Feldman, Morton (1926 - 87)

[Richard Barrett]

Feldman himself (as many will know) commented that after about an hour, "Form" disappears and things become a matter of "Scale".

Indeed, although this is his personal take of course, which might not coincide with that of others, plus Feldman was often wont to say the first thing that came into his head so I'm not sure there's much to be gained from puzzling over what he might have meant by something like that. For example Piano and String Quartet does a similar thing to the Second Quartet, circling around a gradually lessening repertoire of textures. On the other hand For PG and Violin and String Quartet circle around a repertoire that doesn't really change in extent. So the form is either static/rotating or diminishing; I don't think any are accumulative. So the concentration on scale, I would say, is not just a matter of duration but of how that duration is articulated: setting up a certain notional rate of change and then either sticking to it or decreasing it, and within a range of change which is sufficiently circumscribed that you're often not even sure whether you've heard a particular pattern before or not. Here time becomes space, as Gurnemanz (no, not that one) says.

[Richard Barrett]

One inevitably has brought into sharper focus than usual understanding of how the experience might be very different another time.

That's a very interesting point which hadn't occurred to me. But maybe this also is connected to the material as much as to the duration...?