The Unanswered Question

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The Unanswered Question is a work by American composer Charles Ives. It was originally the first of "Two Contemplations" composed in 1906, paired with another piece called Central Park in the Dark. As with many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, being first published in 1940. Today the two pieces are commonly treated as distinct works, and may be performed either separately or together.

The full title Ives originally gave the piece was "A Contemplation of a Serious Matter" or "The Unanswered Perennial Question". His biographer Jan Swafford called it "a kind of collage in three distinct layers, roughly coordinated."[1] The three layers involve the scoring for a string quartet, woodwind quartet, and solo trumpet. Each layer has its own tempo and key. Ives himself described the work as a "cosmic landscape" in which the strings represent "the Silences of the Druids—who Know, See and Hear Nothing." The trumpet then asks "The Perennial Question of Existence" and the woodwinds seek "The Invisible Answer", but abandon it in frustration, so that ultimately the question is answered only by the "Silences".

Ives polished the score in 1908, then from 1930-1935 he worked on a version of The Unanswered Question for orchestra. The premiere performance of this version occurred on May 11, 1946, played by a chamber orchestra of graduate students at the Juilliard School and conducted by Theodore Bloomfield. The same concert featured the premieres of Central Park in the Dark and String Quartet No. 2. The original version of the work was not premiered until March 1984, when Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composers Orchestra performed it in New York City. (Mortensen 2005)

[edit] Views on The Unanswered Question

Leonard Bernstein gave this description of the piece:

Ives assigns this question to a solo trumpet who intones it six separate times. And each time there comes an answer or an attempt at an answer, from a group of woodwinds. The first answer comes very indefinite and slow; the second is faster, the third still faster, and by the time we get to the sixth it’s so fast, it comes out like wild babbling. The woodwinds are said to represent our human answers growing increasingly impatient and desperate, until they lose their meaning entirely. And all this time, right from the very beginning, the strings have been playing their own separate music, infinitely soft and slow and sustained, never changing, never growing louder or faster, never being affected in anyway by that strange question – and – answer dialogue of the trumpet and the woodwinds. (Bernstein 1967)

Bernstein also talks about how the strings are playing tonal triads against the trumpets nontonal phrase. In the end, when the trumpet asks the question for the last time, the strings “[are] quietly prolonging their pure G-major triad into eternity” (Bernstein 1976, 269).

Another view of the piece was written by Jan Swafford:

The ‘cosmic landscape’ of The Unanswered Question, a trumpet repeatedly poses ‘the eternal question of existence’ against a haunting background of strings, finally to be answered by an eloquent silence. By that work of 1906, Ives was over half a century ahead of his time, writing in collage-like planes of contrasting styles. In 1951, the Polymusic Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Will Lorin, first recorded the piece. (Swafford 1998)

Henry and Sidney Cowell stated:

Silence is represented by soft slow-moving concordant tones widely spaced in the strings; they move through the whole piece with uninterrupted placidity. After they have gone on long enough to establish their mood, loud wind instruments cut through the texture with a dissonant raucous melody that ends with the upturned inflection of the Question. (Cowell 1955, 177)

Linda Mack discusses her feelings about The Unanswered Question:

One of Ives' most performed works, The Unanswered Question (1908, rev. 1930-1935), is a study in contrasts. Strings intone slow diatonic, triadic chords; a solo trumpet asks the question seven times; the flutes try to answer the question, each time getting more and more agitated and atonal. True to his pragmatism as a sometime theater orchestra pianist, the composer leaves considerable leeway in orchestration of the piece. One group is an unspecified number of strings, another group is a flute quartet (clarinet and/or oboe may substitute for some of the flutes), and the trumpet part may be played by English horn, oboe, or clarinet. In "Note to Performers," Ives indicates that the groups should operate independently.

[edit] References

• Bernstein, Leonard (1976). The unanswered question : six talks at Harvard. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Cowell, Henry, and Sidney R. Cowell (1955). Charles Ives and his music. New York: Oxford University Press.

[edit] External links

• Bernstein, Leonard (1967). New York's Philharmonic Young People Concert 3 [2]. [December 12, 2005].

• Jaffe, David A (1996). Wanting the Impossible (echos of Ives' Unanswered Question). Updated May 2 [3]. [December 8, 2005].

• Kennedy, Michael and Joyce Bourne (1996). Biography of Charles Ives [4]. [December 12, 2005].

• Mack, Linda (2003). [[Charles Ives (1874-1954) The Unanswered Question]]. Updated November 17 [5]. [December 8, 2005].

• Mortensen, Scott (2005). The Unanswered Question Notes. Updated May 5 [6]. [December 8, 2005].

• Swafford, Jan (1998). Charles Edward Ives [7]. [December 8, 2005].