Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman - Morton Feldman

A collection of Feldman composed pieces

From the liner notes (these are quite technical but helpful):

It is therefore not merely of anecdotal interest to document Feldman's
playing and that of his first interpreters, for here it is made clear how
much Feldman's entire oeuvre developed from this approach. He shifted the implicit precedence of artistic realization from a negligible peripheral issue to the center of his focus. From here on, the traditional musical parameters of harmony, form, time, instrumentation and arrangement are stripped of their essential features and in Feldman's playing, are heard again anew. The present recordings, primarily from Feldman's early period, present different solutions to the same problem.

One of the earliest pieces of the series, "Intermission 5" from 1952,
could be regarded as the germ cell for later works. In fact, it is the
opposite of Cage's musical process that Feldman notates here: not
progression, not variation, but the uncovering of something which is at
first hidden by clusters and chord attacks. From an irregular rhythm and density, tone repetitions and ultimately, a figure that recurs 9 times are shed - metaphor of periodic movement within an inner space. The figure itself - comprised of the tones G, G-sharp, A , B-flat in an orchestration characteristic of Feldman, that is, distributed among different octaves - plays with the most extreme reaches of the hands and with the "Fort" and "Da" which creates the basis for the repetition of the self-contained figure, the module.

"Extensions 3" from the same year also reflects this structure. Here, the play of horizontal and vertical symmetries in repetitions and
displacements form the starting point that is not interrupted until the
very end with a gesture encompassing the entire keyboard and all pitches. The octave obtains special significance as an axis of reflection in this performance and therein anticipates Feldman's later technique of "bridge building" between different modules.

In "Piano (Three Hands)", the problem of transition appears to withdraw
completely into the verticality of the sounds and their sequence. The
three "voices" come together in a flexible and unpredictable harmony,
which likewise exhibits unsystematic moments of repetition and
correspondence. The harmony which has disappeared is restored again by the play of position and distance.


"Vertical Thoughts 2 for Violin and Piano" combines a harmonically
conceived texture with an extremely differentiated temporal structure:
freely notated sections, in which the duration of the tone is defined by
the duration of the sound itself, alternate with segments that translate
the inherent tension of the sounds into rhythmic weights. The elastic
temporal structure is a result of the tactile quality of the sound
complexes.

In "Piano Piece 1956 A" and "Piano Piece 1956 B", the sounding tones are surrounded by numerous silently depressed keys which, through the resonances of sympathetically vibrating strings, convey the sound space like a second dimension. Though not sounding themselves, they first define the form of what is to be heard. It is the shadow that first makes light possible. Here too, octaves link tone groups together.

In his Darmstadt lecture "Indeterminacy", Cage defined "Intersection 3"
as an example of an indeterminate music, that is, a music which in
relation to its performance presents indeterminacies. Feldman notated the number of tones to be played on a time grid within the general limits of high, medium and low. The exact placement of the chords within the grid is left up to the performer. Cage's indeterminacy, however, aims more at the abolishment of fixed relations, while Feldman constructs here a sequence of unconnected sonic "weights" - as he himself called them - a oneness of harmony and contact.

Both ensemble pieces, "Four Instruments (1975)" and "Instruments 1",
transfer the experience of the "weight" from the early pieces onto other
instruments: "Four Instruments (1975)" to the reflections between piano and strings whose values articulate time and "Instruments 1", to an almost single-voiced line that is defined by instrumental oscillations.

Tracklisting:

1. Piano (Three Hands) {8:03} [Morton Feldman & John Tilbury - piano]

2. Intermission 5 {3:52} [Morton Feldman - piano]

3. Vertical Thoughts 2 {6:48} [Janos Negyesy - violin; Cornelius Cardew - piano]

4. Extensions 3 {8:05} [Morton Feldman - piano]

5. Four Instruments {8:11} [Edna Mitchell - violin; Harry Zaratzian - viola; Stephen Kates - cello; Frank Glazer - piano]

6. Intermission 5 {2:11} [David Tudor - piano]

7. Piano Piece 1956 A {2:23} [David Tudor - piano]

8. Piano Piece 1956 B {3:06} [David Tudor - piano]

9. Intersection 3 {3:07} [David Tudor - piano]

10. Instruments 1 {24:15} [Eberhard Blum - flute; Nora Post - oboe; Garrett List - trombone; Joseph Kubera - celesta; Jan Williams - percussion]

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