The Composer's Eye: Morton Feldman
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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. -
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. -
The Seventh Season Being Mendelssohn CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL and INSTITUTE July 17–August 8, 2009 David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors
The Seventh Season Being Mendelssohn CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL AND INSTITUTE July 17–August 8, 2009 David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors Music@Menlo Being Mendelssohn the seventh season july 17–august 8, 2009 david finckel and wu han, artistic directors Contents 3 A Message from the Artistic Directors 5 Welcome from the Executive Director 7 Being Mendelssohn: Program Information 8 Essay: “Mendelssohn and Us” by R. Larry Todd 10 Encounters I–IV 12 Concert Programs I–V 29 Mendelssohn String Quartet Cycle I–III 35 Carte Blanche Concerts I–III 46 Chamber Music Institute 48 Prelude Performances 54 Koret Young Performers Concerts 57 Open House 58 Café Conversations 59 Master Classes 60 Visual Arts and the Festival 61 Artist and Faculty Biographies 74 Glossary 76 Join Music@Menlo 80 Acknowledgments 81 Ticket and Performance Information 83 Music@Menlo LIVE 84 Festival Calendar Cover artwork: untitled, 2009, oil on card stock, 40 x 40 cm by Theo Noll. Inside (p. 60): paintings by Theo Noll. Images on pp. 1, 7, 9 (Mendelssohn portrait), 10 (Mendelssohn portrait), 12, 16, 19, 23, and 26 courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY. Images on pp. 10–11 (landscape) courtesy of Lebrecht Music and Arts; (insects, Mendelssohn on deathbed) courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library. Photographs on pp. 30–31, Pacifica Quartet, courtesy of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Theo Noll (p. 60): Simone Geissler. Bruce Adolphe (p. 61), Orli Shaham (p. 66), Da-Hong Seetoo (p. 83): Christian Steiner. William Bennett (p. 62): Ralph Granich. Hasse Borup (p. 62): Mary Noble Ours. -
Oral History Interview with Hans Namuth, 1971 Aug. 12-Sept. 14
Oral history interview with Hans Namuth, 1971 Aug. 12-Sept. 14 Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Hans Namuth on August 12 and September 8, 1971. The interview took place in New York City, and was conducted by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview PAUL CUMMINGS: It's August 12, 1971 - Paul Cummings talking to Hans Namuth in his studio in New York City. You were born in Germany - right? HANS NAMUTH: Right. PAUL CUMMINGS: Could you tell me something about life there and growing up and education and how you got started? You were born in - what? - 1915? HANS NAMUTH: Yes. I grew up during the war years and inflation. I have memories of the French Occupation and shooting in the streets. The French occupied Essen. We had a French deserter living with us who taught me my first French. I went to the equivalent of a gymnasium, Humboldt Oberrealschule in Essen, hating school, loathing school. I would say it was a prison. Eventually I started to work in a bookshop in Essen at the age of seventeen and became very affiliated with Leftist groups in 1932 when everything was brewing and for a moment we didn't know whether they were going to go all the way Left or all the way Right. I think the Communist and the Socialist Parties at the time lost a big chance of gaining power in Germany by not uniting in 1931-1932. -
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. -
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. -
Allan Sekula
Allan Sekula Polonia and Other Fables The Renaissance Society September 20 – December 13, 2009 at The University of Chicago 5 T a C P 8 t h h h 1 o i e T c 1 n h a R S e g The e : o e o ( u U n 7 , t a 7 n I h l l 3 i i i s E n v ) s 7 o l Renaissance e l i 0 a i r s s 2 s n A 6 - i c t 8 v 0 e y 6 e 6 7 n 3 S Society o 0 u 7 f o e c C i h Mòwimy po Polsku at The University of Chicago e i t c 5811 South Ellis Avenue y a 4th floor g o In 1950, Hans Namuth documented Jackson variety of photographic tropes ranging from means of thinking through rather than excluding Nothing could be further from the pit’s Chicago, IL 60637 Pollock in what are now iconic photographs. clandestine snapshots to formal portraiture, from the self, beginning with the most basic social testosterone-fueled mania than Sekula’s portrait unit, the family. Autobiography recurs in varying of an extremely slight female trader. She stands, Museum Hours One features a pensive Pollock crouched serial to aerial photography, and from street Tuesday - Friday: 10am - 5pm amongst abraded weeds in front of a weathered photography to ethnography in the vein of degrees of subtlety throughout his work. It is arms at her side, in front of a confetti-strewn Saturday, Sunday: 12- 5pm Model T Ford. -
Morton Feldman and Abstract Expressionism
