Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman (1926 to 1987), born in New York, was a major figure of twentieth century music and, with John Cage, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown, a member of the New York School. An early experiment with graphic notation gave the performers freedom over pitch, but he soon returned to precisely notated music of extreme quietness and slowness. His work is defined by soft dynamics, floating chords and, in the last years, enormous length: the String Quartet No. 2 runs some six hours, For Philip Guston past four.
Morton Feldman in Middelburg: Words on Music
Massive! English-German Edition in two volumes 906 pages. These lectures, discussions were within the last years of Feldman's life, he died in September 1987, these were 1985 to 1987, for the "Nieuwe Muziek" in Middleburg, and the topics, subject matter runs the entire cornocopia of post war music, modernity, complexity, post-modernity, post-truth, post metaphysics. The discussion(s) are with all top-recorgnized composers Kaija Saariho, Iannis Xenakis, pianist Geoffrey D. Madge, Louis Andriessen…
Essays
**Original 1985 edition, few copies in stock** Morton Feldman was a big, brusque Jewish guy from Woodside, Queens—the son of a manufacturer of children’s coats. He worked in the family business until he was forty-four years old, and he later became a professor of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He died in 1987, at the age of sixty-one. To almost everyone’s surprise but his own, he turned out to be one of the major composers of the twentieth century, a sovereign artist who o…
Radio Happenings
** 224-page hardcover book with audio DVD of the complete 5-hours of audio from the radio broadcasts** In 1966-67, radio station WBAI in New York City invited composers John Cage and Morton Feldman to make 5 one-hour radio conversations. Unscripted and improvised, they were free to talk about whatever they wished. The fascinating conversations cover music, politics, sociology, current events, the arts and more.These Radio Happenings are legend to fans of these composers, as well as a unique mom…
Desert Plants
Facsimile reprint of Walter Zimmermann's book Desert Plants, his interviews with American experimental composers from a 1976 trip to America
For Bunita Marcus
Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus (1985), an hour-long solo piano work, played by Aki Takahashi, for whom Feldman wrote all his piano music after Triadic Memories.
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Morton Feldman Piano
Philip Thomas presents a major 5CD collection of virtually all of Morton Feldman's music for piano, the most extensive survey of Feldman's piano music to date. Released by Another Timbre in September 2019, exactly 20 years after John Tilbury's pioneering but long unavailable 4CD set, this box includes several pieces which weren't included there, and three works which have never been released on disc before.
Feldman (1926-1987) was part of a radical group of experimenters alongside John Cage, Chr…
Chamber Music: Alvin Lucier & Morton Feldman
Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present a collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, "August Moon" and "Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba" are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier. A selection from Alvin Lucier's liner notes: "For Feldman, dynamics serve an acoustical function. When he mitigates a piano attack he reduces that spike of noise that's at the onset of every pi…
We, Like Salangan Swallows...: A Choral Gallery of Morton Feldma
The intense individuality of Morton Feldman's (1926?1987) art and its 'painterly' aspect have tended to push his rich output of works into a zone all of their own, surrounded by a moat of stillness. This recording attempts the reverse process -- to bring his choral works (the previously unrecorded Chorus and Instruments, Voices and Instruments 1, Voices and Instruments 2, and The Swallows of Salangan) into a 'gallery' of other choir compositions of his times. Through the interaction with works o…
Turfan Fragments
Originally released in 2001 by the Dog W/A Bone label, this release features these 2 long pieces: For Samuel Beckett and The Turfan Fragments. Performed by: The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, with Petr Kotik, conductor. For Samuel Beckett and The Turfan Fragments are Morton Feldman's only chamber orchestra compositions. Both were commissions: The Turfan Fragments by the Swiss-Italian Radio Orchestra in 1980, For Samuel Beckett by the Schönberg Ensemble, Amsterdam, in 1987. Both titles are des…
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Complete Music For Violin & Piano
Morton Feldman's complete music for violin and piano, from Piece for Violin and Piano (1950) to For John Cage (1982), which spans both discs, played by Marc Sabat and Stephen Clarke.
