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Grex > Classical > #68: Does Morton Feldman belong in a box with the minimalists? | |
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| 7 new of 31 responses total. |
dbratman
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response 25 of 31:
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Dec 9 22:03 UTC 2002 |
I'm hardly going to argue with Kyle Gann about what minimalism is, and
I note he makes the case for Feldman as a kind of minimalist. Yet in
distinguishing Feldman's music from Reich's by noting that momentum, so
key to Reich's music, plays no part in Feldman's, he fails to add that
Reichian momentum is in no way essential to minimalism. The minimalist
composer Feldman most resembles is LaMonte Young, who started writing
music of this kind at about the same time that Feldman did (Gann
implies that Feldman predates the minimalists, but his notated works
don't). And they were both inspired by John Cage.
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md
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response 26 of 31:
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Dec 10 15:18 UTC 2002 |
If you'd said "the minimalist composer who most resembles Feldman is
LaMonte Young" it would sound better because Feldman was writing music
consisting entirely of repeated figures nearly a decade before the
minimalists started doing it. I'm sure some of them do sound a little
like Feldman when you describe their music (though not, as I've said,
when you actually hear it).
The only reason I entered the above reviews was that the idea of a six-
hour-long work for live performers that the Kronos Quartet refuses to
perform, during one performance of which a reviewer actually kept a
diary, and which the composer himself described as "a nightmare,"
struck me as quite remarkable. I get a lot of pleasure out of
listening to Feldman's music, but he does spoil my kids' fun in playing
the latest soi-disant "shocking" alternative or rap music for me (lots
of screaming about suicide and murder and blowjobs, every other
word "nigger" or "fuck"). I have to grant that some of it is pretty
extreme, but then I counter with Feldman's "Violin and String Quartet,"
and after five minutes of a two-note violin phrase against a haze of
dissonant quartet chords they ask, "How long does this go on?" and I
get to say, "Two hours." With new listeners, Feldman wins the
outrageousness competition every time, although I don't think that was
ever his intent.
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md
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response 27 of 31:
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Dec 10 15:22 UTC 2002 |
[Btw, I'd've thought Gann's "If anyone wants to make the case that
Feldman was, after all, a Minimalist, this piece is Exhibit A" would've
pleased you.]
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dbratman
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response 28 of 31:
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Dec 11 19:32 UTC 2002 |
It did, and I said "I note he makes the case for Feldman as a kind of
minimalist."
To my ears, Young sounds quite a lot like Feldman. Certainly I'd have
no trouble telling them apart, but the closeness is striking,
especially when you consider how many very different ways there are out
there of writing music. It's Reich who is like Feldman only in written
description.
Music with repeated figures predates both Feldman and Young by quite a
bit, but this only leads to unproductive discussions of whether
Bruckner, Ravel (Bolero), or, gods help us, Sorabji are minimalists.
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md
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response 29 of 31:
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Feb 8 21:27 UTC 2003 |
Looks like John Cage's ghost is having the last laugh.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2728595.stm
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dbratman
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response 30 of 31:
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Feb 9 13:36 UTC 2003 |
I like the article's line "Cage composed the original piece before his
death in 1992." If he'd composed it after his death, it would need to
have been played by Rosemary Brown. At least that would keep her busy
for the next 639 years.
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md
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response 31 of 31:
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Mar 8 12:56 UTC 2003 |
I was listening to the Ronnie Lynn Patterson CD of Palais de Mari on
headphones, which I hadn't tried before, and noticed that the piece is
*so* quiet that the piano mechanism is clearly audible all the way
through. Every single time Patterson releases the key, you hear the
little thud of the hammer returning to its pad. I don't think it's the
pedal, because the pedal sounds depressed all the way through. I.e., I
don't think he ever takes his foot off it.
I checked out the "Why Patterns?" Feldman list to see if anyone else
had noticed it, but apparently not. One person claimed not to like
Patterson's interpretation as being too slow. It's a good ten minutes
longer than the other available recordings. He complained about the
tendency of performers to reduce Feldman's "difficult" music
to "isolated plinks and plunks in the vast silence of eternity."
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