Grove Music Online

Feldman, Morton
Steven Johnson

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.09435
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

(b New York, Jan 12, 1926; d Buffalo, NY, Sept 3, 1987). American
composer. Influenced by abstract painting, his music often employs
alternative notational and organizational systems that contribute to
a compositional style centred on gestural, timbral and non-metric
relationships.

1. Life.

He studied composition with Riegger and Wolpe, but especially

admired Varèse’s music. Early in his career he distanced himself
from traditional academic training, earning his living by working in
his family’s business. Later he served as dean of the New York
Studio School (1969–71). A residency in Berlin (1971–2) generated
commissions from European orchestras and radio organizations,
gaining him wider attention and leading to compositions for larger
ensembles. From 1973 until his death, he taught composition as the
Edgard Varèse Professor of Music at SUNY, Buffalo.

Feldman’s aesthetic crystallized in the early 1950s when he became

associated with John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff and David
Tudor. His strongest influence, however, came from New York
abstract expressionist painters. Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Franz
Kline and especially Philip Guston stimulated Feldman to imagine a
sound world unlike any he had ever heard. Throughout his career, he
adhered with remarkable consistency to a few tenets learned from
them: a dislike of intellectual system and compositional rhetoric; a
hostility to past forms of expression; a preference for abstract
gestures set in flat ‘all-over’ planes of time; an obsession with the
physical materials of art; a belief in handmade methods; and a trust
in instinct. He defended this aesthetic in a number of essays written
over the course of his career. Some of these are autobiographical,
even nostalgic (‘Give My Regards to Eighth Street’), while others
involve polemical attacks on system-conscious European composers
such as Boulez and Stockhausen (‘The Anxiety of Art’). In ‘Crippled
Symmetry’ he wrote straightforwardly about his compositional
methods and his inspiration from the visual arts.

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 2. Works.

Feldman found his voice early with Two Intermissions (1950), a

conventionally notated pair of short, quiet pieces for the piano. Both
project isolated, non-systematically chosen tones and chords into
what might be called ‘open time’, musical space in which metrical
divisions are absent aurally even though they may exist notationally.
Seeking a more complete expulsion of traditional rhetoric, however,
he soon began to explore new notational strategies.

His first graphic scores, the five Projections (1950–51), use

horizontal rows of connected boxes to delineate units of time. In
Projection 1 for solo cello three rows specify either harmonics,
plucked (P) or bowed (A) timbres. Inside the time boxes Feldman
drew smaller squares and rectangles to represent sound events. He
suggested the general register of the sounds by setting the squares
and rectangles either at the top, middle or bottom of the time box.
The sounds’ temporal placement was also communicated spatially,
based on the square’s position from left to right. In Projections for
other instruments, numbers inside the squares specify chords,
corresponding, for example, to the number of pitches to be attacked
simultaneously.

While the graphic scores leave pitch choice to the performer and
suggest only approximate durations, they clearly define density,
timbre, areas of differing rhythmic activity and the overall shape of
the sound. Relatively distinct sections, therefore, do appear in this
music. Passages in Intersection 2 (1951) for the piano are
distinguished by thick or thin textures, or by variances in the
frequency of events; some passages are hectically diverse, while
others maintain a more consistent level of activity. When performed
with atonal materials, as Feldman intended, the scores produce
abstract fields of quiet, slow-moving events, floating free of metric
emphasis and purified of references to the past. After 1953, however,
discouraged by a lapse of appreciation by some performers, he
abandoned graphic notation as a main technique, returning to it only
occasionally in such works as Atlantis (1959), Out of ‘Last Pieces’
(1961), The King of Denmark (1964) and In Search of an
Orchestration (1967).

In the later 1950s and during the 1960s Feldman began writing
pieces that specified pitch but left duration indeterminate. This
method took several forms. The Piece for Four Pianos (1957)
introduced a technique that can be described as non-synchronous
time. The work’s one-page score presents a series of atonal chords
and a few isolated tones placed on staves without barlines (ex.1).
The four pianists read the same part, beginning the piece together
but each progressing at their own pace. Feldman described the
result as ‘reverberations from an identical sound source’. The music
divides into segments defined by density, registral position, or the
repetition of a single event or small group of events. Its sectional
character helps the listener hear the irregular echoes of one player
against another.

