Into the Unknown

Music's unanswered questions. Why didn't Schubert finish his B minor Symphony? What is Charles Ives asking in his Unanswered Question? What is the theme from Elgar's Enigma Variations based on?

Facts are scarce and mysterious. Schubert made no mention of the symphony during his short lifetime. It lay buried, like hidden treasure, in a cluttered study until the 1860s – more than 30 years after his death. The full score, clearly written in Schubert's own hand, includes two movements: a wonderful melodic first movement and a heartbreaking second. And then, nine bars of a scherzo, followied by nothing. The music stopped abruptly as if Schubert had been interrupted mid-thought.

Against a background of slow, quiet strings, a solo trumpet, in Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question, poses ‘the perennial question of existence,' to which a woodwind quartet vainly try to provide an answer, but growing more frustrated and more dissonant.

Elgar refused to explain The Enigma – “its ‘dark saying' must be left unguessed. Through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes' but is not played” But what is it?.