Morton Feldman and Abstract Expressionism
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Morton Feldman: a Celebration of His 80Th Birthday
Morton Feldman : A Celebration of His 80th Birthday Curated by John Bewley June 1 – September 15, 2006 Case 1 Morton Feldman was born January 12, 1926 in New York City to Irving and Frances Feldman. He grew up in Woodside, Queens where his father established a company that manufactured children’s coats. His early musical education consisted of piano lessons at the Third Street Settlement School in Manhattan and beginning at age twelve, with Vera Maurina Press, an acquaintance of the Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, and a student of Ferruccio Busoni, Emil von Sauer, and Ignaz Friedman. Feldman began composing at age nine but did not begin formal studies until age fifteen when he began compositional studies with Wallingford Riegger. Morton Feldman, age 13, at the Perisphere, New York World’s Fair, 1939? Unidentified photographer Rather than pursuing a college education, Feldman chose to study music privately while he continued working for his father until about 1967. After completing his studies in January 1944 at the Music and Arts High School in Manhattan, Feldman studied composition with Stefan Wolpe. It was through Wolpe that Feldman met Edgard Varèse whose music and professional life were major influences on Feldman’s career. Excerpt from “I met Heine on the Rue Furstenburg”, Morton Feldman in conversation with John Dwyer, Buffalo Evening News, Saturday April 21, 1973 Let me tell you about the factory and Lukas Foss (composer and former Buffalo Philharmonic conductor). The plant was near La Guardia airport. Lukas missed his plane one day and he knew I was around there, so he called me up and invited me to lunch. -
City Research Online
City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Pace, I. (2017). Michael Finnissy - The Piano Music (10 and 11) - Brochure from Conference 'Bright Futures, Dark Pasts'. This is the other version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/17523/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] BRIGHT FUTURES, DARK PASTS Michael Finnissy at 70 Conference at City, University of London January 19th-20th 2017 Bright Futures, Dark Pasts Michael Finnissy at 70 After over twenty-five years sustained engagement with the music of Michael Finnissy, it is my great pleasure finally to be able to convene a conference on his work. This event should help to stimulate active dialogue between composers, performers and musicologists with an interest in Finnissy’s work, all from distinct perspectives. It is almost twenty years since the publication of Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). -
Feldman the Rug-Maker, Weaving for John Cage by Meg Wilhoite
Feldman the Rug-maker, Weaving For John Cage By Meg Wilhoite In an interview with Jan Williams, Morton Feldman described his fascination with ancient Middle Eastern patterned rugs: “In older oriental rugs the dyes are made in small amounts and so what happens is that there is an imperfection throughout the rug of changing colors of these dyes. Most people feel that they are imperfections. Actually it is the refraction of the light on these small dye batches that makes the rugs wonderful. I interpreted this as going in and out of tune. There is a name for that in rugs - it's called abrash - a change of colors that leads us into pieces like Instruments III [1977] which was the beginning of my rug idea.”1 There is an intimate connection between the rugs Feldman admired and many of the pieces he wrote in the last fifteen or so years of his life. These rugs set up an overall effect of sameness by systematically repeating a set of patterns, while at the same time disrupting this effect by slightly altering the components of those patterns. Similarly, Feldman wrote long works that produce a sense of skewed sameness by writing musical patterns that repeat many times, but change in intonation and/or rhythm almost imperceptibly. I present here a picture of Feldman as meticulous rug-maker, as he wove together what pianist Siegfried Mauser referred to as “an image of discreetly arranged musical sound and form.”2 Thinking of Feldman’s lengthy late works in terms of rug weaving provides us with a useful framework on which to hang both small and large-scale analyses of his music. -
City, University of London Institutional Repository
