Search - Morton Feldman, Peter Rundel :: Violin and String Quartet

Slow, shifting patterns of strings like waves or clouds

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 02/09/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the longest Feldman piece I've heard yet -- two discs, one 63 minutes long, and another 71 minutes long, all one continuous composition. It's easy to question the premise, but having listened through, it sounds great! Sure, the length is probably indulgent, there is certainly no structure to justify it, but VIOLIN & STRING QUARTET, from 1985, is an excellent late Feldman work. I love the sound of strings, and while I find the timbre of some long Feldman works with piano or glockenspiel hard to take, this does not grate on my ears in the slightest.



Feldman saw his music as the aural equivalent of abstract expressionism, and that makes sense. He was also inspired by Persian rugs in his later works, with patterns that repeat, but not perfectly. An appreciation of either abstract expressionism or Persian rugs, therefore, may be a good indication of whether you might enjoy two hours of what superficially sounds like very monotonous music of constant minor random changes. I suggest another parallel, though it may not have been part of Feldman's experience, cigar-chomping New Yorker that he was -- if you enjoy watching clouds, or watching surf, or watching light reflecting on water, then you might be susceptible to becoming absorbed in this music.



While John Cage, a major influence on Feldman, embraced Zen in his middle years, Feldman remained staunchly secular as far as I know. He loved the existentialist writing of Samuel Beckett, and saw his music as totally simpatico, even prevailing upon Beckett to write something he could set to music (NEITHER -- see my review). But how he saw it or understood it is one thing, concepts and language being so inadequate to our experience -- the best of Feldman's music strikes me as profoundly spiritual. Listening to it slows you down and makes you aware of the slightest nuances and variations. Morton Feldman may have been a Zen Buddhist despite himself.



See my MORTON FELDMAN'S SYSTEMLESS SOUNDWORLD list for more recordings and reviews."

Mesmerizing - slow-moving, low-event music of incredible soo

Discophage | France | 10/06/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Over two hours of slow-moving, low-event music for violin and string quartet (1985). If you don't have the fabric for that kind of stuff, you're likely to find it tedious, senseless, maddening. But if you are in for it - it's mesmerizing. It is music of incredible soothing power, gently rocking, animated by a slow pulse evoking the deep breathing of some gentle giant or the calm but implacable wash and backwash of the sea on a pebble beach. It'll get you high, the effect is probably the same as pot, only it's ingested through the ear and its entirely legal. Use caution, though: you might get an addiction.



Maybe that is how the sirens of Ulysses sounded, or maybe that is how it feels to glide along the River Styx on Charon's ferry. It is a journey."