Morton Feldman and Abstract Expressionism Time and sound construction in his piano miniatures of the 1950s and 1960s by Gianmario Borio (English translation by Francesco Sani) This essay was first published in Italian in Itinerari della musica americana, edited by Gianmario Borio and Gabrio Taglietti, Lucca, Lim 1996, pp. 119-134. An earlier version appeared as a chapter in Borio’s PhD dissertation Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960. Entwurf einer Theorie der informellen Musik, Laaber Verlag, Laaber 1993, pp. 146-167. The circle of musicians gathering around John Cage towards the latter part of the 1940s – Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Christian Wolff – expressed a strong interest in the visual arts. Cage, right from the time of his studies with Arnold Schoenberg in 1935, had taken an interest in abstract painting – Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian – and had himself begun painting. The most fruitful encounter for him was with Mark Tobey at the Cornish School of Art in Seattle; the latter’s white paintings suggested to Cage the idea of non-representational and radically abstract art[1]. Perhaps it was after meeting Cage in 1941 that Tobey began studying piano and composition. His fascination with music concerned especially rhythmic and contrapuntal aspects, the subject of his paintings – stars, swarming lights, crowds and urban landscapes – executed through several interacting lines giving life to an experience characterised by an overall rhythmic pulse[2]. Tobey worked in the West Coast, an area that more than any other in the US was influenced by Asian philosophy and religion. This cultural background helps understanding the intellectual affinity felt http://www.cnvill.net/mfborio.pdf 1 by Cage when confronted with Tobey’s work. -
Leon Lishner (1913-1995)
8l{Gf J University of Washington (1'1'1 _ mE SCHOOL OF MUSIC D~. 12., '15"2... l. -(( (.4-SS 1:2,e;: q 3 presents a/aculty recital: I Z, Cj S"l1 Emilie Berendsen, mezzo-soprano Lisa Bergman, piano .. Iiii In Celebration Leon Lishner (1913-1995) with faculty guest artists Rebecca Henderson. oboe William o. Smith. clarinet and guest speakers Professor Joseph Butwin Dave Larson Professor Emeritus Paul Dietrichson February II, 1991 8:00 PM Meany Theater <t' b.l t.::) \1\ ~.,... ~ t'" \J ,; .1 ~, ~: ! L ,.~. j U ... ; F ' 1t>'I:> from VIER LIEDER, Op. 29 (1938) ;3'Jt-Z- .... ): Rechot (Noach Stem) , 'H,;: C!:) Mazkeret (poet unknown) , )..a A. 1111 fromBEARBEI11JNGEN OSTJUDISCHER 5'3 VI , VOLKSLIEDER (1923-25) ,'\ n.r V\ ! IOndl!r'deln Kinds Wiegele " . ". , Es: Kimt GeJl~en diGilde.rn.tf, Pawe .. f. ~ 0 Ii • ". ~.; I 'j, ., • ~., ; ': .: I .......re ·jNruMls.siON'~"-:"·" -':;~ i ,.'; ~nil '-W:Jr.i1ei-?'~~;IL<1 Jt [: .. :.;.,.<,; .!~ ,', , }1 .j:':.(:~l!.J c::~_~~ v,. ,,\5·, Son- Co.. "., '1 " .. ., ., ~ ~ . 11'1 " ':.... ·t~.".::\" 'j~~''{ 11V~';' .:1. •. 1',1. ;".~"'i.~'-!J.'; ',!;'.." ',....f ~.,"li. t- It> -<} AsaNDPHANTASIE (1943; Fri~d~cli Hotde~lin):t~.:, .. Vikto~,~lJl"~n \blO ZWEI CHINESISCHE l:IEDER(1943) l-t 'I~ ; JHp ::(1898-1944)' . ,Wanderer erwacht In der Herberge .,,: .... ,..' . Der made SoldDt' .. ' , ',' , , ~ ,/ . f''O' ' ~..:, " Il) \1)1 l-from SOL~-C0ATE n,943i; H. d. Adler 2- (/7 ~ lmmer Inm,tten -VI ; . \ I PI3 SUITE, Op. 17 (1939) .......1f4.............................................. Pavel Haas e; Furioso (1899~ 1944) \J"" Confuoco r\ , Moderato \f) \ ~ SEpM PISNO V l:.IDOvEVM T6NU, Op. 18 IL-t I (1939-40; F. -
The First Gutai Exhibition I N Japan Marks the Dissemination Of
1955a The first Gutai exhibition in Japan marks the dissemination of modernist art through the media and its reinterpretation by artists outside the United States and Europe, also exemplified by the rise of the Neoconcretist group in Brazil. n the fifth issue of the journal Gutai, published in October 1956, painter-his works then were competent yet rather provincial .l this brief statement appeared: 'The US artist jackson Pollock, versions of European postwar abstraction. It is not so much his whom we highly esteemed, has passed away all too early in a road own art as his independence of mind, his defianceof bureaucracy, accident, and we are deeply touched. B. H. Friedman who was close his willingness to seize the opportunity of a clean slate afforded by to him, and who sent us the news of this death, wrote: 'When the historical situation of postwar japan, and his encouragements recently I looked through Pollock's library, I discovered issues two to be as radical as possible that explain the attraction he exerted on and three of Gutai. I was told that Pollock was an enthusiastic artists who were a generation younger. His interest in perfor- disciple of the Gutai, fo r in it he had recognized a vision and a mance and in the theater-the only domain where he was as CD reali� close to his own.' " This last sentence is subject to doubt, to innovative as the other members of Gutai-also played a major U1 0 say the least (was Friedman excessively polite, was his letter tam role in defining the group's activity.