BA Sonic Arts SA304 Modern Composition Morton Feldman an introduction

What we will be covering Background to Morton Feldman The aesthetic quality The music The Viola in My Life 1

Background to Morton Feldman January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987 Learnt the piano as a child and studied composition later with Stephan Wolpe. Befriended by John Cage Preoccupations of time & timbre Large scale works

His Jewish heritage saw that his musical sensibilities drawn naturally to this rather than that of the central European canon. “Because I’m Jewish, I do not identify with, say, Western civilization music. In other words, when Bach gives us a diminished fourth, I cannot respond that the diminished fourth means, O God.... What are our morals in music? Our moral in music is nineteenth- century German music, isn’t it? I do think about that, and I do think about the fact that I want to be the first great composer that is Jewish. Accessed

The aesthetic quality of time Aleatoric time Measured time Implied tempo Tempo No metre Constant metric change with symmetric & asymmetric metre

The aesthetic quality of time Measured time Tempo Constant metric change with symmetric & asymmetric metre Sparse & avoiding strong metric beats Highly sustained thus avoiding metre Time is Feldman’s greatest asset which he employs in a subtle and elusive manner Syncopations Irrational values

The aesthetic quality of time Aleatoric time The score is largely indeterminate within clearly defined boundaries

Morton Feldman Extracts

BA Sonic Arts SA304 Modern Composition Morton Feldman The Viola in My Life 1

What we will be covering Background to the work Reflections The Viola in My Life 1

Visited 26 th October 2011 Background to the work Cyclic work (I – IV) Began cycle July 1970 Written for Viola player Karen Phillips Feldman on the cycle

The music of Morton Feldman is habitually slow Reflections on Morton Feldman periods of reflection narrative and communication he requires an utmost attention spiritual yield to and not confront listen to Feldman as a child and learn to disbelieve ones musical expectations and preconceptions beyond the safety and familiarity of its usual boundaries hearing a strange and beautiful landscape for the first time

glimpse our own humanity between a shadow and a whisper the musical space within us unhurried, meticulous and simultaneously fragile and steadfast; transient and resolute temporal plasticity through the precise and unremitting measurement of time measured through the means of traditional and non-traditional notation fixed his gaze firmly past those boundaries but kept his vision firmly within musical mobiles are interspersed with silence and reverberations the uniformity of harmony and linear statements of the piano indefatigable and indefinable long, drawn out sonorities; brief fragments of gestures; delicate chord clusters, harmonics and hushed rumbles of percussion constant in syntax and unremitting musical logic

Morton Feldman The Viola in My Life 1

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