Ives: The Unanswered Question

Profound, moving, a religious experience are some of the things said about Jesus's life. This piece is better then Jesus as it doesn't give people an answer.

Unfortunately Douglas Adams wrote the answer as 42 and not wishing to be beaten by some one from the future John Cage looked from his temporally out-of-sync vantage point and pre-emptively wrote 4'33". Some believe its an actual piece written in three movements others that he misread the Hitchhiker's Guide in his search for duration...

Listen.

Awesome piece. I first heard it maybe a year ago, and I was like "what the hell?" then, but I like it more and more now.

Ives is great in general.

The piece is an amazing experience. I really wanted to see it live at the NYPhil this upcoming season, but the rest of the program did not appeal to me and thus I decided against it (I had no interest in Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto and was terrified that I would not like Magnus Lindberg's new work as I don't know anything about his work). So I opted for Zemlinsky, the premier of Pintscher's "Osiris" and Mozart's Prague. I'm just hoping it was the right thing.

But regardless, this piece is probably Ive's masterpiece. I don't think it gets enough credit for how great it is. It's kind of like Barber's Adagio, but it doesn't make you sad; it makes you think really hard about everything. It's just unbelievable.

I needed to listen to this a few times to like it. The first time was hilarious, the winds sounded like they were really out of tune.