String Quartet No. 1
Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 1 in the longest recorded performance, with Structures and Three Pieces for String Quartet, played by the Flux Quartet. Two CDs plus a bonus DVD of the uninterrupted 90-minute audio.
Trio
Morton Feldman's Trio for violin, cello and piano, lasting one hour, 45 minutes, in a recording with Aki Takahashi, Marc Sabat and Rohan de Saram, two of whom worked closely with the composer.
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String Quartet No. 2
Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, a work of more than six hours, played by the FLUX Quartet on a deluxe five-CD box with liner notes by Christian Wolff and FLUX founder Tom Chiu.
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello
“Another Timbre has been contributing excellent recordings to the rapidly expanding universe of what might still be called “Classical” music, and nowhere more convincingly than in the shimmering beautiful tapestries woven by Morton Feldman. The label’s double set of Feldman’s earlier piano works would be an excellent place to begin for anyone wishing to slide into familiarity with his work, as it’s wonderfully performed by John Tilbury and Philip Thomas. Pianist Mark Knoop, violinist Aisha Orazb…
Music for Piano and Strings by Morton Feldman. Volume 3
At its best Feldman's music can take our breath away, providing a revelatory experience, a transparency which has no need of argument. Thinking back to Piano and String Quartet there are moments of extraordinary beauty when, through a sudden change of register, darkness enshrouds the music; elsewhere the string sound enshrouds the piano arpeggios. Morton Feldman seems to occupy a metaphysical space and encroaches on the domain of spirituality normally associated with religion. Thus art w…
For Samuel Beckett
1999 release - For fifty-five minutes the great American composer Morton Feldman weaves his tapestry of sounds, a pattern always the same and yet never the same, an iridescent, thick fabric, full of details, although these never distract the listener's attention. Feldman met Beckett only once in his life (though Beckett later sent him a postcard on which the composer discovered the text for his opera Neither). He created music of a beguiling tonality and beauty, inspired more by painting and lit…
Clarinet and String Quartet
Saltern returns with a gorgeous new recording of Morton Feldman's Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) performed by Anthony Burr (clarinet), Graeme Jennings (violin), Gascia Ouzounian (violin), Che-Yen Chen (viola) and Charles Curtis (cello). This performance highlights Feldman's interest in notation by treating the slight differences in intonation and rhythm literally and specifically. Recorded by Tom Erbe in the living room of a friend of the musicians. Edition of 400. Housed in jackets print…
Two pianos and other pieces, 1953-1969
A double CD of music for multiple pianos from what is arguably the most experimental and interesting period of Morton Feldman's development as a composer. Some of the pieces have been very rarely performed or recorded, and have probably never been in better hands. The music featured on these two discs testifies to the intensity of Feldman's experimentation with notation and sound during the 1950s and 60s. Considering the works chronologically one senses the composer trying out, teasing and deve…
The American Avant-Garde in the 20th Century
Following on from our popular primer A Young Person's Guide to the Avant-Garde, LTM now offers a more comprehensive overview of American avant-garde music in the 20th century.Commencing with early pioneers Charles Ives and George Antheil (including the celebrated, Futuristic Ballet Mechanique of 1924), this chronological double disc collection also includes pieces by émigré arrivals in the New World such as Leo Ornstein, Dane Rudhyar and Edgard Varèse, as well homegrown composers including Henry…
Violin & Orchestra
Carolin Widmann’s widely acclaimed ECM recordings have traversed a broad arc of music – from Schubert to Xenakis. Here she turns her attention to one of the pivotal compositions of Morton Feldman. Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1979, marked a new direction, with an almost painterly attention to detail in slowly unfolding music. It is not a concerto in the strict sense of the term, not soloist with orchestral support. The violinist must move inside the glowing colour-field of sound. In t…
Morton Feldman / Earle Brown
