Morton Feldman

[Larry Kart]

Any fans out there? I've been one since high school when I encountered Columbia's Feldman LP with liner notes by Frank O'Hara. I'm curious at the moment about recordings of Feldman's "for John Cage" (for piano and violin). Over time I've acquired three  of this 1982 work -- one by Christina Fong and Paul Hersey in a 2-CD collection on the obscure  Ogre/Ogress label of all Feldman's chamber music for violin, viola and piano, one with Eric Carlson and Alec Karis on Bridge, and a third with the late Paul Zukofsky and Marianne Schroeder on CP2.

Going by names/reputations, one of the latter two would seem to be the choice, but I much prefer the uncannily intimate Fong/Hersey version -- it seems to progress on a series of continuous underlying breaths, and the seemingly incalcuably varied in timing pauses between piano and violin are full of rhythmic meaning -- geez, at times it almost swings! Carlson and Karis, by contrast are recorded rather close up, and phrasing is rather abrupt and segmented at times, while Zukoksky and Schroeder are somewhere in between.  FWIW Fong/Hersey runs 66 minutes, Carlson/Karis 71:46, and Zukofsky/Schroeder 77:10. I'll add that Fong's performance of  Feldman's "For Aaron Copland" (1981) is a gem and reveals that the hushed somewhat grainy tone she brings to "For John Cage" (this I find ideal for the work) is not the only string in her bow, so to speak. On "For Aaron Copland" her approach is warmer, more songful, and at times it even has a slight Hebraic throb.

 

[Joe]

I am a fan generally but I confess I don't know this piece or these recordings very well.

Looks like Hat Hut / ezz-thetics now has this covered: https://ezz-thetics.bandcamp.com/album/for-john-cage. But I've yet to audition it.

The first Feldman recording I heard pairs the early Durations with Coptic Light. I still have a soft spot for these renditions. 

https://www.allmusic.com/album/morton-feldman-durations-i-v-coptic-light-mw0001940584

[Teasing the Korean]

I adore Morton Feldman.  This may sound weird, but I really love listening to him when I am coming down with the flu or something, and I am having half-asleep, half-awake fevered dreams.  He is the perfect soundtrack for that state.  I listen to him when I am healthy also.

[Teasing the Korean]

I will add that when it comes to minimalism, Phillip Glass's music does not at all appeal to me, but I love Morton Feldman's style of minimalism.

[Chuck Nessa]

Larry, your post prompted me to purchase the Fong/Hersey via Bandcamp.

[Larry Kart]

Hope you like it. All I can say for sure is that I much prefer their version of For John Cage to the other two I have and and that I also prefer Fong's version of For Aaron Copland to the other one I've heard. BTW, Fong was a member of the Grand Rapids orchestra. 

Yesterday a copy of Feldman's Violin and Orchestra arrived. What an opulent work at times, at leasts by MF's standards. This thought probably would have driven him crazy, but I was reminded a bit of  the opening movement, "Nacht," of Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony.

[T.D.]

Christina Fong and Glenn Freeman of OgreOgress (the latter used to post on r.m.c.c. in the old days iirc) seem like reliable interpreters of Cage and Feldman. They resort to overdubbing on some of the number pieces; I can go back and forth on the merits of that but it's likely the only practical way to record higher-numbered works.

I have a couple of their Cage number piece recordings, have listened to various Feldman (incl. the set cited by Larry, which has been on the wish list for a couple of years) on Bandcamp but never got around to ordering.

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I will add that when it comes to minimalism, Phillip Glass's music does not at all appeal to me, but I love Morton Feldman's style of minimalism.

MF has said a numbers of times that he sees no connection between his music and minimalism -- historically, sonically, or whatever. I think he's right.

[Teasing the Korean]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

MF has said a numbers of times that he sees no connection between his music and minimalism -- historically, sonically, or whatever. I think he's right.

That depends on whether you are using "minimalism" technically or descriptively.

[Larry Kart]

One might say that MF's music is descriptively minimalist in terms of other musics -- that is that there is in it less literal activity and/or fewer "events" than one typically finds in other musics. But MF's "less" is less only in that measuring how much of what sense. To susceptible listeners, and I would assume to MF himself, it is quite full in the experiential sense, nor is its "less" a matter of avoidance on MF's part of what happens in other musics. Above all, perhaps, while MF's music could be said to be descriptively minimalist in that how much of what sense, his making of it is and one's experiencing of it is free of "isms."  

I think of three stories that MF likes to tell. In one of them Stockhausen asks MF what his secret is. At first MF denies that he has one but then says that if he does have a secret it's that "I don't push around the sounds." To which Stockhausen says, " Not even a little bit?" 

Second story -- MF's second composition teacher was the wonderful composer Stefan Wolpe. A committed Marxist who came of age in Germany in the 1920s, Wolpe tells MF that his music is too elitest, that he needs to write for "the man in the street." MF looks down from Wolpe's apartment, at the corner of 14th St. and Sixth Ave., sees Jackson Pollock walking along and says,  "There's the man in the street, and he likes my music."

