aworks :: "new" american classical music

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives #soundtrack #germany

I saw a re-release showing of Run Lola Run at the Aquarius Theatre in Palo Alto. Originally released in 1998. the movie excerpts Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question, one of my favorite works.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /canonical riffing/

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HurdAudio on a concert by the Jamie Baum Septet:

Hearing the signature trumpet line of The Unanswered Question transformed into a riff over a pulsing ensemble texture was incredibly satisfying.

Jamie Baum on her recording Solace:

I had received a CMA/Doris Duke grant to write music for my Septet using influences from the music of Charles Ives. My intention was never to have my music sound like his, not that I could do that anyway. It was more about listening to his music, really checking out in-depth a few of his compositions and then seeing what I could come up with, how it would inspire me…how it might influence my writing and how I could integrate it into some pieces that would be fun or challenging to improvise over.

lala has a streaming album:

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /"a father, not a fossil"/

Several items of note including two from the Halloween issue of the New Yorker (items not online; go buy the magazine) and one from the Fredösphere (online, free and often surprising):

1. In a New Yorker paragraph about the Yale at Carnegie concert of Ives songs, it is stated that "Ives is generally recognized as America's greatest classical composer." Really, generally recognized? I think his body of song represents an amazing achievement and I'll accept Ives as the first great American composer (although I would nominate Aaron Copland as the greatest). This so astounds me, I'd like to hear if anyone wants to suggest Ives as greatest.
2. Fred of Fredösphere basically calls Ives a coward, at least on a harmonic basis (along with Elgar). I also enjoy Fred's continued dislike of Haydn even as I have warmed up to the composer earlier this year after listening to the Robert Greenberg Haydn lectures.
   
3. Speaking of Aaron Copland, Steve Martin, in a nostalgic piece centered around performing at Knott's Berry Farm early in his career, tells a bizarre anecdote about he and a friend visiting the composer for an interview:

We emerged a half hour later with the coveted interview and got in the car, never mentioning the men in skimpy black thongs, because, like trigonometry, we couldn't quite comprehend it.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /huggable?/

Jeff Norman gives examples of consonant music with drastic contrasts including Jane Fakes a Hug by the the Wrens but also Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question:

In many ways, the Wrens track is a translation into personal, everyday life of the high-minded (and rather heavy-handed) philosophical issues Charles Ives explored in his well-known piece "The Unanswered Question."

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /clarity/

Andrew Woodrow on Ives' The Unanswered Question:

The Unanswered Question (the Ives they played) is written for a string orchestra, a trumpet, and a few woodwinds. The strings repeat the same thing over and over again (and the thing they repeat reminded me of Barber's Adagio), and the trumpet and woodwinds interject interrogative phrases here and there. It's clear. And beautiful.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /kfjc/

A review of an Ives album, from the KFJC (Los Altos Hills!) website including this succinct description of The Unanswered Question:

over a slowly shifting bed of strictly diatonic strings, a trumpet asks a 5-note question, and a woodwind quartet answers. Repeat 5 times, woodwinds getting more and more atonal and crazed. Existential burning consumes you.

In my previous Unanswered Question post, M. Keiser of Music in a Suburban Scene comments that it still sounds as if it could have been written last year. Timeless indeed.

Cujo, the KFJC reviewer, also points out Decoration Day is what we now call Memorial Day.

rgable: aworks wwi/prohibition era ives: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news google blog yahoo audio  memorial day: wikipedia

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /tonality/

Rajarshi Chaudhuri wrote about Ives' The Unanswered Question:

So, is tonality seemingly everlasting - could be so - but the disturbing question - like a specter - still floats in the air and of course there is no answer other than silence and confusion!