Finally back in print. This rare Morton Feldman /Earle Brown split LP was originally released in 1962 on the small NY-based Time Records and features Feldman's 'Durations I-IV' on side A and Brown's 'Hodograph I,' 'Music for Violin, Cello and Piano' and 'Music for Cello and Piano' on side B. David Tudor is featured on piano throughout. Feldman and Brown, who were both interested in non-traditional systems of notation and improvisation, were very closely aligned with the New York School, a group …
Crippled Symmetry, live at June in Buffalo
Restocked. In 2000, Eberhard Blum (flute, alto flute, bass flute), Nils Vigeland (glockenspiel, vibraphone) and Jan Williams (piano, celesta), American composer Morton Feldman's close friends and collaborators, came together once more as The Feldman Soloists to perform Crippled Symmetry, the trio Feldman composed for them, on the 25th anniversary celebration of June in Buffalo, the festival he founded. The recording of this concert is now finally available on CD, and is destined to become the…
Neither
Neither has been identified by some as an opera (it was commissioned by the Rome Opera) but it makes use of none of the conventions of traditional opera. There is no story, no mise-en-scene. The intensity results from emotional/aesthetic tension, not plot manipulation or character confrontation. The music does not attempt to accompany or depict the text in the usual fashion; instead Feldman has created a kind of musical equivalent to the environment that Beckett's words suggest, invoking …
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Music for Piano and Strings by Morton Feldman. Volume 2
The 2nd volume of "Music for Piano and Strings" by Morton Feldman is performed by The Smith Quartet with John Tilbury, presenting "Patterns In a Chromatic Field", and "Piano, violin, Viola, Cello", on DVD audio to allow for the length of these large works
Several lifetimes ago, when I was nineteen, I was interviewed by Wilfrid Mellers for a place at York University. That I failed to win a place may have been due in part to the confinement of our discussions to the music of Morton Feldman. Wilfr…
For Philip Guston
Originally released in 2000. Looking for just one Morton Feldman CD to give to someone that you like more than yourself? There's more than one correct answer to this elusive question, but this overwhelming set (closing in on 300 total minutes) is an utter classic, with paralyzing sonic power. Feldman is recognized as one of the 20th century's most influential composers. Feldman's artistic principles were shaped in the early 1950s by his association with composers John Cage, Earle Brown and…
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Music for Piano and Strings by Morton Feldman. Volume 1
The Smith Quartet with pianist John Tilbury perform two long works by Morton Feldman: "For John Cage" (1982) and "Piano and String Quartet" (1985) on DVD Audio. Several lifetimes ago, when I was nineteen, I was interviewed by Wilfrid Mellers for a place at York University. That I failed to win a place may have been due in part to the confinement of our discussions to the music of Morton Feldman. Wilfrid (a friend of Feldman's and, in later years, a friend of mine) saw Debussy as a powerful influ…
Crippled Symmetry
orton Feldman's music continues to exert its fascination on listeners and record companies alike. After releasing its highly successful recording of the more than three-hour-long For Philip Guston, Bridge once again returns to the California EAR Unit for Crippled Symmetry, at only 87 minutes a mere bagatelle in terms of Feldman's late output. Well, maybe not. Scored for flutes, mallet percussion, and piano/celeste, Crippled Symmetry does exactly what the title says: it toys with not quite exact …
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For Christian Wolff
For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that 'I found the experience of listening to it beautiful and interesting -- it moves away partly from our (Morty's, John Cage's and mine) original preoccupation with just sound and sonority into areas of self-awareness about listening, being a listener,…
Three Voices
This piece is sung by the Swiss “deep voice”, Marianne Schuppe in trio with herself, a feat made possible by playing back recordings of her own voice. This is not minimal music; melodic lines arise, sensual, beautiful, and undoctored, swaying like a lullaby, yet boosting the overall rhythmic intensity. There cannot be many works which demand of the soloist such careful timing, intense concentration and voice control.
