Morton Feldman - Piano and String Quartet (1993)



"Feldman's decision to write pieces lasting several hours, through-composed in every detail, can first of all be understood as a purely conceptual one, through which he makes a conscious departure from the formal and material preconceptions of the conventional classical concert, which even the field of New Music had in fact done little - if anything - to alter. The artistic success of this decision, however, lies in the fact that Feldman achieved an almost perfect congruence between this conceptual choice and his compositional/constructive procedures: the pattern-variants require the space and formal distance firstly in order to be fully played out, but secondly also to make the transition from the focus of immediate perception to the imprecision of the memory as it is written over, so to speak, by the subsequent variants; and the temporal frame requires forms of material which allow meaningful developments within these dimensions if it is to be more than a mere statement, but rather a genuine counterposition to the conventional concert form." - Sebastian Claren, Construction and Conceptuality

"Polyphony sucks." - Morton Feldman

this is hard

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8 Responses so far.

  1. ribs says:

    I'm really enjoying your posts-thanks!

  2. Lana says:

    I'm loving this! Thanks man.

  3. so, this is kronos quartet playing the work of morton feldman?

  4. Moshi says:

    Dullest fucking thing I've listened to in a long time

  5. Anonymous says:

    yeah this piece can be difficult. it really does reward close and repeated listens. and yes, this is Kronos and Aki Takahashi playing Feldman.

  6. dave says:

    holy fucking shit. i can't believe i found a blog that lauds feldman alongside baroness, alcest and mission of fucking burma. you also curse like a badass, which i love as much as this piano and string quartet. i'm glad you exist. thank you for loving music.

  7. dave says:

    if you like feldman, listen to my version of "deep dance" from this record. think earl palmer playing drums for the kronos quartet. it was supposed to sound like a demented david axelrod but it landed in "the taking of pelham 123" ost territory. (the original, not the crap remake.)

    http://soundcloud.com/patrikios

    enjoy!

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