Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown. Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating, pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused, a generally quiet and slowly evolving music, and recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also explore extremes of duration.

Biography

Morton Feldman was born in Woodside, Queens, New York City, on January 12, 1926. His parents, Irving and Frances Breskin Feldman, were Russian Jews who had emigrated to New York from Pereiaslav (Irving, in 1910) and Bobruysk (Frances, in 1901). His father was a manufacturer of children's coats. As a child he studied piano with Vera Maurina Press, who instilled in him a "vibrant musicality rather than musicianship". Feldman's first composition teachers were Wallingford Riegger, one of the first American followers of Arnold Schoenberg, and Stefan Wolpe, a German-born Jewish composer who had studied under Franz Schreker and Anton Webern. Feldman and Wolpe spent most of their time simply talking about music and art.

In early 1950, Feldman heard the New York Philharmonic perform Webern's Symphony. After this work, the orchestra was to perform a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Feldman left immediately, disturbed by the audience's disrespectful reaction to Webern's work. In the lobby he met John Cage, who was at the concert and had also decided to step out. The two quickly became friends, with Feldman moving into the building Cage lived in. Through Cage, he met sculptor Richard Lippold (who had a studio next door with artist Ray Johnson); artists including Sonja Sekula and Robert Rauschenberg; and composers such as Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson, and George Antheil. An interview with Feldman was published in the first issue of ''0 to 9'' magazine in 1967.

With Cage's encouragement, Feldman began to write pieces that had no relation to compositional systems of the past, such as traditional tonal harmony or serialism. He experimented with nonstandard systems of musical notation, often using grids in his scores, and specifying how many notes should be played at a certain time but not which ones. Feldman's experiments with notation and indeterminacy inspired Cage to write pieces like ''Music of Changes'', where the notes to be played are determined by consulting the I Ching.

Through Cage, Feldman met many other prominent figures in the New York arts scene, among them Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Frank O'Hara. He found inspiration in abstract expressionist painting, and in the 1970s wrote a number of pieces around 20 minutes in length, including ''Rothko Chapel'' (1971; written for the building of the same name, which houses paintings by Mark Rothko) and ''For Frank O'Hara'' (1973). In 1977, he wrote the opera ''Neither'' with original text by Samuel Beckett.

Feldman was commissioned to compose the score for Jack Garfein's 1961 film ''Something Wild'', but after hearing Feldman's music for the opening scene, in which a character (played by Garfein's wife Carroll Baker) is raped, the director promptly withdrew his commission, opting to enlist Aaron Copland instead. Garfein's reaction was said to be, "My wife is being raped and you write celesta music?"

Feldman's music "changed radically" in 1970, moving away from graphic and arhythmic notation systems in favor of rhythmic precision. The first piece of this new period was a short, 55-measure work, "Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety", dedicated to his childhood piano teacher.

In 1973, at age 47, Feldman became the Edgard Varèse Professor of Music Composition (a title of his own devising) at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York; until then, he had earned his living as a full-time employee at the family textile business in Manhattan's Garment District. Feldman also held residencies at the University of California, San Diego in the 1980s.

Late in his career, Feldman produced a number of very long works, rarely shorter than half an hour and often much longer. These include ''Violin and String Quartet'' (1985, around 2 hours), ''For Philip Guston'' (1984, around four hours), and ''String Quartet II'' (1983, over six hours long without a break). These pieces typically maintain a very slow developmental pace and a very quiet dynamic range. Feldman said at the time that quiet sounds had become the only ones that interested him; in a 1982 lecture, he asked: "Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?"

Feldman married the Canadian composer Barbara Monk shortly before his death. He died of pancreatic cancer on September 3, 1987, at his home in Buffalo.

Works

:''See: List of compositions by Morton Feldman''

Notable students

Footnotes

Sources

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Further reading

* Cline, David. ''The Graph Music of Morton Feldman''. Cambridge University Press, 2016
* Eldred, Michae
''The Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music''
www.arte-fact.org 2010
* Feldman, Morton. ''Morton Feldman Says''. Chris Villars, ed. London: Hyphen Press, 2006.
* Feldman, Morton. ''Morton Feldman in Middelburg. Lectures and Conversations''. Raoul Mörchen, ed. Cologne: , 2008.
* Feldman, Morton. ''Give my regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman''. B. H. Friedman, ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Exact Change, 2000.
* Gareau, Philip. ''La musique de Morton Feldman ou le temps en liberté''. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006.
* Hirata, Catherin (Winter 1996). "The Sounds of the Sounds Themselves: Analyzing the Early Music of Morton Feldman", ''Perspectives of New Music'' 34, no. 1, 6–27.
* Herzfeld, Gregor. "Historisches Bewusstsein in Morton Feldmans Unterrichtsskizzen", ''Archiv für Musikwissenschaft'', vol. 66, no. 3, (Summer 2009), 218–233.
* Lunberry, Clark. "Departing Landscapes: Morton Feldman's String Quartet II and Triadic Memories". ''SubStance'' 110: vol. 35, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 17–50. (Available at http://www.cnvill.net/mftexts.htm 105 on the list
* Noble, Alistair. ''Composing Ambiguity: The Early Music of Morton Feldman''. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
* Woodward, Roger (2014). "Morty Feldman". ''Beyond Black and White''. HarperCollins. pp. 287–312.

External links

Morton Feldman Photographs, 1939–1987
from University at Buffalo Libraries
Jan Williams Photos of Morton Feldman, 1974–1979
from University at Buffalo Libraries

* ttp://www.cnvill.net/mfstruct.htm Morton Feldman: Structures for String Quartet (1951)by Lejaren Hiller
GregSandow.com: Feldman Draws Blood
''The Village Voice'', June 16, 1980
Morton Feldman profile at New Albion RecordsInterview with pianist Philip Thomas, about his recording of Feldman's complete piano music, on The Next Track podcast
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Listening

*, three works by Feldman

featuring ''The King of Denmark''

featuring tracks from ''Only – Works for Voice and Instruments''
In Conversation with John Cage, 1966, Part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feldman, Morton
1926 births
1987 deaths
American male classical composers
Deaths from pancreatic cancer in New York (state)
American experimental composers
Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School alumni
Jewish American classical composers
Jewish American artists
Pupils of Wallingford Riegger
Pupils of Stefan Wolpe
20th-century American classical composers
University at Buffalo alumni
University at Buffalo faculty
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
20th-century American male musicians
People from Woodside, Queens
20th-century American Jews