This piece purports to be a picture-in-sounds of the sounds of nature and of happenings that men would hear some thirty or so years ago (before the combustion engine and radio monopolized the earth and air), when sitting on a bench in Central Park on a hot summer night.
Within this, Ives juxtaposes the different sections of the orchestras in contrasting and clashing pairings (i.e. the ambient, static strings against the syncopated ragtime pianos against a brass street band).
The first documented performance of the piece was in New York on May 11, 1946, by the chamber orchestra students from Juilliard Graduate School conducted by Theodore Bloomfield.
It was performed at an all-Ives concert at the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University as part of the Second Annual Festival of Contemporary America Music.
In relation to programs to be printed for the concert Ives wrote: Though it is not an important matter, it would be well—unless the programs for the May concert are already printed—not to put as a first public performance the 'Central Park- some 40 years ago' as it was cut down some, in instrumentation, for a Theater Orchestra and played between acts in a downtown Theatre in N.Y. [Ives] doesn't remember the exact date or the name of the theater.
[6] In 1967, the pop group The Buckinghams recorded the song "Susan", and producer James William Guercio inserted an excerpt from Ives' Central Park in the Dark without informing the band beforehand.