Feldman: Elemental Procedures

"All extraneous perception suppressed, animal, human, divine, selfperception maintains in being. Search of non-being in flight from extraneous perception breaking down in inescability of self-perception. "

(text for "Elemental Procedures": Introduction to "Film", 1964, by Samuel Beckett)

Morton Feldman:

1 Principal Sound (1980) for organ

2 Words and Music (1987), radio play

for two speakers, two flutes, vibraphone, piano, violin, viola, cello

(Less Words Edit)

script by Samuel Beckett

3 Elemental Procedures (1976) for soprano, chorus and orchestra

"Words and Music"

There are two recordings released of this piece, one of Feldman's last completed compositions. The first one features the spoken text in English and is impossible to get - and I never had the chance to hear it. The second release is rather easy to get. The Ensemble Recherche does a good interpretation of the music. Problem is, tough - this production sucks. And it sucks big time.

Instead of delivering their texts in manners befitting Beckett's words and Feldman's music, the two speakers - stage actors of profession - intone and dramatize like it's the end of the world and they wanna show one last time how uber-dramatic and outburstingly expressive they can do their stuff. Before entering hell. Where they belong for this. Along with the vocal director and producers of this record.

Finding this recording unlistenable, I decided to make my own edit of the record, cutting out the speaker-only segments. And lo, behold! It worked. For me, at least. Judge for yourself. The few remaining kagel-lish vocal snippets (didn't want to leave any of the music out) seem a little irritating for a Feldman, okay. But hearing this rather short piece with its greater number of different patterns and pacings from 1987 is almost like discovering a new side of Feldman, after the large-scale reductionist patterning of works like "Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello" (from the same year). I hope you'll like it. "Elemental Procedures"
"... I was given a commission by the Köln Radio, and he thought I fit in fine - it was called the New Simplicity, twenty-five years, thirty years later, there was finally the New Simplicity, and of course my music and Steve Reich, and Phil Glass and the minimal music from Europe. So here he told me the title of the thing, and I got this nice commission, where I could bring in my own soloists, which I did and chorus and orchestra, and write a piece for the New Simplicity. But for some particular reason, that was, being that it was the seventies, and so mid-Seventies, and being that the mid-seventies was, as far as I could see a very - where middle age composers, painters and everybody became very competitive, and very worried, and I was no exception, and for whatever reason, not that I thought I was gonna knock 'em out in Europe, but I found out that the new simplicity was developing into the new complexity. And I wrote, for me, an unusually complex piece. And I was very embarrassed actually the fact that it was on that festival called the New Simplicity ..."

Morton Feldman Lecture, April 17th 1982, Mercer Union Gallery, Toronto, Canada

"Principal Sound"
This exciting piece has a rather strong alienating effect on the listener. Nothing less than "Feldman in Space". And not just on the Moon or Mars, but another Galaxy altogether, with cube-shaped planets and strange creatures that look like organ pipes. Abstract organisms.

Compilation and cover by H.C. Earwicker

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