City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Pace, I. ORCID: 0000-0002-0047-9379 (2021). New Music: Performance Institutions and Practices. In: McPherson, G and Davidson, J (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/25924/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] New Music: Performance Institutions and Practices Ian Pace For publication in Gary McPherson and Jane Davidson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), chapter 17. Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century concert programming had transitioned away from the mid-eighteenth century norm of varied repertoire by (mostly) living composers to become weighted more heavily towards a historical and canonical repertoire of (mostly) dead composers (Weber, 2008). -
John Cage's Entanglement with the Ideas Of
JOHN CAGE’S ENTANGLEMENT WITH THE IDEAS OF COOMARASWAMY Edward James Crooks PhD University of York Music July 2011 John Cage’s Entanglement with the Ideas of Coomaraswamy by Edward Crooks Abstract The American composer John Cage was famous for the expansiveness of his thought. In particular, his borrowings from ‘Oriental philosophy’ have directed the critical and popular reception of his works. But what is the reality of such claims? In the twenty years since his death, Cage scholars have started to discover the significant gap between Cage’s presentation of theories he claimed he borrowed from India, China, and Japan, and the presentation of the same theories in the sources he referenced. The present study delves into the circumstances and contexts of Cage’s Asian influences, specifically as related to Cage’s borrowings from the British-Ceylonese art historian and metaphysician Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. In addition, Cage’s friendship with the Jungian mythologist Joseph Campbell is detailed, as are Cage’s borrowings from the theories of Jung. Particular attention is paid to the conservative ideology integral to the theories of all three thinkers. After a new analysis of the life and work of Coomaraswamy, the investigation focuses on the metaphysics of Coomaraswamy’s philosophy of art. The phrase ‘art is the imitation of nature in her manner of operation’ opens the doors to a wide- ranging exploration of the mimesis of intelligible and sensible forms. Comparing Coomaraswamy’s ‘Traditional’ idealism to Cage’s radical epistemological realism demonstrates the extent of the lack of congruity between the two thinkers. In a second chapter on Coomaraswamy, the extent of the differences between Cage and Coomaraswamy are revealed through investigating their differing approaches to rasa , the Renaissance, tradition, ‘art and life’, and museums. -
Notes on Morton Feldman's “The King of Denmark” by Eberhard Blum
Notes on Morton Feldman’s “The King of Denmark” by Eberhard Blum [English translation by Peter Söderberg] In February and March 2008 I had an exhibition, entitled “Choice & Chance”, at the Villa Oppenheim in Berlin, a centre for contemporary art. This featured some forty of my large graphite works on paper. In connection with the exhibition, the percussionist Adam Weisman gave a concert with the following programme: Morton Feldman – The King of Denmark (1964), first realization Karlheinz Stockhausen – Zyklus for a percussionist (1959) Morton Feldman – The King of Denmark (1964), second realization I have been familiar with both these compositions for a long time. Their principles of construction have influenced many considerations affecting the construction of my own graphic work (e.g., the question: What could be the nature of indeterminate or aleatoric graphic works?). Morton Feldman often talked about his piece and also described its relationship to Stockhausen’s. Through the percussionist Jan Williams I came to know Feldman’s piece in detail. During his tenure at the “Center of the Creative and Performing Arts” in Buffalo, Jan had created a version which fully corresponded to Feldman’s own conception of the work. The choice of percussion instruments, which are not determined in the score, was made by Jan according to Feldman’s proposals and wishes. More than once I observed them both in the famous percussion room – Room 100 of the Music Department at the University, where early in 1978 we first performed Feldman’s work “Why Patterns?”, then still called “Instruments 4”, for his students – the two of them comparing the sounds of small cymbals and triangles to make the right decision. -
Solo Percussion Is Published Ralph Shapey by Theodore Presser; All Other Soli for Solo Percussion
