Nashua Symphony - Orchestra & Chorus

Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Unanswered Question-1908

I first encountered Ives’ The Unanswered Question in an education concert performed by the National Symphony in the recently opened Kennedy Center, in 1970. I was seven years old. Conducting the piece was Murry Sidlin, someone who was years later to become a teacher of mine at Aspen. To do this day, I remember the many-layered silence of the piece and of that concert hall, and feeling that time was suspended. It may well be that this instant is when my love of that universe we know as "orchestral music" began. Curiously, I have never conducted the piece and am delighted to explore it for the first time with Nashua audiences.

Ives’ The Unanswered Question is very much a prelude in feel, though it contains within it a universe, perhaps two. The "question," the nagging insistent trumpet refrain, remains unresolved, yet the piece provides a modern-and extraordinarily compelling-encounter with the unknowable. The strings provide a constant "harmony of the spheres" backdrop to the repeated disturbing articulation of doubt in the trumpet. The trumpet’s obsessive intrusions are mortal, obstinate, and courageous in their indiscretion. Flutes echo the trumpet, providing dissipating ripples of the inquiry, contributing their voices and objections to the knottiness of the human dilemma. We have in the strings a beautiful and entrancing constant that will grant no reply. Their hymn is on a different plane from our limited human questioning But let’s not disparage human obstinacy: without the trumpet and flutes, the piece-and by implication, existence itself-would have no profile and little purpose.

- Jed Gaylin

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Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 8 in B Minor,
D. 125 "Unfinished"-1822

I performed Schubert’s Unfinished most recently as part of a benefit concert for AMC Cancer Research Center. I chose this work at that time specifically for the sense of unresolved striving in the first movement, reflective to me of so many among us who have struggled, and of our medical community’s unrelenting efforts at pursuing cures and treatments. But the second movement provided a contrasting sense of resolution, or of a dream’s fulfillment, though still elusive. Since that performance, this piece remains for me one of heroic striving and a hoped for release.

Although Schubert’s "Unfinished" Symphony is the title role of "Unfinished Business," in many ways this work is the most resolved of the three on our program. Schubert finished what we have of the Symphony in 1822. He was 25 when he wrote it, and he died at 31. The gigantic ensuing six years of his brief adulthood saw the completion of many works including his titanic 9th Symphony. True, there are sketches for what would be the "Unfinished’s" third movement. But Schubert did not pursue them. What we have then, are two perfect, and perfectly conjoined movements that complement each other so well that, I believe, anything further would be artistically extraneous.

In the first movement, from the low rumblings in the cello-bass opening, through the plaintive song in the oboe-clarinet, and the jarring, interrupting full-orchestra chords, we have a turbulence that is almost unrelenting. The well-known, beautiful 2nd theme in the celli provides some relief. But even in this moment, the woodwinds maintain agitating syncopations. In contrast, the second movement is a balm, the exact inverse of the previous movement, filled with peaceful chorals, and dreamy oboe and clarinet melodies that only occasionally touch on anxiety. Schubert keeps a similar triple meter and tempo for both movements, thus implying a continuation of thought between movements.

The Symphony’s two-part form highlights the contrast between the first movement’s anguish with the second’s tranquility and transcendence. Where Ives juxtaposed these two elements in non-dialogue, Schubert teases them apart to form a narrative. Here is a perfect two-part essay where the first part glimpses with longing beyond the threshold. Then we cross over from that painful existence into the bliss second movement, which views the threshold from the opposite view. How much more fully "finished" can a work be, after providing these two disparate yet intertwined states of the soul?

- Jed Gaylin

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W.A. Mozart (1756-1791): Requiem-1791

Lest we remain too much at peace, we conclude with the most restless work on the program. Mozart’s Requiem is a work that I came to study and perform more recently in my life. I have always felt in Mozart an unsatisfied quality, even in those works which most consider to be sun-filled (in contrast to, say, Haydn, whose music seems to reflect a musical persona full of well-being). This statement is, of course, an oversimplification; no great composer writes music of only one stamp. Yet, we only have to look at the ambiguities in the late operas-Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutte, The Magic Flute, and, yes, even Figaro-to find this quality borne out in dramatic terms. For me, Mozart is at his most direct when he is in the conflicted emotional state found in the Requiem and in Don Giovanni. But with Don Giovanni, we sense a torment that is presented as a drama in the third person, whereas in the Requiem, we feel it actually confessed and personal.

The requiem is a mass whose text asks for rest-"requited-ness"-for the dead. Mozart’s, however, is a desperate plea of anguish for those on earth rather than a supplication for those beyond the grave. Mozart’s business is indeed unfinished as he challenges the heavens themselves for peace and salvation. Gone is any objectivity in praying respectfully through music for the dead; Mozart has staked his very soul in the piece. The work, incomplete at Mozart’s death, was finished by his pupil Süssmeyer.

It is telling that Mozart left us (with the exception of the beautiful and operatic Recordare) only those movements that travel beyond emotional turbulence to places of anguish and even torture. Even his more lyrical moments (Salva me at the end of Rex Tremendae), are the cowering pleas of a crushed ego. The movements he left unwritten were those that might have provided respite. The key of the work, d minor, is the same as that most subversive and disturbing of operas, Don Giovanni. The Süssmeyer movements provide some welcome (though admittedly less brilliant) relief. He wisely chose to use the same musical material to conclude the Requiem that Mozart used for the opening, supposedly on Mozart’s instructions. The final sonority of the first movement Kyrie, and therefore of the whole work as is an open fifth. Mozart’s use of this ancient harmony dating to the middle ages leaves us with an almost gothic, hollow ending.

Unfinished business indeed. In having the courage to ask, through music, the biggest, existentially demanding questions, all three composers have given us some of their most intimate, provocative, and powerful expressions. The trajectory of this program moves from the quizzically unresolved, to one of fateful wrestling, increasing in intensity throughout the concert. Such a program is hardly conventional fare for an introductory concert. But, I believe that art shimmers between convention and subversion. And certainly I relish the opportunity to share with Nashua audiences works of unabashed joy and extroversion in the future. This program is just one glimpse of the infinite expressions music has to offer. I hope this program challenges us all to question as obstinately, as unflinchingly, and as deeply as our strength, our imagination, and our hearts will allow.

- Jed Gaylin