Unanswered Question is a musical work by American composer Charles Ives. Originally paired with Central Park in the Dark as Two Contemplations in 1908, Unanswered Question was revived by Ives in 1930-1935. Like many of Ives' works, it was largely unknown until much later, and not done until 1946.
With a slow and quiet backdrop representing "The Silence of the Druids", a solo trumpet poses "The Perennial Question of Existence", in which the woodwind quartet of "Fighting Answerers" tries in vain to answer, grows more frustrated and dissonant until they give up. Three groups of instruments perform in independent tempo and are placed separately on stage - strings outside the stage.
Video The Unanswered Question
Composition
Unanswered Questions are valued for three groups: ensemble string, solo trumpet, and woodwind quartet. The play groups are independent in time and are placed in such a way that they may not be able to see each other; string playing outside the stage.
Ives provides short text to interpret the work, giving it narration as in the music of the program. Along the part of the string maintains a slow tonal triad which, according to Ives, represents "The Silence of the Druids - Who Know, See and Hear Nothing". Against this background, the trumpet raises the seven-time show-"The Perennial Question of Existence" - which woodwinds "replied" the first six times in an increasingly erratic fashion. Ives writes that woodwinds' reply represents "Fighting Answerers" who, after some time, "realizes the futility and begins to mock the 'Questions'" before disappearing, leaving "Questions" to be asked once more before "The Silence" is left to "The Silence Tak Engage "them.
The string twice repeats the development of thirteen pianissimo-bars, so slowly it has a static feel. It uses lead voices, passing tones, and decorative notes in a way that is reminiscent of singing or singing hymns. After repetition, the string section varies in a subtle way that the listener is hard to hear. Unlike the ever-changing but seemingly ordinary "Silence", the trumpet repeats the same "Question". This is the answer or the woodwinds that change in a clear way, growing increasingly agitated and dissonant. After woodwinds finally surrendered, the trumpet asked the question calmly for the last time.
Maps The Unanswered Question
History
Initially Ives wrote Unanswered Questions in 1908 (though often erroneously in 1906). In 1930-1935, he revised it to include a 13-bar introduction and make woodwind parts more dissonant, and added further indication of dynamic and articulation. He also made minor but significant changes to the "question motive", which originally ended in the notes that started it, but now remains unresolved.
Ives greased the score in 1908, then from 1930-1935 he worked on an Unanswered Unanswered Version for the orchestra. The first appearance of this version took place on May 11, 1946, played by a graduate student's orchestra at Juilliard School and performed by Edgar Schenkman, with a rope led by Theodore Bloomfield. The same concert featured the premiere of Central Park in the Dark and String Quartet No. 2 . The original version of this work was not aired until March 1984, when Dennis Russell Davies and the American Composers Orchestra presented it in New York City.
In 1985, Paul Echols and Noel Zahler produced an unanswered edition of Unanswered Questions that included the original version and revised 1930-1935 edition. Echols and Zahler are lucky because a fairly complete source is available to work from both values.
Views
Linda Mack calls "Unanswered Questions" a different study: The string represents a diatonik chord, a slow triadic: a solo trump asks seven questions: the flute tries to answer the question, each time getting more and more agitated and impolite. "Leonard Bernstein adds in his 1973 Norton Lectures that borrowed the title of Ives's work that woodwinds are said to represent our increasingly impatient and desperate human answers until they lose their full meaning. Meanwhile, from the outset, the string has played their own separate music, very soft and slow and sustained, never changing, never growing harder or faster, never affected in any way by the strange question and answer dialogue of the trumpet and woodwinds. Bernstein also talked about how the string plays a tonal triad against the non-tonal phrase trumpet. In the end, when the trumpet asks a question for the last time, the string "secretly extends their main pure G trio into eternity". This piece graphically represents the 20th century dichotomy of tonal and atonal music that occurs at the same time.
Another view of the paper was written by Austin Frey:
'The cosmic landscape of Unanswered Questions , trumpets repeatedly give rise to the "eternal question of existence" against a haunting background of strings, ultimately to be answered by an eloquent silence. With that 1906 work, Ives had been more than half a century ahead of his time, writing in collage-like areas. In 1951, the Polymusic Orchestra Room, performed by Will Lorin, first recorded it.
Henry and Sidney Cowell add that the silence in the form of slow-moving soft concordant tones widely placed inside the strings moves through all parts with undisturbed serenity. Once these notes solidify their mood, the wind instrument cuts texture with a hoarse melon that ends with inflection The inverted question.
Wayne Shirley believes that Unanswered Questions shared "images, structures, and worldviews" with "The Sphinx" (1847) by the American Transcendentalist poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and that the title came from a line of poetry : "You are an unanswered question". While at Yale, Ives wrote his senior essay on Emerson, and shortly after writing the Unanswered Question he compiled his book Emerson Overture, the part that was later put into > Concord Sonata
Reception and inheritance
Ives' biographer Jan Swafford called the "collage-like" piece in three different layers, approximately coordinated ". Aaron Copland, who often performed compositions, regarded it as "one of the best works ever made by American artists".
Ives used a separate group of instruments placed separately on stage and played in an independent tempo affecting the work of American composer Henry Brant.
This music was used in a 1972 short film directed by Donald Fox based on the story of "Young Goodman Brown" by author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was also used in the 1998 Run Lola Run movie.
The music was used in The Thin Red Line (1998), directed by Terrence Malick. Performed by Orchestra St. Luke's (as The Orchestra of St. Luke's) and Organized by John Adams.
This introduction was reused by Owen Pallett for an alternative version of the song "CN Tower Belongs to the Dead" as the B-side of the "Lots of Life -> 49 MP" single; it's funny called "Many versions of Ives" as a clear reference to Charles Ives. This version is also played directly with the orchestra.
Notebook
References
The work cited
External links
- Bernstein, Leonard (1967). New York Philharmonic Young People 3 (December 12, 2005) concert
- Jaffe, David A (1996). Want the Unlikely (echoes of unanswered questions). (December 8, 2005)
- Kennedy, Michael and Joyce Bourne (1996). Biography of Charles Ives (December 12, 2005)
- Mack, Linda (2003). Charles Ives (1874-1954) Unanswered Questions (December 8, 2005)
- Mortensen, Scott (2005). Unanswered Question Notes (December 8, 2005)
- Swafford, Jan (1998). Charles Edward Ives bio (December 8, 2005)
- Unanswered Question on YouTube
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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