Morton Feldman at the Festival d'Automne (Paris
1997)
by Dan WARBURTON
Its a pleasure to see the French finally acknowledging Morton Feldman
by programming a series of concerts of his music as part of the Autumn
Festival. Feldman has finally succeeded in capturing the imagination of
the Europeans in a way that his fellow American Experimentalists have
so far failed to do: perhaps the old Europe vs. U.S.A. (or rather, Boulez
vs. Cage) thing is still partly responsible--for, despite the fact that
its become rather chic these days to pour scorn on IRCAM, that organisations
founding father and the philosophy he represents both still carry a not
inconsiderable cultural weight round these parts. So, Cage is important
more as a philosophical rather than a musical force (we Europeans
never could take those radios and mushrooms all that seriously...),
Wolff is interesting ideologically (personally I live in hope that one
day his 1960s works will receive more attention), and Earle Brown is more
or less forgotten, albeit unjustifiably so. Only Feldman, marching steadily
on along the path he started upon in the mid-Sixties, devoting his life
to the production of increasingly fragile and exquisite--and from time
to time exquisitely long--music, produced a homogenous body of work too
strong and original to be dismissed by those all too ready to do so. Perhaps
image also played a part: its easy to wonder at how such delicate
sonic surfaces could have issued from that gangling, overweight, chain-smoking
character (Its too fuckin loud and its too fuckin
fast! he once berated some well-meaning students at York University
after theyd tried their best to render one of his pieces...). Certainly
that frank lucidity evident both in his Writings and in his fascinating
re-evaluation of the basic concepts of musical notation (see the liner
notes to Crippled Symmetry) was responsible for attracting
the attention of more mainstream French composers (Dusapin and MÉfano
are both quoted in the Festival programme), and ultimately prompted several
fine European ensembles--notably the Ensemble Recherche in Freiburg and
the HatArt label--to issue several excellent CDs. Nowadays, Feldman is
better served in terms of available discography than many of his contemporaries.
As I write this, the extraordinary vocal sonorities of Rothko Chapel
float around me in the quiet of my apartment, and there is nothing else
(apart from the hum of the computer) to distract my attention. This is
private music, perhaps best appreciated in the quiet of ones own
space--does this explain why Feldman CDs have been found in the same bin
as Arvo Prt and Tavener? A curious match, that, for while Feldmans
music is for the most part still and invites contemplation, it lacks the
self-conscious asceticism of Prt or the public spirituality of Tavener.
Its also for the most part atonal--sorry to bring back
that meaningless old tag, but you know what I mean: lots of major sevenths,
minor ninths, etc. OK, OK chromatic, if you prefer--worth stating I think,
for were it to consist solely of gentle Bill Evans minor elevenths and
perfect fifths, this music would be alarmingly bland.
Eglise des Blancs-Manteaux, 10th. October 1997
Gratifying though it is to hear this music in concert, my overriding
impression is one of frustration: how dare a car-horn honk outside during
these breathtaking pianissimos? Why cant the concert-going public
carry and use handkerchiefs instead of desecrating this sacred emptiness
with ear-splitting smokers hacking coughs? Anyway, the resonant
acoustic of the Eglise des Blancs Manteaux was perfect for Rothko
Chapel, in a sensitive and moving performance by violist Barbara
Maurer and the Ensemble Vocal Les Jeunes Solistes conducted by Rachid
Safir. However, Safirs decision to use two-part womens chorus
instead of two solo voices in Voices and Cello (1973) seemed
to me a mistake; many of Feldmans works are written for trio combinations
(Crippled Symmetry, For Philip Guston, Why
Patterns etc.), and the visual intimacy of three musicians alone
on stage was sacrificed in order to obtain a perfect fusion of the
two vocal lines and the cello harmonics, to quote Safir. All well
and good--the performance was careful and clear, though I couldnt
see the cellist for the conductor--but I cant help feeling that
it became somehow a different piece, more akin to Feldmans other
more public choral offerings (Christian Wolff in Cambridge
and Chorus and Instruments I and II). Perhaps Feldman scholars
will write in to tell me that he himself authorised this alternative version,
and I will duly stand corrected.
The King of Denmark (1964), for percussion, was performed
in a seven-minute version by Florent Jodelet, who looked like an escapee
from Nexus or Les Percussions de Strasbourg, incarcerated as he was on
stage in a cubic prison of gongs, drums and bells (very impressive to
look at--it produced some pretty reflections too under the pale gold lights).
