Feldman, Morton (1926 - 87)

[mozart79]

Enjoyed this a lot it restored some of my faith in radio 3 that I've lost over the last few months.

a huge round of applause must be given to all in involved in bringing this us wonderful production the people who played not stop for 5 and a half hours all at the bbc for pulling off what must have been a vary technical challenge. i'd be more than happy to go and see this if it was included in the proms programme some time in the future.

[Serial_Apologist]

Enjoyed this a lot it restored some of my faith in radio 3 that I've lost over the last few months.

a huge round of applause must be given to all in involved in bringing this us wonderful production the people who played not stop for 5 and a half hours all at the bbc for pulling off what must have been a vary technical challenge. i'd be more than happy to go and see this if it was included in the proms programme some time in the future.

Indeed, pretty thirsty they must have all been after not visiting the loo in all that time!

[Frances_iom]

Indeed, pretty thirsty they must have all been after not visiting the loo in all that time!

well they certainly couldn't be seen to be taking the p@ss (leave that to others)

[Serial_Apologist]

well they certainly couldn't be seen to be taking the p@ss (leave that to others)

I'll pass on that one...

[Beef Oven!]

I'll pass on that one...

Urine a silly mood today!

[ahinton]

Urine a silly mood today!

Kidney've done better than tha'?...

[Sir Velo]

Kidney've done better than tha'?...

Stop taking the mick-turition.

[ahinton]

Stop taking the mick-turition.

'Twas the bladder best that I cold do; sorry.

[Tapiola]

'Twas the bladder best that I cold do; sorry.

Water way to pass the time...

[Richard Barrett]

Nice to see the discussion is concentrating on the finer points of Feldman's piece.

I've listened to about half of this recording so far, having previously got to know it through the Mode DVD and a live performance by the Kronos Quartet in the 1984 Darmstadt courses (during which Wolfgang Rihm is reputed to have written an entire string quartet). What interests me most about it is an aspect it shares with other late Feldman pieces, namely that pretty much all the material you're going to hear occurs in the first quarter of the piece, and the other three quarters consist mainly of permutations with slight variation of what's already been heard. I have the impression that Feldman wrote his pieces from start to finish, without much if any preplanning, and that at a certain moment in the process thought ok, now I have enough material, from now on I'm just going to concentrate on examining that. It struck me listening to the broadcast that this is actually quite a "classical" way to think about form - exposition followed by development. What about others who heard the broadcast (either as first-time listeners to the work or not)? Or does its duration dissuade you from even thinking about what its large-scale form might be?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Feldman himself (as many will know) commented that after about an hour, "Form" disappears and things become a matter of "Scale". I'm too new to the Quartet to comment much further on how it is composed, although a lot of what you say rings true - certainly of a piece like For Philip Guston where everything (I should probably add an "almost" for Insurance purposes) is permutation & alteration (the "same" Musical figure heard from a different "viewpoint", if you like). It seems to me that in that piece, it wasn't so much an "exposition" of an idea followed by "developments" of it, as one of joining a piece that has already been playing - to put it perhaps a little better, as if it were all "development" (/mutation/unfolding) without any initial "exposition", other than the ones that happen to be heard first. This, I think, is fundamentally different from "classical" thinking, where materials are crafted to be given specific characteristics (= "this is an important idea", "this is of lesser importance", "these are transformations of ideas heard before", "this is a significant new idea, created from the friction of the important ideas" "this is letting everyone know we're stopping") presented in a carefully arranged sequence of events.


One of the things in the Quartet that struck me as significantly different from For PG (no; not him!) was the variety of different ideas & moods presented at the start of the work. I need to hear the work many more times before I can offer anything other than speculation; after all, "the first quarter of the piece" is already twice as long as Feldman's First Quartet!

"Speculations" such as if we played the CDs in a different order - so that the first disc doesn't get played first - is there still a sense of "exposition" followed by "elaboration"? Which isn't what you were asking about - but I wonder if the absence of "new" material is not itself an aspect of its/Feldman's non-classicistic way of composing? Wouldn't a more "classical"-minded composer have felt the need to inject such a weight of time with different material. Isn't this, perhaps, the essential difference between Feldman and Sorabji?

