Nov. 2. 1920 and An Election are the titles Charles Ives gave to essentially the same work in their guises as a solo song with piano accompaniment and as a unison choral song with orchestral accompaniment.

Twenty-five years earlier Charles Ives had written William Will and other official Republican Party campaign songs supporting the Presidential candidacy of William McKinley. Now he wrote his most bitter political song out of shock and disappointment over the defeat of Democratic candidate James Cox by Warren G. Harding.

There were several reasons for this shock. Ives had been profoundly affected by World War I, as were artists the world over. It was almost mandatory that the war mean something, that Woodrow Wilson's proclamation that this was a "war to end all wars" be enforced by the creation of the League of Nations with American participation. The election of Harding would clearly show the American people had turned their backs on this ideal.

In addition, Ives believed with almost religious depth in the God-given wisdom of "The Majority" and had written both a pamphlet and a song with that title, demanding a Constitutional Amendment to set up a system of referenda on leading national issues. (The proposal included provisions for mandatory political study of such issues for the whole population.

Then came the election of Nov. 2, 1920. Harding won; Cox and by extension Wilson and the League of Nations were repudiated in one of the great landslide defeats in American history, 60 percent to 34 percent in the popular vote.

One or the other of Ives' cherished beliefs had to be wrong. He and the League of Nations supporters were in the minority, and he couldn't stand it. Nov. 2 is a bitter, hectoring diatribe that essentially shouts throughout how stupid, greedy, and swinish the electorate was. His own text uses phrases like "the hog-heart came out of his hole," "to hell with ideals"; "a good many citizens voted as granpa always did." It was a victory of "prejudice and the stand-patters," who yelled "It's raining, lets throw out the weather man."

It ends by linking Wilson to Lincoln with a quotation from Whitman. It's strong music, and has many of Ives' touches (including quotations of The Star Spangled Banner and Cohen's Over There, but Ives makes it mawkish by prefacing it as representing the thoughts of an old man "whose son died 'in Flanders fields.'" In the end, it impresses as little more than a diatribe set to harsh music.

© All Music Guide