His reading of this graphic score was quite balletic to watch, as he darted
around his cage, flicking and pinging his instruments, but gave the impression
that he was in some way making it up as he went along (he was playing
from memory). It certainly sounded quite different from my recording--though
this is hardly surprising, since Feldmans scores of the period leave
many decisions of timing and articulation to the performer--had you played
this in a blind test telling me it was a new piece by Boulez I might just
have believed you. If Jodelet was consciously highlighting the playful
character of Feldmans score (after all, he wrote it on the beach
in Long Island...) he certainly succeeded, but the piece sat uneasily
in the programme between Voices and Cello and Principal
Sound (1980) for organ. Here I have to state a prejudice: church
organs, along with bagpipes and bassoons, are among my least favourite
instruments. If youre going to write for this great big ugly beast,
at least go all the way and attack it Gothic-horror style with fists and
forearms, as in Ligetis Volumina. Somehow the registration
can never be intimate enough, as was the case with Principal Sound,
performed well enough, I suppose, by Olivier Latry; in music such as this,
where surface is all-important, the organs chronic inability to
produce sounds with definable attack and decay seems to me to set it at
a distinct disadvantage. In short, I can sit spellbound for nearly two
hours listening to Crippled Symmetry (for flute, celesta,
vibraphone), but Principal Sound had me nodding off within
ten minutes. Rothko Chapel (1971), however, was breathtaking.
I suppose this has to be Feldmans 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 works 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: Voices, Viola and Percussion
somehow just doesnt sound as good.
Théatre Molière, Maison de la Poésie,
4th. November 1997
In 1983, when I should have been old enough to know better, I walked
out of a Feldman concert in London. It was the mighty Kronos Quartet playing
the second String Quartet, which lasts somewhere near four hours. What
had annoyed me at the outset was the presence of eight chairs onstage--four
for the musicians and four more for their page-turners... As they were
playing from copies of the full score, all four turners would have to
stand up and turn together, which, in the absence of any discernible movement
on the part of David, John, Hank and Joan, soon became the major visual
focal point of the performance. After two hours, I started agonizing as
to whether I could stay the course, and twenty minutes later left as silently
as possible (the hard seats helped me make up my mind). I spent the rest
of the evening feeling extraordinarily guilty, and trying to think of
some justification for what I was beginning to consider as an act of cowardice.
You know, like: well, Feldman was always very close to painters
such as Rothko, and in the same way that painting has no existence in
time (duration)--you can look at it for as long as you wish--neither does
a Feldman piece, which means I can leave when I want... And, worse:
I know that the piece wont change very much during the next
ninety minutes, so I figure if I leave now I can say Ive heard as
much as I have to hear... Of these two excuses, the former is a
conceptually interesting, if flawed, notion; the latter plain wrong. To
requote Howard Skempton on LaMonte Young, its not that theres
not enough to hear, theres too much to hear..
Kronos came to mind at the ThÉtre MoliËre, with Piano
and String Quartet (their recording of the work with Aki Takahashi
is one of the most readily available discs of late Feldman), performed
here by members of the Ives Ensemble, who, though less sartorially flamboyant
than Kronos, played the work with extreme precision and sensitivity. Thankfully
they had arranged and recopied their scores in such a way that page turners
were not required, leaving the audience free to watch the musicians alone.
Not that there was much to watch--the gentleman next to me nodded off,
leaving his starched shirt to creak in time with his breathing, as if
a geiger counter had been hidden somewhere in the plush upholstery--the
minute gestures of coordination between the players (one sensed the intricacies
of Feldmans notation) were almost imperceptible. Fascinating however
was the spatial distribution of the string chords: what on the record
can seem like the same sonorities (more or less) repeated over and over
was aurally richer in performance, as the constituent elements of each
chord were subtlely swapped between the four musicians.
As Steve Reich notes in his appreciation of Feldman in the programme,
many of the chords are inversions of themselves, though the repetitions
are never exact: ceratin harmonic events do reoccur--the E-G#-F#-G chord
(or 4-2 if you prefer set-theory), permeates much of the central
area of the piece: a typically ambiguous Feldman sound, this, with its
implicit dissonance--two adjacent semitones--and yet a hint of an E major
ninth (a duality highlighted by its vertical note-by-note presentation,
the pitches entering in order one by one above each other, major third,
minor seventh, minor ninth). Its also tempting for set-theorists
to analyse what Feldman was up to in the piano part near the end of the
piece, where the same arpeggiated chord is heard in numerous transpositions
but with the same intervallic profile--perfect fifth, major third, whole
tone, perfect fourth, minor sixth (e.g. F-C-E-F#-B-G, or 6-38
in Forte notation)--though the fact that the same pitch information occurs
again and again is hardly evidence of Feldman consciously applying set-theory.
His oft-asserted I compose by ear may well account for the
coherence of pitch-class content (i.e. he just heard the same pitches),
and budding analysts are well-advised to bear this in mind before congratulating
themselves on discovering Mortys use of set-theory..
To quote Feldman: If you think you might have secret information
listening to me, youre lost.
