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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.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/06/19/060619crat_atlarge Accessed 23.10.2011
The aesthetic quality of time
Aleatoric time
Measured time
Implied tempo Tempo
No metreConstant
metric change with symmetric & asymmetric
metre
The aesthetic quality of time
Measured timeTempo
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
http://www.universaledition.com/Morton-Feldman/composers-and-works/composer/220/work/5335/work_introduction Visited 26th 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
End
