Morton Feldman (via last.fm)
As I continue to try to use my ears rather than my eyes in my quest for interesting music, I managed to surprise myself with Morton Feldman's Only. With only a too-small-to-quickly-read album cover on lala as my guide, earlier today, I queued up a Feldman album I'd never seen before.
When the first track, Only, finally played, my first thought:
Why is there a vocal in the Berio piano album I was streaming at the time?
my second thought:
Hmm, lala has screwed up the track and this isn't really a Feldman album.
my third thought:
Feldman wrote songs. Cool.
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Rodger Coleman at NuVoid didn't get Morton Feldman at first but it was the composer's Piano Three Hands that triggered the understanding this music has soul.
I never had that struggle with Feldman's music -- I either liked individual pieces or didn't. I did have to work to see that at least some of Elliott Carter's music was beyond just "interesting."
David Toub suggests Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston as driving music and comments:
I've been in love with this piece for some time now, but it struck me yesterday that Feldman was able to take a four-note chromatic scale and make it sound heavenly.
He also pans a Feldman organ piece I haven't heard, Principal Sound (emusic).
Seeking some meditative clarity, Jason at I Am Sitting in a Room visits the Rothko Chapel in Houston:
On first sight, the Rothkos might seem to be solid colors. But they’ve been painted; they have texture, irregularities, varied hues. Hanging for thirty-five years has given some wave to the canvases, too. So there’s a lot to look at in these paintings.
From the Rothko Chapel web site:
The Rothko Chapel is alive with religious ceremonies of all faiths and diverse programs to engage audiences intellectually, artistically and spiritually. It is a place where the experience and understanding of all traditions and cultures are encouraged and made available....
William Winant and David Abel play on the recording. Alex Ross and Tim Rutherford-Johnson both blogged about the work earlier this year. Dan Warburton reviews a 1997 performance in Paris Transatlantic:
“Rothko Chapel” (1971), however, was breathtaking. I suppose this has to be Feldman’s most accessible piece, due probably to the inclusion near the end of a haunting melody on the solo viola which Feldman tells us he wrote when he was fifteen. This strange timeless melody arrives from nowhere, but somehow reflects on the work’s eerie floating chords. (Where did he get these amazing pitches from? What an ear!) Inevitably, the title leads us to think of death and matters spiritual--I wonder if we would react as intensely had he followed his usual practice of naming the piece after its instrumental forces: “
John Perkins on afterPostModern reflects on the music of Morton Feldman and also recommends Rothko Chapel.
Feldman's music is quiet and slow and atonal. He became inextricably associated with one musical direction often written in his scores: "as softly as possible." People will either love his music or hate it, I would guess. I'm in the former camp.
And I am in both camps -- I love Rothko Chapel and say, his sparse works for two pianos but don't care much for Coptic Light and am struggling right now with Patterns in a Chromatic Field (despite the new release on Tzadik with Aleck Karis).
Tim Rutherford-Johnson's take on Rothko Chapel.
