 Because the composer was a pianist, his accompaniments are inventive and colorful.Both "The Pasture" and "Richard Cory" were dedicated to the important Danish soprano Povla Frijsh, who recorded the former song in 1940.His choices of poems by important American poets and their musical settings is remarkable and unexpected, "in a man who was not native born and spoke so many languages, was the depth of his understanding of and response to American poetry, and the force and precision with which he was able to interpret it in musical terms".