Charles T. Griffes had a short but productive career, writing some of the best songs and piano music of our century. A Winter Landscape is something of a mystery piece because his diaries and letters contain no references to it. The autograph manuscript, which is neatly copied and complete, is titled and signed by Griffes, but there is no indication of composition date, poet or text. The title was presumably Griffes' own. The composition was probably written ca. 1912 or earlier, since it exhibits strong evidence of Griffes' Germanic style, which gave way to a more impressionistic idiom in the early 1910s.