Third story -- in the early 1950s, after a concert of aggressively experimental works, someone came up to John Cage in the lobby and said, "Don't you think there's enough pain in the world?" To which Cage replied, ""On the contrary I think there's just enough."

[Teasing the Korean]

58 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

One might say that MF's music is descriptively minimalist in terms of other musics -- that is that there is in it less literal activity and/or fewer "events" than one typically finds in other musics. But MF's "less" is less only in that measuring how much of what sense. To susceptible listeners, and I would assume to MF himself, it is quite full in the experiential sense, nor is its "less" a matter of avoidance on MF's part of what happens in other musics. Above all, perhaps, while MF's music could be said to be descriptively minimalist in that how much of what sense, his making of it is and one's experiencing of it is free of "isms."  

I'll buy that.  As we all know, the lines between genres are blurry.  I think that Feldman could be a gateway into or out of minimalism. However we describe him, I love his music either way.  

[Larry Kart]

19 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I'll buy that.  As we all know, the lines between genres are blurry.  I think that Feldman could be a gateway into or out of minimalism. However we describe him, I love his music either way.  

One of the hallmarks of most if not all minimalism that I'm aware of are its, for those who are susceptible to them, seductively repetitive motoric rhythms. These are not at all to be found in MF's music.

[JSngry]

Glass insists. Feldman allows. 

[T.D.]

 

I very much doubt that MF would have enjoyed being called a "minimalist".  😄  But I leafed through his book of essays Give my regards to Eighth Street and couldn't find any remarks hostile to minimalism. In fact (in the essay Crippled Symmetry), he discusses Reich's Four Organs in the same paragraph as Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles and Varese's Integrales.

Interesting article that touches on possible relationships (in both directions?) between Feldman and minimalism: 

https://www.kylegann.com/Feldman-DispraiseofEfficiency.html

I particularly enjoy the discussion of notation, which came up  on another  forum* in the context of performances of Triadic Memories, where recordings by Aki Takahashi and Roger Woodward  were most faithful to MF's handwritten score.

* see https://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/2015/10/07/a-question-about-rhythm-in-triadic-memories/

Edited January 14, 2023 by T.D.

[Joe]

FWIW, John Tilbury (of AMM) has also recorded a version of FOR JOHN CAGE, with violinist Darragh Morgan. 

https://diatriberecords.bandcamp.com/album/morton-feldman-for-john-cage

[Teasing the Korean]

15 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

One of the hallmarks of most if not all minimalism that I'm aware of are its, for those who are susceptible to them, seductively repetitive motoric rhythms. These are not at all to be found in MF's music.

I agree, but that is where you get into the distinction between capitol-M "Minimalism" as a formal style or school, and minimalism as a descriptor.  I would say that a piece of music could be described as "minimalist" if it uses few notes, lots of open spaces, minimal harmony, sparse arrangements, or any combination of those.  So I think that the style we tend to associate with Minimalism does not capture all the ways that a composition can be descriptively minimalist.  Maybe I should describe Feldman as a "minimumist" to distinguish between the two.

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[Larry Kart]

Looking at/listening to minimalism as  that music is commonly regarded, it strikes me as a kind of gated community and/or a club, very much an inside and outside phenomenon. That is, inside and outside in terms of  musical practice or effect, even though a minimalist piece might be designed to arouse broad involvement and assent in an audience. Feldman's music -- in practice or in effect -- is not at all like that.

Jim's point above about Glass versus Feldman is a good one, I think. Another possible related point of difference is that Glass' and Adams' and Reich's music is often at times overtly dramatic and about things "out there" (e.g. Ghandi, the Holocaust, Palestinians versus Jews,, Nixon visiting China, etc.) and Feldman's is not.

 

 

 

[Larry Kart]

16 hours ago, T.D. said:

 

I very much doubt that MF would have enjoyed being called a "minimalist".  😄  But I leafed through his book of essays Give my regards to Eighth Street and couldn't find any remarks hostile to minimalism. In fact (in the essay Crippled Symmetry), he discusses Reich's Four Organs in the same paragraph as Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles and Varese's Integrales.

Interesting article that touches on possible relationships (in both directions?) between Feldman and minimalism: 

https://www.kylegann.com/Feldman-DispraiseofEfficiency.html

I particularly enjoy the discussion of notation, which came up  on another  forum* in the context of performances of Triadic Memories, where recordings by Aki Takahashi and Roger Woodward  were most faithful to MF's handwritten score.

* see https://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/2015/10/07/a-question-about-rhythm-in-triadic-memories/

He has many less than positive things to say about minimalism in the collection "Morton Feldman Says."

[JSngry]

Glass loves the relentless.

Me, not so much.

[corto maltese]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Glass loves the relentless.

Me, not so much.

I have far more Feldman in my collection than Glass, but the Glass music I listen to is his early work, precisely because of its austere and unsweetened "relentlessness".

[JSngry]

It was exhilarating at first. 

[Hoppy T. Frog]

I'm listening to the de Saram/Schroeder Hat[now]art "Patterns in a Chromatic Field" right now, got a bunch of the Hat from Berkshire Record Outliet for cheap. Is this a good one? I have no basis for comparison.