None of the versions I can find of Ives' version seem to follow Vachel Lindsay's poem through to its ending.

Charles Ives arrangement is a proper vocal setting and quite extraordinary, a much more challenging musical dramatic world than this, impressive though it is. But better is such a negative comment Ivan, don't you think and you are not comparing like with like. Gowans is a fine proactive actor in his way, but of course Ives brings quite another dimension. I haven't heard of a brass band version though - be interesting to do it with a good band like this one. This is a very Victorian exploration although the music is a little nearer mid 20C, amazing though that Ives music was so radical at such h an early date :-) Great though !! Nigel

When I hear Ives' version, It sounds like Charles Ives, and the text could have been written by anyone. When I hear this performance, it is the way Vachel Lindsay intended his poems to be read.

​@@andyb9378 Interesting Andy - I hear what you mean - Ive's explosive sound world came more from his US experience and Booth's reactions to Vioctorian London in particular came from that more specific tortured world. Funny enough my dad made a lovely version of his own with both singing and speaking and using music-hall like music to offer up the poem. I only ever heard it with piano but I think he may have done a brass band version at sometime. So my experience of the poem came from his more Victorian music world along with some of the dialogue over music. When he was at Cambridge he persuaded me to perform the Ive's, a piano version, in a meeting and I'm not sure how the people understood it. It certainly had an impact and underneath it all, I think the poem was at the heart of Booth's bass drum.

It was interesting to discover this, but I have to agree - what Ives did was so original and moving and this sounds more like a high school concert band piece. The oration here is formal where in Ives it's raw and spontaneous with shouts of hallelujah. The scene depicting Jesus standing at the courthouse door while Booth and his crew doesn't notice is so much more moving and psychologically nuanced in the Ives. To each their own, though. I for one can't keep the Ives version out of my mind when listening to this despite that it may be incomplete literally. Ives version is complete in another way.