Born on October 20, 1874, Danbury, Connecticut, Died on May 19, 1954, in New York, New York.
The Unanswered Question
Composed: 1906-08; revised in 1930-35
Estimated length: 6 minutes
Charles Ives is often described as the guiding spirit of America’s “maverick” tradition—a lineage of composers who resisted convention and pioneered radical new ideas. A native New Englander, Ives was steeped in the ideas of Transcendentalist thinkers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who championed the power of nature and the human spirit and became a lifelong fascination for the composer. According to the musicologist Wayne Shirley, Ives took the title for this short, enigmatic piece from Emerson’s poem The Sphynx (1841): “Thou art the unanswered question.”
What is being contemplated here is nothing less than a cosmic mystery. Ives imagined a scenario addressing what he called “the perennial question of existence.” Rather than unfold in the conventional narrative style of his era, the piece is built from three simultaneous strands of music. Heard together, they form a kind of musical collage that makes us newly aware of how music can inhabit space as well as time.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Each layer has its own character. The first is a slow-moving background of sustained string chords. Spaciously voiced and serene, they evoke a timeless hymn—Ives likened their sound to “the silence of the Druids—who know, see, and hear nothing.” This calm backdrop continues almost imperceptibly throughout, never reacting to the other voices.
The second layer introduces “the question” itself: a brief five-note phrase, usually played by solo trumpet positioned offstage, sounding seven times across the piece. Each entrance unsettles the stillness of the strings, beginning on a note that does not belong to their harmonic world and remaining unresolved.
The third layer is carried by woodwinds, which represent “the hunt for the invisible answer.” At first, their replies are tentative and restrained, but they grow sharper and more frantic each time the question returns, until they break into chaos. Ives builds tension by letting these answers accelerate in tempo and rise in volume, until at last they unravel.
On the second-to-last appearance, the trumpet subtly alters its phrase. The seventh and final question is met with silence. Ives wrote that the “fighting answers” eventually recognize the futility of their efforts and mock the question itself: “The strife is over for the moment.” Only the strings remain, pulsing in what he called “undisturbed solitude.”
Scored for 4 flutes (or 2 flutes, oboe and clarinet), strings, and a “solo instrument” (preferably trumpet).
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Featured on Reflections and Hope — October 24 & 25, 2025.
Nashville Symphony
Christian Reif, conductor
J'Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano
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