This is only one of many intriguing aspects touched upon here, but leads
to a question of great significance: does that the fact that we recognise
recurring events (such as the cellos solo melody--played four times
on harmonics and finally pizzicato) impart form to the work? What is musical
form? If we propose the hypothesis that our so-called traditional Western
musical forms are classifiable and identifiable precisely because they
contain elements which reoccur and are perceived to reoccur (what is Rondo
other than ABACADA etc.?), then are concepts such as Stockhausens
moment form invalid as musical forms? Where do we situate
Feldmans music in this discourse? I would venture to suggest that
a kind of moment form is in effect here, in that our capacity to perceive
recognisable musical ideas, indeed our very notion of memory itself, is
being brought into question. To be sure, these are issues which are central
to the discussion of any piece of contemporary music, be it by Ferneyhough
or LaMonte Young, but Feldmans direct exposition of basic musical
building blocks--arpeggio, simple rhythmic unison, regular/not-so-regular
repetition of events--brings them into sharper focus. Closing my eyes
during the piece I thought at times of the Nevada desert, of a sensation
of travelling without really moving: the profile of distant mountains
shifting slowly enough for a change in the landscape to be perceived only
in retrospect, a blurring of past and present. Do the Speed Limit
75 signs which flash by every ten miles or so impart a kind of form
to this landscape? Perhaps not, though they trigger the processes of memory
which allow us to (re)construct its form, which might not be the form
in an abstract cartographical sense but is certainly our form. Similarly,
in a score, do barlines impart musical form? Yes, in a sense, but only
for the performer--maybe then we can consider Feldmans repetitions
as audible barlines, simple signposts we pass as we make our way through
a desolate and beautiful landscape. And what do we remember of the piece
when it is finished? Sometimes we dream of places we know but the dream
image bears no relation whatsoever to the place as it really is (I
dreamt of Paris but it didnt look like Paris at all, but it was
Paris..)--for some strange reason, all I could hear as I made my
way home on the MÉtro was a descending major seventh, from A below
middle C to the B flat below. The more I think of it, the surer I am that
this sonority is nowhere to be found in Piano and String Quartet,
but it somehow belonged there, part of the piece. Now, where was Feldman
in all of this?
Théâtre Molière, Maison de
la Poésie, 25th. November 1997
In contrast to the Rothko Chapel concert, the audience for the Ensemble
Recherche was by far the quietest Ive ever heard. Not the slightest
hint of a cough. Maybe its just that they were well educated concert-goers,
but I prefer to think it had something to do with the music. It was an
awesome concert, spanning the full range of Feldmans career, from
the exquisite pointillism of the Four Songs to e.e. cummings
(1951), via the first-past-the-post indeterminate durations of the OHara
Songs of 1962, to three major Seventies works I Met Heine
on the Rue Frstenberg (1971), For Frank OHara
(1973), and Routine Investigations (1976), culminating in
Feldmans final work, Samuel Beckett, Words and Music,
premiered only months before his death in 1987. The Ensemble Recherche
was on fine form--they have after all recorded this music and toured it
extensively--and the vocal contributions from Sarah Leonard, Omar Ebrahim
and Stephen Lind were superb: Ebrahim in fact nearly got a standing ovation
mid-concert for the OHara songs.
Performing without a conductor--no easy feat given Feldmans notational
idiosyncracies--the ensembles coordination was nonetheless impeccable
(sitting on the front row I was actually able to follow the scores). What
comes across most forcibly in performances of this quality is the distinct
identity of each piece; despite the fact that theyre all 100% pure
Feldman, i.e. almost entirely pianissimo and gently chromatic and mildly
repetitive throughout, each work rapidly establishes its own musical identity,
its own unique sonic universe. I Met Heine... trembles like
a captive butterfly with its voice and clarinet fluttertonguing (and what
supremely lyrical vocal writing for wordless soprano!); in For Frank
OHara the percussion growls like a distant thunderstorm, until
at one moment the snare drum breaks out in an extraordinary crescendo
to fortissimo (surely one of the most breathtaking moments in Feldmans
oeuvre); Routine Investigations is more active, but also more
rhythmically stolid, its tiny chromatic fragments rotating in intricate
not-so-regular metrical prisons, a technique Feldman later explored in
1980s The Turfan Fragments. As for Words and Music,
of the maybe hundreds of composers (myself included) who have tried, it
seems to me that only Feldman ever succeeded in truly capturing the intimate
desolation of Beckett. His most austerely Beckettian work, and to my mind
his masterpiece, is the ensemble piece For Samuel Beckett
from 1986 (if you dont have this at home, your record collection
is woefully lacking), whereas Words and Music finds Feldman
in more relaxed, incidental music mood, dictated somewhat
by the bitter humour of Becketts text.
One of Feldmans overriding concerns was musical time and how we
experience it; LaMonte Young once spoke of a prisoner confined for a long
time who hears a door slam one day--as the only sound he has heard (and
will hear) for a very long time, Young (I think it was Young) postulates
the hypothesis that the sound continues to exist for him long after it
has physically ended. In the same way, the shattering snare drum roll
in For Frank OHara resonates in the listeners
minds not only for the rest of the piece, but way beyond. However, as
I wandered out into the night once more after the concert, I put on my
Walkman (an indispensable travelling aid in the Parisian transport system),
and discovered that I had taken the wrong tape to listen to: instead of
the Ives Ensembles newly-issued (and excellent) version of Feldmans
Trio, I found myself listening to the Waudang flute music
of Papua New Guinea. Absolutely spellbinding, utterly minimal, and very
Feldmanesque--a touch of chance Morty himself might well have
appreciated. May he rest in peace.
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