Unanswered Question

One of America’s most original artists, Charles Ives (1874-1954) brought his insatiable curiosity to fruition in only about two dozen published works. Many of these were not even performed in his lifetime. In 1908 Ives simultaneously created two “Contemplations,” as he called them: Central Park in the Dark and The Unanswered Question. The latter, revised significantly in the 1930s and first performed in 1946, is a fascinating score for solo trumpet, woodwind quartet, and off-stage strings. These groups unfold in isolation from each other, moving at different tempi. The Unanswered Question translates a very specific program expounded by the composer himself, and its ethereal string opening, with strident call from solo trumpet, demonstrates Ives’ particular gifts. The strings, representing “The Silence of the Druids,” sound a primordial vista that draws upon Ives’ experience with sacred hymns and organ music. This thirteen-bar subject is interrupted seven times by the trumpet’s non-tonal “Perennial Question of Existence.” To this question, the woodwinds try to flesh out an answer, but their response grows increasingly erratic. Eventually these “Fighting Answerers” fall silent at the end, leaving the trumpet’s final question unanswered.
From an early age Ives was fascinated by distinct, conflicting planes of sound. Three planes are laid out in The Unanswered Question, and three basic musical aspects—tempo, texture, and tonality—keep these planes independent throughout. The “Perennial Question” motive was revised to end on a pitch other than its starting note, making it sound even more quizzical. The use of an open-ended question as principal motive shows a debt to Beethoven’s last string quartet, whose finale attempts to answer the existential query “Must it Be? (Muss es sein?). Other musico-philosophical brethren help contextualize Ives’ striking work. Consider Richard Strauss’ famous tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra. The tone poem opens with clarion trumpet over sustained organ chords. Simultaneous to Ives, Alexander Scriabin wrote both The Poem of Ecstasy and Prometheus, in which the trumpet symbolizes a primal “will to power” from a composer steeped in Nietzschean thought. For Ives the philosophical foundation is suitably closer to home, stemming from Emerson’s The Sphinx, the subject of Ives’ senior thesis at Yale. In that poem, the Sphinx says to the Poet:

“Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply.”

(c) Jason Stell