Everything about Morton Feldman totally explained
Morton Feldman (
January 12,
1926 –
September 3,
1987) was an
American composer, born in
New York City.
A major figure in
20th-century music, Feldman went through several compositional phases. He was a pioneer in
aleatoric music and
indeterminate music, and in music requiring
improvisation. His works are characterized by quietness, slowness, and often by their extreme length, especially in his later music.
Biography
Feldman studied piano with
Madame Maurina-Press, a pupil of
Ferruccio Busoni, and later composition with
Wallingford Riegger and
Stefan Wolpe. He didn't agree with many of the views of these composition teachers, and he spent much of his time simply arguing with them. He was composing at this time, but in a style very different from that with which he'd later be associated.
In 1950, Feldman went to hear the
New York Philharmonic give a performance of
Anton Webern's
Symphony. At the concert, he met
John Cage. The two became good friends, with Feldman moving into the apartment downstairs from Cage. Under Cage's influence, Feldman began to write pieces which had no relation to compositional systems of the past, such as the constraints of traditional
harmony or the
serial technique. He experimented with non-standard systems of
musical notation, often using grids in his scores, and specifying how many notes should be played at a certain time, but not which ones. Feldman's experiments with the use of chance in his composition in turn inspired John Cage to write pieces like the
Music of Changes, where the notes to be played are determined by consulting the
I Ching.
Through Cage, Feldman met many other prominent figures in the New York arts scene, among them
Jackson Pollock,
Philip Guston and
Frank O'Hara. He found inspiration in the paintings of the
abstract expressionists, and throughout the 1970s wrote a number of pieces around twenty-minutes in length, including
Rothko Chapel (1971, written for the building of the same name which houses paintings by
Mark Rothko) and
For Frank O'Hara (1973). In 1977, he wrote the opera
Neither with words by
Samuel Beckett.
In 1973, at the age of 47, Feldman became the Edgard Varese Professor (a title of his own devising) at the
University at Buffalo. Prior to that time, Feldman had earned his living as a full time employee at the family textile business in New York's garment district.
Later, he began to produce his very long works, often in one continuous movement, rarely shorter than half an hour in length and often much longer. These works include
Violin and String Quartet (1985, around 2 hours),
For Philip Guston (1984, around four hours) and, most extreme, the
String Quartet II (1983), which is over five hours long without a break. It was given its first complete performance at
Cooper Union, New York City in 1999 by the
FLUX Quartet, who issued a recording in 2003 (at 6 hours and 7 minutes). Typically, these pieces don't change in mood throughout and tend to be made up of mostly very quiet sounds. Feldman said himself that quiet sounds had begun to be the only ones that interested him.
Feldman married the composer
Barbara Monk shortly before his death. He died from
pancreatic cancer in 1987 at his home in
Buffalo, New York, after fighting for his life for two years.
Notable students
Further Information
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