This is a lovely song with a flowing accompaniment and a tender melodic line. Its composer, Amy Beach (1867 - 1944) has become recognized as one of America's greatest composers after a few decades of comparative neglect during the middle period of the twentieth century. When she wrote Five Burns Songs, Op. 43, in 1899, she was the wife of Dr. H.H.A. Beach, a Boston physician and Harvard lecturer; moreover, she could pursue music without financial pressure. Far Awa' is number four of the Burns settings, a gently nostalgic song about reminiscence of one who is "far away." Beach, who approached her composition in a fully professional manner, got it published in 1899. After her husband's death in 1910 and her return to the concert platform, she considered the potential for further exploitation of her better musical ideas, including this song. In 1918, she issued it in several versions: One for piano solo, one for chorus, and another for vocal duet (in a version for a man and a woman's voice and another for two female voices)—all these appearing in 1918—two versions she wrote in 1936, one for organ and another for piano. The piano version from 1936 is a particularly interesting case. The original version of the song is entirely in a late-Romantic style and a fairly conservative one. After a few years of residence in Germany between the death of her husband and mother (1910 - 1911) and the outbreak of World War I, Beach returned to the U.S. having observed the many changes taking place in music of all sorts. By the end of the 1920s, she had absorbed many lessons from Impressionism and the neo-Classical movement. The 1936 version is effectively a new composition based on her original melody and elements of the original harmonic framework, but her chords are more adventurous. She uses increased dissonance to transform the nostalgia of the original setting into a more painful contemplation of separation and loss. The first half of the song climbs and the melody eventually disintegrates into some of its component motive and rises in loudness. The second half again begins quietly and grows in intensity, this time using falling motives. Beach then adds a brief coda full of unresolved dissonance chords, only giving some respite at a fully resolved final chord.

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