Author: JamesP
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The manuscript score and early performances reveal an alternative interpretation of a persistent rhythm in Triadic Memories
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To start on Feldman’s “Triadic memories”, I knew I needed to get a new copy of the score, but what I really wanted was a facsimile of the manuscript. Here’s how to get these scores and why I prefer them to the newer computer-typeset ones.
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Recently I’ve had a very engaging e-correspondence with pianist Adam Tendler about Morton Feldman, memory, and memorizing Feldman.
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My good friend Richard Karpen recently asked me to write the notes for an upcoming NEUMA Records release of two of his compositions: Elliptic (Strandlines II) and Aperture II.
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Last year I spent a good deal of time listening to Morton Feldman’s music, trying to get a picture of his entire body of work. I started with the works of the early 1950s and marched forward through the 1960s and 1970s. When I got to 1983, I faced the need to listen to Feldman’s…
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Recently, I learned Morton Feldman’s Two pianos, a short work from 1957. I’ve also been listening to the String quartet II lately, and I’m recognizing the same processes of musical attention in this late work—just at a massively greater scale (hours instead of minutes).
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Morton’s Feldman’s graph music—a music that was silent about which pitches should be played—changed Cage’s work forever. Cage expressed his understanding of Feldman’s radical act in a new lecture, the “Lecture on something”.
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Morton Feldman’s “Projection” showed John Cage the destination of his musical-spiritual journey. It was a revelation, the opening of a door to an entirely new world, “not just the musical world outside of you”, as he later described it, “but the musical world inside of you.”
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By 1950 Cage had arrived at a style that celebrated emptiness. Paradoxically, by letting go any strong self-expression, he discovered a truer musical voice. His next major work, the Concerto for prepared piano and chamber orchestra, was to explicitly present this release from self-expression.
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Energized by the discoveries of the quartet, Cage created his first really great piece of writing in 1950, the “Lecture on nothing”. It eloquently presents Cage’s belief that self-negating discipline produces insight.