The Unanswered Question

• Ives wrote The Unanswered Question op.50 in 1908, and he revised it around 1930-35.¹
• This is one of the first pieces to use atonality (Schoenberg was doing the same thing independently around the same time)²
• Though Ives’ experimental and avant-garde works are more familiar, he also composed tonal, Romantic works, sometimes combining styles within one piece (including this one).³
• Listen for: this piece is a dialogue, written in three layers, played by three different instrument groups:⁴
  • Underneath everything, a serene, string ensemble
  • Over the strings, a solo trumpet appears, posing the “unanswered question” in mysterious atonal passages
  • Also over the strings, a wind ensemble attempts to answer the trumpet’s question in frenzied atonal responses.
  • The dialogue between the trumpet and winds continues until at last the winds give up trying to answer. The piece ends with a final “question” from the trumpet, which remains unanswered, with nothing left by the bare, serene strings.
• Ives wrote a Forward to the score of The Unanswered Question but there is some confusion regarding how literally he wants to be taken. For one thing, he keeps talking about the instruments as though they are people (“the trumpet … states it in the same tone of voice each time” ?? “flutes and other human beings”??). For another thing, he didn’t write this description until the 1930s revision, so we don’t know if Ives actually had any of this in mind when he wrote the piece in 1908.⁵ Here’s an excerpt of the description: (entire forward/score here)

“The strings play ppp throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent “The Silences of the Druids – Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.” The trumpet intones “The Perennial Question of Existence,” and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for “The Invisible Answer” undertaken by the flutes and other human beings, becomes gradually more active, faster and louder through an animando to a con fuoco… “The Fighting Answerers”, as time goes on, and after a “secret conference,” seem to realize a futility, and begin to mock “The Question” – the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, “The Question” is asked for the last time, and “The Silences” are heard beyond in “Undisturbed Solitude.”

Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question (New York: Southern Music Publishing Co., 1940), 2.

• For further information: Bernstein discusses The Unanswered Question as an illustration of the conflict between tonality and atonality (from his 1973 Norton Lectures)

1. J. Peter Burkholder, James B. Sinclair and Gayle Sherwood Magee, “Ives, Charles,” Grove Music Online (October 16, 2013), accessed October 30, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002252967.
2. J. Peter Burkholder et al, A History of Western Music, 7^th Ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 838-839.
3. Ibid.
4. Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question (New York: Southern Music Publishing Co., 1940), 2.
5. Jan Swafford, “A Question Is Better Than an Answer,” Charles Ives Society, accessed October 30, 2019, https://charlesives.org/question-better-answer.