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 Ex.1 Piece for Four Pianos, second and third systems

Peters Edition

While Feldman returned repeatedly to this method, in later pieces,

such as Piano Four Hands (1958), Durations I–V (1960–61) and For
Franz Kline (1962), each performer plays his or her own part. Thus,
as Feldman conceived it, ‘each instrument [lives] out its own
individual life in its own individual sound world’. In many other
works of the 1960s (e.g., Vertical Thoughts, DeKooning, First
Principles), Feldman exerted greater control over the order and
alignment of events while leaving durations indeterminate. The
events in DeKooning, for example, usually proceed in notationally
open time, but dotted lines from one event to another specify the
desired sequence of events and vertical lines designate
simultaneities (ex.2). Interspersed sporadically throughout these
scores are short (often one-bar) segments in a conventional metre.
Since these almost always present either silence or a single
sustained event, however, they do not create conventional rhythmic
patterns, but rather show periodic attempts to regulate the space
between events.

Ex.2 DeKooning, first system

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 Peters Edition

The various notational strategies of the 1950s and 60s had a minimal
effect on the sound of Feldman’s music. When he returned to fully
conventional notation around 1970, however, there was a slight yet
perceptible change. The first works of this period, the first three
Viola in My Life pieces (1970), introduced a conspicuous new
lyricism. Short bursts of viola melody appear amidst the familiar
sparse textures and quiet atonal sonorities of the work. Because he
had so consistently avoided melody in the past, these bursts sound
almost tuneful, even though they remain fragmentary by
conventional standards. Frequent use of crescendo and decrescendo,
largely absent from both earlier and later compositions, give the
music an uncustomary expressivity. In some passages, such as the
end of Viola II, consonant pitch collections heighten the lyricism.

Rothko Chapel (1971), commissioned as a tribute to the Houston

chapel and its painter, who had killed himself the year before,
culminated this intense but short-lived lyrical period. The close bond
between Feldman and Rothko inspired the composer to build
abundant extramusical references into the piece, some of which he
specified. The uncharacteristic sectionalism reflected his physical
impression of the chapel, certain passages stood for the chapel
paintings and some intervals invoked the atmosphere of a
synagogue. The music combines viola lyricism with melodic
fragments for soprano and stationary atonal choral chords. The
piece concludes with a nostalgic, long-breathed viola melody in E
and A minor, written when Feldman was 15.

Most of Feldman’s music of the 1970s, however, exhibits his

customary abstract language. He considered his For Frank O’Hara
(1973) typical of his style, with its ‘flat’ minimally contrasting
surface. Yet the music actually falls into relatively discrete sections,
distinguished by the position of events in pitch space, use of
distinctive timbral combinations and textural variation. Some
sections are unified by the repetition of harmonies, which may
return literally or in spatially varied forms. Many constructions use
all-adjacent pitch classes (or pitch class clusters), a technique
favoured by Feldman throughout his career.

Feldman’s late style combined the ingredients of his earlier music –

atonality, low volume levels, austere textures and open time – with
several new elements. First, the size of individual sound events
increased slightly. Whereas events in earlier music consisted mainly
of single attacks without rhythmic identity and metric context, those
in the late music frequently involve brief one- or two-bar gestures.
These often appear as separate sound blocks with distinct rhythmic
motives, and may consist of melodic fragments, short chord
progressions, or single harmonies rendered in broken chords (ex.3).

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 Ex.3 Crippled Symmetry, a passage from near the beginning

Peters Edition

Second, Feldman embraced minimalist repetition. In his early works

he occasionally built long passages with repeated single tones,
chords, or short figures (e.g., the conventionally notated
Intermission V and Extensions III, both from 1952). Now, he began
using literal as well as varied repetition. Individual motifs or small
groups of gestures repeat consecutively as many as 12 or 13 times.
This helped Feldman achieve his goal of disorienting the listener’s
memory, emphasizing the stationary character of individual gestures

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 and de-emphasizing patterns that might arise from progressions of
different gestures. He compared himself to Mondrian in this way, an
artist who did not want to paint ‘bouquets, but a single flower at a
time’.