Violin and Orchestra / Coptic Light
Morton Feldman dedicated a whole series of compositions to the relationship between solo instruments and the orchestra: after Cello and Orchestra (1972), Piano and Orchestra (1975), Oboe and Orchestra (1976) and Flute and Orchestra (1977/78) his Violin and Orchestra (1979) marks the conclusion of these "relationship works." The variety of sound accumulated around the violin, or through the violin, in less than an hour's time ranges from delicate whispers to cantilenas in rich tones and sharp rep…
Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
In the early 1970s Feldman increasingly turned his attention to works for orchestra, in most cases combined with a solo instrument, like Piano and Orchestra (1975). One aspect that was important to him in all of these works was a research into sound, an "unceasing effort to create, by way of exclusion and integration, by operating with colored projection surfaces and various spatial levels, a kind of self-supporting structure elastic enough to take up the exactly fixed initial impulse and contin…
Piano and Orchestra, Palais de Mari, Piano
In the early 1970s, Feldman increasingly turned his attention to works for orchestra, in most cases combined with a solo instrument. The compositions dating from this period include, among many others, Cello and Orchestra (1972) or Oboe and Orchestra (1976). One aspect that was important to him in all of these works was a research into sound, an "unceasing effort to create, by way of exclusion and integration, by operating with colored projection surfaces and various spatial levels, a kind of se…
Patterns In A Chromatic Field
Performed by: Charles Curtis (cellos), Aleck Karis (piano); recorded 2003. The definitive recording of one of Morton Feldman's most important and challenging pieces, played at the composer's marked tempos, and taking all the notated repeats. Fitting neatly onto one CD, this is Feldman at his most extreme. A dramatic display of virtuosity performed with passion and precision by two of the leading exponents of new music in the world. Out of Feldman's enormous oeuvre, Patterns in a Chromatic Field …
Early Piano Works
For each ecstatic instant / We must an anguish pay / In keen and quivering ratio / To the ecstasy." It almost seems as if Emily Dickinson could have been describing the early piano music of Morton Feldman when she wrote those lines nearly one-hundred-and-fifty years ago. Certainly, the uncommonly short, acutely concentrated, unadorned and vulnerable pieces Feldman composed between 1950 and 1964 each span just an “ecstatic instant” — a brief, heightened experience measured not according to time b…
Viola In My Life / False Relationships
False Relationships and the Extended Ending" alternates between exact proportions and "free time" in the vertical style (slowly changing chords, common-tone suspensions etc. in works such as "Atlantis" (1958) and "The Swallows of Salangan" ) which came after the counterpoint style of the early 50's graph pieces. "The Viola in My Life" (composed especially for Karen Phillips) was the next development adding melody-like gestures. Ethereal, heartfelt. Only one copy available.
String quartet (1979)
Morton Feldman’s String Quartet (1979) follows over a decade of compositional activity where the composer was constantly occupied with a new piece for orchestra. In the eleven years before the Quartet he produced fifteen orchestral works, beginning with On Time and the Instrumental Factor (1969) up to Violin and Orchestra (1979). In the following eight years only three orchestral works were written, The Turfan Fragments (1980), Coptic Light (1986) and For Samuel Beckett (1987). With the String Q…
Music For Keyboard 1935-1948 / The Early Years
This double-CD set combines two of the key titles of Columbia Records's
legendary "Music of Our Time" series curated by David Behrman. Jeanne
Kirstein's recording of Cage's early keyboard works remains a touchstone
of Cagean interpretation notwithstanding the passage of time. Christian
Wolff recalls, "I remember Cage saying that Jeanne Kirstein's playing
caught the spirit in which the pieces were written at the time he wrote
them-a kind of simple excitement and enthusiasm (also, surely, ou…
Rumori alla Rotonda
Live recording at the Rotonda del Pellegrini, Milan, January 21st, 1959 featuring John Cage, Morton Feldman, Juan Hidalgo, Leopoldo La Rosa, and Walter Marchetti. Among all the events involving John Cage during the long stay in Europe that followed his controversial appearance at Darmstadt Ferienkurse in September 1958, the concert he held in Milan on January 21st perhaps represents a less well known episode.
Featuring Cage's intervention both as composer and performer of one's own work as well …
Silent Pieces - Live At Dacapo II
1995 release ** Special members-only edition for the sponsors' circle of dacapo. Music by: Anton Webern, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Hans Otte, Malcolm Goldstein, Dietrich Eichmann, Yoshikazu Iwamoto.
Beckett Material
Morton Feldman's 1976 trilogy Orchestra, Elemental Procedures (soprano, choir, orchestra; Beckett text) and Routine Investigations, with Claudia Barainsky, WDR Rundfunkchor and WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under Peter Rundel; recorded 2010 and 2013.