I generally like the music of Morton Feldman, I like sparse, non-goal oriented music (am I a simpleton?), Aleck Karis is great, I've absorbed works longer than its 80-minutes (e.g. La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano), the piece is easy to comprehend (compared to something by say, Boulez that still makes no sense to me), the CD booklet has some great Feldman quotes, a handy Morton Feldman work list, and lush and colorful graphics, it's on John Zorn's esteemed Tdazik label, and yet, I find nothing to like in Patterns in a Chromatic Field. The piano has a muffled quality and I find the cello part excruciating. It makes me appreciate John Cage's Freeman Etudes.
Morton Feldman from the liner notes: Art is a crucial, dangerous operation we perform on ourselves. Unless we take a chance, we die in art.
Keep on at the Patterns! It really is one of the finest pieces of music of the 80's, or even the 2nd half of the 20th century. I am particuarly fond of Cello and Orchestra, and Piano and Orchestra, as well as Coptic Light too.
Posted by: Guido | October 28, 2007 at 01:16 PM