The Unquestioned Answer

How do composers find titles, beyond Etude or Sonata? It's really hit or miss when the piece is non-vocal, like La Mer or Pictures at an Exhibition.

Since the present work was commissioned by and for the same group that commissioned the much larger Bright Music in 1988, I at first thought Dull Music might provide an apt echo. Then I remembered Ives' wonderful title, The Unanswered Question, which Leonard Bernstein had borrowed for his book of lectures. But Bernstein had used the title in the vast Romantic extra-musical sense of "What does it all mean - what is the secret of the universe?" For me, music asks no questions, it provides an answer. Questions are philosophical and art is not philosophy; art is an end in itself, an answer.

Which is how I decided on The Unquestioned Answer.