The use of bigger gestures and constant repetition led to a third

important characteristic: the tendency to compose pieces of
enormous length. Many of the late works (Patterns in a Chromatic
Field, For Bunita Marcus) run continuously for over an hour, some
for four or five (For Philip Guston, String Quartet II). This reflects
Feldman’s preoccupation with scale over form and his interest in
enveloping environments, in which listeners experience music from
‘inside’ a composition.

In some late works Feldman returned to the non-synchronous

technique he had used since the late 1950s. In Why Patterns?
(1978), for example, the three players (flute, piano, glockenspiel)
move at their own pace through their parts, which divide into fairly
distinct segments. Each segment is relatively consistent in its use of
material, employing the kind of systematic methods Feldman had
long derided. A few compositions include aurally undetectable
isorhythms and another uses a 12-note serial procedure in
combination with an elaborate rotation scheme, producing a long,
undifferentiated sequence of whole-tone dyads. Such music reveals a
new ironic attitude towards system, in which Feldman conceals
highly ordered patterns with banal material. This interest derived in
part from his attraction to the woven patterns in Anatolian rugs and
to Jasper John’s crosshatch paintings, which feature a sly balance of
hidden regulation and mundane repetition. Other textile-inspired
works include Crippled Symmetry (1983), which resembles Why
Patterns? in its material, instrumentation and non-synchronized
score; and Coptic Light (1986), Feldman’s last orchestral work. The
latter piece, inspired by the early Coptic textiles at the Louvre, has
an inordinately dense, undulating texture. Its opening passage
superimposes over 20 different layers, each repeating a simple
pattern.

Other late pieces, using conventional synchronized notation, focus

on a single gesture at a time. In many passages the connection
between gestures seems random, a product of Feldman’s aimless,
psycho-automatic mind. But in others, gestures evolve one into
another in a manner approaching organic development. The opening
broken chord of Triadic Memories, for example, yields after about
four minutes, first to one, then another, broken chord, each of which
relates rhythmically and harmonically to the initial event.

These compositions typically alternate, albeit irregularly, between

passages that concentrate exclusively on one gesture and those that
group together many different ones. In passages of the first kind,
Feldman often alters an aspect of a gesture continually, even while
keeping most of its elements intact. The harmony and rhythms of the
opening gesture of Triadic Memories remain constant, for instance,
but its sonic character steadily changes as its upper and lower
elements gradually exchange registers. In passages of the second
kind, Feldman habitually shuffles and re-shuffles the order of
gestures. According to the composer, such modular construction

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 allowed him to avoid the occurrence of predictable patterns while
preserving the self-contained, inorganic character of his musical
gestures.

Works

Stage

Ixion (Summerspace) (ballet), 10 insts, 1958 [rev. for 2 pf,

1965]

Neither (op, 1, S. Beckett), S, orch, 1977, Rome Opera, 13 May

1977

Samuel Beckett, Words and Music (incid music for radio play),
1987

Orchestral

Intersection I, 1951

Marginal Intersection, 1951

Atlantis, 1959

Out of ‘Last Pieces’, 1961

Structures, 1962

First Principles, chbr orch, 1967

In Search of an Orchestration, 1967

On Time and the Inst Factor, 1969

The Viola in my Life [IV], va, orch, 1971

Vc and Orch, 1972

Str Qt and Orch, 1973

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 Pf and Orch, 1975

Ob and Orch, 1976

Orch, 1976

Fl and Orch, 1978

Vn and Orch, 1979

The Turfan Frags., 1980

Coptic Light, 1986

For Samuel Beckett, chbr orch, 1987

Vocal

Choral

The Swallows of Salangan, SATB, 4 fl, a fl, 5 tpt, 2 tuba, 2 vib,

2 pf, 7 vc, 1960

Chorus and Insts, SATB, hn, perc, cel, vn, vc, db, 1963

Christian Wolff in Cambridge, SATB, 1963

Chorus and Insts II, SATB, tuba, tubular bells, 1967

Chorus and Orch, 1971

Rothko Chapel, S, A, chorus, perc, cel, va, 1971

Chorus and Orch II, S, chorus, orch, 1972

Pf and Voices (Pf and Voices II), vv, 5 pf, 1972

Voices and Insts, chorus, 2 fl, eng hn, cl, bn, hn, perc, pf, db,
1972

Elemental Procedures, S, chorus, orch, 1976

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 For Stepan Wolpe, chorus, vib, 1986

