The Question Answer'd is a little piano piece I wrote in 1982 for my then-fiancée Nancy Cook, in advance of our wedding. The title isn't a reference to Charles Ives's The Unanswered Question, as one might expect, but to a 1793 poem of William Blake:

The Question Answer'd

What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

For years I kept the piece private, and it was finally given its public premiere in New York in the late 1990s by Marc Peloquin.

Score (PDF)

- Kyle Gann

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