In other Ives news, singer Bruce Hornsby incorporates Ives' Study No. 22 into one of his songs. And Cheryl Gibbs reviews a concert of American music in Richmond, IN and calls The Unanswered Question one of Ives' less approachable works. Well, for me, I heard it once and was instantly ensnared.

rgable: aworks wwi/prohibition era ives: aworks del.icio.us wikipedia google news google blog yahoo audio word for the day: polytonality apple stores, mormon temples, and where ives bought his ipod

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /congregationalist/

While discussing  organized religion, Scott  Spiegelberg makes the point that Charles Ives, despite some of his music's ambivalence, was a devoted Congregationalist:

Instead, Ives shows that religion doesn't have to be all about revelations. "The Cage" ponders if life is simply pacing back and forth, with no goal in sight. The Unanswered Question realizes that some questions have no answers, and is at peace with that, while still asking the question.

I don't know much about Congregationalists. I see that they were called, appropriately for Charles Ives,  "separatists" or "independents." The idea of autonomy of congregation is attributed to John Wyclif, a fourteenth-century theologian and Platonist. I just finished the book "The Last Night: The Twilight of the Middle Ages and the Birth of the Modern Era," by Norman Cantor. He describes aristrocratic medieval life through the lens of the life of John of Gaunt, whom the author considers the last medieval knight, before social changes shook up the status quo. Regarding Wyclif, although England unlike other countries, didn't necessarily persecute heretics, Wyclif's radical writings, including the notion the Church at the time should divest itself of its land and property, resulted in his being brought to an inquistional court of the Church. However, Gaunt, pursuing spiritual questions brought on by the Black Death and sympathetic to Wyclif, ended up protecting him by starting a riot during the trial and attacking the residing Bishop.

Anyway, my point is that Wyclif, to his benefit, had aristocratic protection in the form of  billionaire prince Gaunt. However, Charles Ives had to fend for himself. He did provide for himself financially via his very successful insurance career, but had he been born in earlier times, maybe Ives would  had a benefactor or protector. This might have allowed him to focus solely, in his early adult years, on his heretical music. I'm guessing but it's probably hard being a heretical artist and a responsible, faithful, devout citizen at the same time.

Real stream of The Unanswered Question here, via classique.abeillemusique.com.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives /autumn/

Linus Gelber  at Pepper of the Earth writes that  Ives' The Unanswered Question suggests September sun and the coming Autumn.

• Prior aworks post on The Unanswered Question.
• Full Real stream via abeillemusique.
• Jazz version MP3.
• Preston Wright's Flash demonstration of Ives technique of spatial sound.
• In 1906, Charles Ives had a physical breakdown, partnered to start an insurance company, began courting his future wife, and  the San Francisco earthquake was the first major natural disaster to be photographed.

The Unanswered Question (1908). Charles Ives. /societal relevance/

In an essay "Movies as Mirror on Society", San Francisco film critic Mick LaSalle writes about current movies reflecting a lack of faith in both individuals and institutions:

If anything, American movies are more cynical and despairing than before. Their implicit message: People are garbage and the world is terrifying.

I buy into the somewhat different Fourth Turning historical doctrine where we are near the end of an unraveling era ("third turning") , where people hold institutions in low esteem but view themselves with high esteem:

Wars are fought with moral fervor but without consensus or follow-through. Eventually, cynical alienation hardens into a brooding pessimism... During an Unraveling, an obliging society serves purposeful individuals, and even good people find it hard to connect with their community. 

LaSalle also links post-World War II film noir with Charles Ives:

I see noir as a despairing response to conformity, depicting the individual's lone wail and his subsequent submersion. Or to put it another way, noir is the cinema's equivalent of composer Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question."

From which I'll conclude The Unanswered Question is not really speaking to us now, 60 years into the battle of overcoming conformity.  I still like the work, though, as does Kenneth Walton in the Scotsman:

Not for nothing was his [Ives] best-known piece called The Unanswered Question - a startling contradiction of musical styles written in 1906 that somehow achieves penetrating unity through its unconventional diversity. Ives, in his personal and musical life, was such a paradox.