Solo

Only, 1946

Journey to the End of the Night (after L.-F. Céliné), S, fl, cl, b
cl, bn, 1949

4 Songs (e e cummings), S, pf, vc, 1951

Intervals, B-Bar, trbn, vc, vib, perc, 1961

For Franz Kline, S, vn, hn, vc, tubular bells, pf, 1962

The O’Hara Songs (F. O’Hara), B-Bar, vn, va, vc, tubular bells,
pf, 1962

Rabbi Akiba, S, fl, eng hn, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, perc, pf, 1963

Vertical Thoughts III, S, fl, hn, tpt, trbn, tuba, perc, cel + pf,
1963

Vertical Thoughts V, S, vn, tuba, perc, cel, 1963

I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstenberg, Mez, fl + pic, cl + b cl,

perc, pf, vn, vc, 1971

5 Pf (Pf and Voices), 5 S, 5 pf, 1972

Voice and Insts, S, orch, 1972

Voices and Insts II, 3 high vv, fl, 2 vc, db, 1973

Voices and Vc, 2 high vv, vc, 1973

Voice and Insts II, 1v, cl, vc, db, 1974

Voice, Vn, Pf, 1976

3 Voices (O’Hara), 1/3 S, tape, 1982

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 Chamber

5 or more insts

Projection II, fl, tpt, vn, vc, pf, 1951

Projection V, 3 fl, tpt, 2 pf, 3 vc, 1951

11 Insts, fl, a fl, hn, tpt, b tpt, trbn, tuba, vib, pf, vn, vc, 1953

2 Pieces, fl, a fl, hn, tpt, vn, vc, 1956

Durations V, hn, vib, cel + pf, vn, vc, 1961

2 Pieces, cl, str qt, 1961

The Straits of Magellan, fl, hn, tpt, pf, amp gui, hp, db, 1961

DeKooning, hn, vn, vc, perc, pf, 1963

Numbers, fl, hn, trbn, tuba, perc, cel, pf, vn, db, 1964

False Relationships and the Extended Ending, trbn, tubular

bells, 3 pf, vn, vc, 1968

Between Categories, 2 vn, 2 vc, 2 tubular bells, 2 pf, 1969

Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety, 2 fl, brass, tubular

bells, cel, vc, 2 db, 1970

The Viola in My Life [I], fl, vn, va, vc, perc, 1970

The Viola in My Life [II], fl, cl, pf, perc, vn, va, vc, 1970

3 Cl, Vc and Pf, 1971

For Frank O’Hara, fl + pic + a fl, cl, perc, pf, vn, vc, 1973

Insts I, a fl + pic, ob + eng hn, trbn, perc, vc, 1974

Insts II, a fl + fl + pic, ob + eng hn, cl + b cl, tpt, trbn, perc,

hp, pf, db, 1975

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 Routine Investigations, ob, tpt, pf, va, vc, db, 1976

Cl and Str Qt, 1983

Crippled Symmetry, fl + b fl, glock + vib, perc, pf + cel, 1983

For Philip Guston, pic + fl + a fl, perc, pf + cel, 1984

Pf and Str Qt, 1985

Vn and Str Qt, 1985

1–4 insts

Piece, vn, pf, 1950

Projection I, vc, 1950

Extensions I, vn, pf, 1951

Intersection, tape, 1951

Projection IV, vn, pf, 1951

Structures, str qt, 1951

Intersection IV, vc, 1953

3 Pieces, str qt, 1956

2 Insts, hn, vc, 1958

Durations I, vn, a fl, vc, pf, 1960

Durations II, vc, pf, 1960

Durations III, vn, tuba, pf, 1961

Durations IV, vn, vc, vib, 1961

Vertical Thoughts II, vn, pf, 1963

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 The King of Denmark, perc, 1964