[ahinton]

Feldman himself (as many will know) commented that after about an hour, "Form" disappears and things become a matter of "Scale". I'm too new to the Quartet to comment much further on how it is composed, although a lot of what you say rings true - certainly of a piece like For Philip Guston where everything (I should probably add an "almost" for Insurance purposes) is permutation & alteration (the "same" Musical figure heard from a different "viewpoint", if you like). It seems to me that in that piece, it wasn't so much an "exposition" of an idea followed by "developments" of it, as one of joining a piece that has already been playing - to put it perhaps a little better, as if it were all "development" (/mutation/unfolding) without any initial "exposition", other than the ones that happen to be heard first. This, I think, is fundamentally different from "classical" thinking, where materials are crafted to be given specific characteristics (= "this is an important idea", "this is of lesser importance", "these are transformations of ideas heard before", "this is a significant new idea, created from the friction of the important ideas" "this is letting everyone know we're stopping") presented in a carefully arranged sequence of events.


One of the things in the Quartet that struck me as significantly different from For PG (no; not him!) was the variety of different ideas & moods presented at the start of the work. I need to hear the work many more times before I can offer anything other than speculation; after all, "the first quarter of the piece" is already twice as long as Feldman's First Quartet!

"Speculations" such as if we played the CDs in a different order - so that the first disc doesn't get played first - is there still a sense of "exposition" followed by "elaboration"? Which isn't what you were asking about - but I wonder if the absence of "new" material is not itself an aspect of its/Feldman's non-classicistic way of composing? Wouldn't a more "classical"-minded composer have felt the need to inject such a weight of time with different material. Isn't this, perhaps, the essential difference between Feldman and Sorabji?

Well, in terms of works of durations greater than, say, a conventional concert programme and whose performances accordingly require an entire event to themselves, yes although, of course, there are many other material differences, not least a desire to creative an organic whole with a sense of narrative on the part of the latter that might not be of like importance to the former.

I fear that I simply cannot get close to Feldman and it's by no means for want of trying; that's not in any sense a value judgement but an admission of failure on my part.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, in terms of works of durations greater than, say, a conventional concert programme and whose performances accordingly require an entire event to themselves, yes although, of course, there are many other material differences, not least a desire to creative an organic whole with a sense of narrative on the part of the latter that might not be of like importance to the former.

That is precisely the "essential difference" that I struggled to express in the final paragraph of my earlier post that you quoted. (By which I mean that I think that "injecting new/different material" is the essential component of the creation of an "organic whole with a sense of narrative". Feldman creates an "object", rather than a narrative: aurally gazing at facets of this object from different angles and distances - though, again, this is more a response to For Philip Guston than to the Quartet.)

I fear that I simply cannot get close to Feldman and it's by no means for want of trying; that's not in any sense a value judgement but an admission of failure on my part.

That is unfortunate - I'd eagerly listen to either: and gain far greater satisfaction than with a 25minute work by ... well, that's between me and me.

[ahinton]

That is unfortunate - I'd eagerly listen to either: and gain far greater satisfaction than with a 25minute work by ... well, that's between me and me.

I'm not necessarily asking you to reveal that composer's identity but, should you do so in a PM or email, it will naturally then be between you and me and accordingly treated with appropriately discreet confidence!

No, I simply struggle to get out of Feldman what he gives; I listened earlier today to Neither (not having heard it in quite a while) but not even the singing of Sarah Leonard did it for me, I'm afraid! - but you're right in your description of what Feldman aims to do. I know in advance that I'm not to expect and "organic whole with a sense of narrative" when listening to Feldman but that doesn't help, I'm afraid; in an entirely different context, I know in advance that I'm going to get short-changed when I listen to Bruckner 9 if there's only to be the first three movements!...

For what it may or may not be worth, I don't think that I've ever previously mentioned Feldman and Bruckner in the same sentence...

[teamsaint]

What about others who heard the broadcast (either as first-time listeners to the work or not)? Or does its duration dissuade you from even thinking about what its large-scale form might be?

The duration seems to me to unavoidably place listener and listening context at the centre of the experience.Of course the listener is always at the centre, but the duration rather forces a concentration on this aspect onto the listener.
One inevitably has brought into sharper focus than usual understanding of how the experience might be very different another time. There is also a demand on the listener to reflect more than usually on the progress of the piece, during that listening process.

re the contemplation of the large scale form, I rather thought I'd let any understanding develop, if at all, over time, which seems the obvious, if possibly unambitious response.