Nevin's third opus included three exquisite songs of a pastoral nature, Goethe's rollicking "One Spring Morning" having an immense sale. Opus 5 contained five songs, of which the ecstatic "'Twas April" reached the largest popularity. Possibly the smallest sale was enjoyed by "[Herbstgefühl]." Many years have not availed to shake my allegiance to this song, as one of the noblest songs in the world's music. It is to me, in all soberness, as great as the greatest of the Lieder of Schubert, Schumann or Franz. In "[Herbstgefühl]" (or "Autumn-mood") Gerok's superb poem bewails the death of the leaves and the failing of the year, and cries out in sympathy:
"Such release and dying
Sweet would seem to me!"
Deeper passion and wilder despair could not be crowded into so short a song, and the whole brief tragedy is wrought with a grandeur and climax positively epic. It is a flash of sheer genius.
Three piano duets make up opus 6; and other charming works, songs, piano pieces, and violin solos, kept pouring from a pen whose apparent ease concealed a vast deal of studious labor, until the lucky 13, the opus-number of a bundle of "Water Scenes," brought Nevin the greatest popularity of all, thanks largely to "Narcissus," which has been as much thrummed and whistled as any topical song.
Of the other "Water Scenes," there is a shimmering "Dragon Fly," a monody, "Ophelia," with a pedal-point of two periods on the tonic, and a fluent "Barcarolle" with a deal of high-colored virtuosity.
His book "In Arcady" (1892) contains pastoral scenes, notably an infectious romp that deserves its legend, "They danced as though they never would grow old." The next year his opus 20, "A Book of Songs," was published. It contains, among other things of merit, a lullaby, called "Sleep, Little Tulip," with a remarkably artistic and effective pedal-point on two notes (the submediant and the dominant) sustained through the entire song with a fine fidelity to the words and the lullaby spirit; a "Nocturne" in which Nevin has revealed an unsuspected voluptuousness in Mr. Aldrich' little lyric, and has written a song of irresistible climaxes. The two songs, "Dîtes-Moi" and "In der Nacht," each so completely true to the idiom of the language of its poem, are typical of Nevin's cosmopolitanism, referred to before. This same unusual ability is seen in his piano pieces as well as in his songs. He knows the difference between a chanson and a Lied, and in "Rechte Zeit" has written with truth to German soldierliness as he has been sympathetic with French nuance in "Le Vase Brisé," the effective song "Mon Desire," which in profile suggests Saint-Saëns' familiar Delilah-song, the striking "Chanson des Lavandières" and "Rapelle-Toi," one of Nevin's most elaborate works, in which Alfred De Musset's verse is splendidly set with much enharmonious color. Very Italian, too, is the "Serenade" with accompaniment à la mandolin, which is the most fetching number in the suite "Captive Memories," published in 1899.
Nevin has also put many an English song to music, notably the deeply sincere "At Twilight," the strenuous lilt "In a Bower," Bourdillon's beautiful lyric, "Before the Daybreak," the smooth and unhackneyed treatment of the difficult stanza of "'Twas April," that popular song, "One Spring Morning," which has not yet had all the charm sung out of it, and two songs with obbligati for violin and 'cello, "Deep in the Rose's Glowing Heart" and "Doris," a song with a finely studied accompaniment and an aroma of Theokritos.
A suite for the piano is "En Passant," published in 1899; it ranges from a stately old dance, "At Fontainebleau," to "Napoli," a furious tarantelle with effective glissandi; "In Dreamland" is a most delicious revery with an odd repetition that is not preludatory, but thematic. The suite ends with the most poetic scene of all, "At Home," which makes a tone poem of Richard Hovey's word-picture of a June night in Washington. The depicting of the Southern moonlight-balm, with its interlude of a distant and drowsy negro quartette, reminds one pleasantly of Chopin's Nocturne (op. 37, No. 1), with its intermezzo of choric monks, though the composition is Nevin's very own in spirit and treatment.
In addition to the works catalogued, Nevin has written a pantomime for piano and orchestra to the libretto of that virtuoso in English, Vance Thompson; it was called "Lady Floriane's Dream," and was given in New York in 1898. Nevin has also a cantata in making.
It needs no very intimate acquaintance with Nevin's music to see that it is not based on an adoration for counterpoint as an end. He believes that true music must come from the emotions—the intelligent emotions—and that when it cannot appeal to the emotions it has lost its power. He says: "Above everything we need melody—melody and rhythm. Rhythm is the great thing. We have it in Nature. The trees sway, and our steps keep time, and our very souls respond." In Wagner's "Meistersinger," which he calls "a symphonic poem with action," Nevin finds his musical creed and his model.