Tom Kolor, percussion Acknowledgments Recorded in Slee Hall, University Charles Wuorinen at Buffalo SUNY. Engineered, Marimba Variations edited, and mastered by Christopher Jacobs. Morton Feldman The King of Denmark Ralph Shapey’s Soli for Solo Percussion is published Ralph Shapey by Theodore Presser; all other Soli for Solo Percussion works are published by CF Peters. Christian Wolff Photo of Tom Kolor: Irene Haupt Percussionist Songs Special thanks to my family, Raymond DesRoches, Gordon Gottlieb, and to my colleagues AMERICAN MASTERPIECES FOR at University of Buffalo. SOLO PERCUSSION VOLUME II WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1578 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. AMERICAN MASTERPIECES FOR AMERICAN MASTERPIECES FOR Ralph Shapey TROY1578 Soli for Solo Percussion SOLO PERCUSSION 3 A [6:14] VOLUME II [6:14] 4 A + B 5 A + B + C [6:19] Tom Kolor, percussion Christian Wolf SOLO PERCUSSION Percussionist Songs Charles Wuorinen 6 Song 1 [3:12] 1 Marimba Variations [11:11] 7 Song 2 [2:58] [2:21] 8 Song 3 Tom Kolor, percussion • Morton Feldman VOLUME II 9 Song 4 [2:15] 2 The King of Denmark [6:51] 10 Song 5 [5:33] [1:38] 11 Song 6 VOLUME II • 12 Song 7 [2:01] Tom Kolor, percussion Total Time = 56:48 SOLO PERCUSSION WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1578 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. TROY1578 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. -
Ulrich Buch Engl. Ulrich Buch Englisch
Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik First edition 2012 Published by Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik 51515 Kürten, Germany (Fax +49-[0] 2268-1813) www.stockhausen-verlag.com All rights reserved. Copying prohibited by law. O c Copyright Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik 2012 Translation: Jayne Obst Layout: Kathinka Pasveer ISBN: 978-3-9815317-0-1 STOCKHAUSEN A THEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION BY THOMAS ULRICH Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preliminary Remark .................................................................................................. VII Preface: Music and Religion ................................................................................. VII I. Metaphysical Theology of Order ................................................................. 3 1. Historical Situation ....................................................................................... 3 2. What is Music? ............................................................................................. 5 3. The Order of Tones and its Theological Roots ............................................ 7 4. The Artistic Application of Stockhausen’s Metaphysical Theology in Early Serialism .................................................. 14 5. Effects of Metaphysical Theology on the Young Stockhausen ................... 22 a. A Non-Historical Concept of Time ........................................................... 22 b. Domination Thinking ................................................................................ 23 c. Progressive Thinking -
Hie-Yon Choi Piano ______
Indiana University Summer Music 2014 EDWARD AUER PIANO WORKSHOP FACULTY RECITAL Hie-Yon Choi Piano _______________________ Sonata in C Minor, Op. 10 No. 1 ......................... Ludwig van Beethoven Allegro molto e con brio (1770-1827) Adagio molto Finale: Prestissimo From Monogramme (1998-2003) ..................................... York Höller Entrée (for Bernd Alois Zimmermann) (born 1944) Artikulation (for György Ligeti) Elegia giocosa (for Hans Werner Henze) Fluktation (for Elena Bashikirova) Intermission Sonata No. 3 (2010-11) ............................................... York Höller Sonata in C Minor, Op. 111 .............................. Ludwig van Beethoven Maestoso – Allegro con brio ed appassionato Arietta: Adagio molto semplice e cantabile _________________ Auer Concert Hall Friday Evening June Thirteenth Eight O’Clock IU Jacobs School of Music Fifth Program of the 2014-15 Season Indiana University Summer Music 2014 Hie-Yon Choi is established as one of the most sought-after pianists in Korea and is a rising presence in many of the world’s music festivals and concert houses. Since her first public appearance at the age of six with the Incheon Symphony, her solo and concerto performances have encompassed all the major halls and orchestras in Korea, as well as appearances with the National Symphony Orchestra in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and halls throughout the United States and the world. She has been a regular guest at the Seoul Spring Chamber Music Festival since 2010, as well as at the Musik Sommer in Ost Friesland (Germany) since 2007. She was the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Tong-Yeong International Music Festival in 2009. She participated as faculty in 2011 and 2012 at the CCM Prague International Piano Institute. -
A Musical Work Emerges and Disappears – Morton Feldman's The
