The Unanswered Question

One of my favorite pieces of music that I find myself returning to periodically is Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question”, written by Ives around the beginning of the 20th century but not performed until the 1940s.

It’s a haunting piece of music that for me captures both emotionally and philosophically what it means to be a person.

The piece starts with slow, peaceful, expansive strings, moving almost like breathing. Ives referred to this part of the piece as the “Silence of the Druids”. For me, it feels like a representation of the universe, of existence itself, of being. As I hear these strings flowing along, I imagine creation itself in a similar slow, breath-like flow.

About a minute and a half into the piece, the strings are met with a lonely trumpet, which apart from being alone also sounds kind of out of place. This is “The Question” that the title refers to. This represents each of us in our existential situation, looking out into the fact of being with a sort of out-of-place inquisitiveness.

I’m already reminded of Albert Camus (1913-1960) and his description of the Absurd, the tension arising from our desire for understanding and the “unreasonable silence of the world” that does not provide us with such understanding.

Ives highlights the absurd attempts we make to create explanations with an annoying woodwind section that comes in about two minutes into the piece, and then several times after that in response to the trumpet’s question. These increasingly erratic, confused interruptions remind me of the ways that our brain can erupt into bursts of frantic thought in attempts to explain the unexplainable.

Listen throughout the piece to the conversation between these three elements: the peaceful strings, the lonely trumpet, the erratic woodwinds, playing out the ongoing conversation between the universe, our existence in it, and our attempts to make sense of it all.

Notice the peaceful feeling that arises when there is a break and we hear only the strings. Notice the awkward but aching feeling that arises when the trumpet asks its question. Notice the anxiety that erupts with the erratic woodwinds. It’s strikingly similar to the experience of meditation, where we notice our breathing, our emotions, and the erratic interruptions of our thoughts before returning again to noticing our breathing.

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