4 Insts, vn, vc, tubular bells, pf, 1965

The Viola in My Life [III], va, pf, 1970

4 Insts, vn, va, vc, pf, 1975

Insts III, fl, ob, perc, 1977

Spring of Chosroes, vn, pf, 1978

Why Patterns?, fl + b fl, glock, pf, 1978

Str Qt, 1979

Trio, vn, vc, pf, 1980

B Cl and Perc, 1981

Patterns in a Chromatic Field (Untitled Composition), vc, pf,

1981

For John Cage, vn, pf, 1982

Str Qt II, 1983

For Christian Wolff, fl, pf + cel, 1986

Pf, Vn, Va, Vc, 1987

Keyboard

Ens

Projection III, 2 pf, 1951

Extensions IV, 3 pf, 1952

2 Pieces, 2 pf, 1954

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 Piece, 4 pf, 1957

2 Pf, 1957

Pf, pf 3 hands, 1957

Pf, pf 4 hands, 1958

Vertical Thoughts I, 2 pf, 1963

2 Pieces, 3 pf, 1966

Solo (pf, unless otherwise stated)

Illusions, 1950

2 Intermissions, 1950

Intersection II, 1951

Extensions III, 1952

Intermission V, 1952

Pf Piece, 1952

Intermission VI, 1/2 pf, 1953

Intersection III, 1953

3 Pieces, 1954

Pf Piece, 1955

Pf Piece a, 1956

Pf Piece b, 1956

Last Pieces, 1959

Pf Piece, 1963

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 Pf Piece, 1964

Vertical Thoughts IV, 1964

Pf, 1977

Principal Sound, org, 1980

Triadic Memories, 1981

For Bunita Marcus, 1985

Palais de Mari, 1986

MSS in CH-Bps

Principal publishers: Peters, Universal

Writings
Essays, ed. W. Zimmermann (Kerpen, 1985)

with J. Cage: Radio Happenings I-V, trans. G. Gronemeyer

(Cologne, 1993)

Bibliography
GroveA (W. Bland/K. Porter, J. Wierzbicki) [incl. further
bibliography]; KdG (S. Claren)

H. Cowell: ‘Current Chronicle’, MQ, 38 (1952), 131–6

P. Davis: ‘Feldman and Brown’, Musical America, 83/11

(1963), 33–4

P. Dickinson: ‘Morton Feldman Explains Himself’, Music

and Musicians, 14/11 (1965–6), 22–3

W. Zimmermann: ‘Morton Feldman’, Desert Plants:

Conversations with 23 American Musicians (Vancouver,
1976), 1–20

T. Caras and C. Gagne: ‘Morton Feldman’, Soundpieces:

Interviews with American Composers (Metuchen, NJ,
1982), 163–77

P. Gena: ‘H.C.E. (Here Comes Everybody)’, A John Cage

Reader (New York, 1982), 51–73 [interview]

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 W. Baldridge: ‘Morton Feldman: One whose Reality is
Acoustic’, PNM, 21 (1982–3), 112–13

J. Williams: ‘An Interview with Morton Feldman’,

Percussive Notes, 21/6 (1982–3), 4–14

T. Moore: ‘We Must Pursue Anxiety’, Sonus, 4/2 (1984),

14–19

R. Ashley: ‘Morton Feldman’, Contemporary Composers

on Contemporary Music, ed. B. Childs and E. Schwartz
(New York, 1987), 362–6 [interview]

R. Wood Massi: ‘Captain Cook’s First Voyage’, Cum Notis

Variorum, no.131/April (1989), 7–12 [interview]

M. and P. Paccione: ‘Did Modernism Fail Morton

Feldman?’, Ex tempore, 6/1 (1992), 13–21

S. Johnson: ‘Rothko Chapel and Rothko’s Chapel’, PNM,

32/2 (1994), 6–53

T. DeLio, ed.: The Music of Morton Feldman (Westport, CT,

1996)

M. Kimmelman: ‘The Abstract Expressionist of Music’,

New York Times (28 July 1996)
See also
Cage, John, §4: Chance

More on this topic

Feldman, Morton (opera) <http://
oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/
gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/
omo-9781561592630-e-5000002381> in Oxford
Music Online <http://oxfordmusiconline.com>
Feldman, Morton (1926-1987), composer <http://
anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/
9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-
e-1803493> in American National Biography
Online <http://anb.org>

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