A musical work emerges and disappears – Morton Feldman’s The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar 1 by Peter Söderberg The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar is a work by Morton Feldman that does not exist. Or maybe it does, after all! There was certainly something resembling a work for one year, between 1966 and 1967, after which all traces seemed to disappear. But can an existing musical work really cease to be, and if so, under what conditions? Can a work reappear after many years, in spite of the fact that the original, the composer’s manuscript, is lost? Morton Feldman composed The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar in early 1966, at the request of his colleague Christian Wolff. Feldman and Wolff were since the early 1950’s part of the circle around John Cage in New York, and they both belong amongst the most the prominent American composers of the second half of the 20th century. Less well- known is the fact that, around that time, Christian Wolff performed as an electric guitar player. He played the instrument without any real training and with an idiosyncratic technique, often with the guitar lying on the floor or on a table. Wolff has testified that the music emerged on a single occasion, when he and Feldman got together. Feldman sat at the piano, playing sounds that Wolff would try to transfer to the guitar. The result of the investigation was notated by Feldman, and in that way the work took shape. On the same occasion, Feldman handed over the sheet music to Wolff, and accordingly the work was established in the form that would be the ultimate – at least from the composer’s pen. -
Suspicious Silence: Walking out on John Cage
Suspicious Silence: Walking Out on John Cage Clark Lunberry “What we require is / silence; but what silence requires / is that I go on talking .” –John Cage, “Lecture on Nothing” “Well, shall we / think or listen? Is there a sound addressed / not wholly to the ear?” –William Carlos Williams, “The Orchestra” Critical Innocence: 2012 marked what would have been the composer and writer John Cage’s 100th birthday, offering a nice round numbered moment to commemorate and reevaluate Cage’s lasting legacy. And it is a rich and still, astonishingly, controversial legacy, bringing forth bold assessments of Cage that range, as they have for decades, from worshipful acclaim, to ridiculing rejection. It seems with Cage, still, that it’s either black or white, love or hate; that he is either a saintly prophet of new sounds, new silences, or a foolish charlatan leading anarchically astray. Of late, however, one reads more and more critical accounts of Cage that, while acknowledging his wide–ranging influence and importance, suggest nonetheless of him a deafening innocence to his own renowned hearing. A new generation of writers and listeners, one that is perhaps more theoretically inclined and less reverential of the composer’s acclaim, have begun to raise questions about what they perceive as the unexamined dimensions of some of Cage’s claims about silence, the nature of the nothing that was thought to have constituted it. Cage, as a consequence, is now often more mystically presented as somewhat naively espousing a kind of zen–like syncing of a scene with a sound, with its immediate moment. -
Hans Werner Henze Und Ingeborg Bachmann: Die Gemeinsamen Werke
Christian Bielefeldt Hans Werner Henze und Ingeborg Bachmann: Die gemeinsamen Werke Christian Bielefeldt, Dr. phil., Studium in Hamburg, Tätigkeit als Theatercellist, 1994 Gründung von TRE MODI, Ensemble für Alte und Neue Musik. 1998-2000 Stipendiat am DFG-Graduiertenkolleg »In- termedialität« (Siegen). Veröffentlichungen zu Neuer Musik und Filmmusik. Christian Bielefeldt Hans Werner Henze und Ingeborg Bachmann: Die gemeinsamen Werke Beobachtungen zur Intermedialität von Musik und Dichtung Der Abdruck von Zitaten aus dem unveröffentlichten Nachlass Inge- borg Bachmanns geschieht mit ausdrücklicher Erlaubnis der Erben, bei denen die Abdruckrechte gleichwohl verbleiben. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Angaben sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. © 2003 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Umschlaggestaltung: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld, unter Verwendung einer Partiturseite aus: Hans Werner Henze, Reinschrift der Musik zu Ingeborg Bachmanns Hörspiel »Die Zikaden« (1955/56), S. 1; © Sammlung Hans Werner Henze (Depositum Schott Musik International), Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel Lektorat & Satz: Christian Bielefeldt Druck: Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN 3-89942-136-1 INHALT Vorwort 9 Biographisches 14 Zur Forschung 17 I. Konzepte von Intermedialität bei Henze und Bachmann 21 Erster Auftakt: Die Konstruktion der Überschreitung 27 Lacan. Sprache, Musik und das Genießen 31 Der Braunschweiger Vortrag: Henzes „geistige Rede der Musik“ 37 Zweiter Auftakt: Die menschliche Stimme 43 Barthes. Die Stimme und das Genießen 45 Musik und Dichtung: Die Intermedialität der Stimme 49 II. Ballettpantomime: Der Idiot 57 Musik aus der Hand der Trauer: Reihen- und Zitattechnik im Idioten 62 Intrada und Danse Nr.