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An excellent entry example of Morton Feldman's mature Early work is the first piece from Last Pieces for solo piano (1959). At this point in his career, Feldman was known best in association with the New York School of composers John Cage, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff along with pianist David Tudor. These composers set out to find new ways to bring an immediacy to sounds and their perception, often by abandoning previously used compositional systems. Feldman was the most insistent on an intuitive approach to composing, rather than incorporating alternative systematic devices (e.g. as in Serial music). In this short piano piece, one may gain volumes of insight into the Feldman's compositional thinking (often regarded as inscrutable or not analyzable) by examining his idiosyncratic "voice-leading" and treatment of orchestration beyond the usual surface perceptions.

Feldman's music is known for its slow tempos, extremely soft dynamics and sensuous sonorities. In early works like Last Pieces, Feldman sought to give primacy to sound through selecting and amassing carefully sculpted moments of single notes or chords. The common feeling noted when listening to Feldman is that time seems suspended. In The Time of Music, Jonathan D. Kramer devotes a chapter to this issue of perceived timelessness in contemporary music. He sites the writings of a Dr. Melges describing perceived timelessness in the early stages of psychosis:

When mental sequences become mildly disconnected, present experiences seem to last longer since they are relatively isolated from past and future events. That is, they seem to stand alone. Rather than the future continually becoming present and then fading into the past as in normal consciousness, the disconnection of sequences makes the present seem relatively isolated from the past and future. Moreover, the inability to sustain a continuous train of thought [to be equated with the absence of musical linearity] prompts the person to attend to a variety of present stimuli that ordinarily would be excluded from consciousness. As a result . . . the prolongation of the present.

This “prolongation of the present” that is experienced through listening to Feldman effectively combats linear and formal relationships, perceptions thereof and the construction of such time-based relationships that are often the concerns of the conventional language of music making. Christian Wolff describes stasis in music:The music has a static character. It goes in no particular direction. There is no necessary concern with time as a measure of distance from one point in the past to a point in the future, [Last Pieces indicates “Durations are free”] with linear continuity alone. It is not a question of getting anywhere, of making progress, or having come from anywhere in particular. 

The diminution of instrumental attack, flatly soft dynamics and slow tempos contribute greatly to the overall feeling of stasis in a Feldman work, but the selection and ordering of musical materials within these limited parameters are at work as well. Feldman states that his aesthetic towards construction as: “I make one sound and then I move on to the next.” This is very charming, but what may be the thought behind his intuitive process that allows his compositional material to turn into such timeless, non-linear, present-tense “moment music?” Feldman agreed when someone stated that “each chord that follows tries to establish a completely different world than the former one.”  Feldman refines further that he wanted his “chords in a sense to be very different from the next, as if almost to erase in one's memory what had happened before. That's the way I would keep time suspended.” One would agree upon first listening to Last Pieces. 

Feldman also selects and orders his events with the preference that “everything changes and nothing changes.” This limbo of motion and stasis, is primarily what sparks my curiosity to gain insight into the mechanics, albeit their home-made, non-systematic nature. How does Feldman choose his materials to create this balance of motion and stasis? We know immediately after listening that the always-muted and always-slow nature of the work are static. Given the free durations, no specific information can be determined by the rhythmic quality aside from the slow tempo. From here, I will primarily focus on the vertical material and the progressions thereof.

Concerning the vertical, the first piece of Last Pieces is primarily a succession of chords throughout. No functional harmonic relationship between these chords could be determined. I have arbitrarily given each chord or “event” a number. In the first piece, there are 46 events. I have distilled the pitch material from each event and calibrated them to prime forms as in pitch set theory  to examine the basic nature of their intervallic content (the prime form removes the specific pitch information to focus solely on the intervals within an event). In figure 1 (found in the downloadable pdf version of this paper), some of the pitch class sets are given (see also, appendix chart 1 in the downloadable version for a full list of events and pitch sets) 

From the abundance of “0, 1” (indicating a semitone) in the pitch collections (22 out of the 46 events), one can see that the dominant interval is the semitone. This semitone presence within these chords is what gives those events their dissonant character. Beyond the semitone, most of these chords have very similar prime-form intervallic content. This would suggest that the chords in succession are very much the same, if the prime root was constant. What about Feldman's claim to differentiate each chord from the next? We must note that in the piece, the root pitch of these prime forms are often different from event to event, so while the nature of the chords are similar, they may lie in different pitch transpositions (which would allow two chords of exact intervallic content to sound different from each other because of differences in absolute pitch).

Furthermore, I have found a pattern at work in the progression of one chord to another; a sort of modulation. This so-called modulation cannot be considered a directional chord progression related to those in functional harmony(where often root progressions commonly contain much larger intervals - e.g.: I, IV, II, V, I - a formulaic root progression that moves mostly in 4ths and 5ths) that would certainly give the listener a perception of a conventional relationship between events, and thus give a linear direction to the piece by neutralizing the suspension of time with a sequence of events that plays with conventional expectations.

The pattern I have found (keeping in mind that Feldman claimed to not work systematically, and so the pattern does not occur all of the time) is that of semitone progressions (allowing octave equivalence when displaced), and leads to chromatic progressions of clusters that erase any feeling of tonal polarity. This allows each successive event to stand apart from its preceding event, further accentuated by the semitone-shifted pitch's being re-contextualized within a new chord by additional intervallic content. The accumulative effect is that of non-goal-oriented activity, disconnectedness, a sense of timelessness and the immediacy of the moment. Figure 2 in the downloadable version of this paper demonstrates a portion of this type of movement, whileChart 2 in the downloadable appendix traces the abundant semitone movement in the event sequence.

How might one account for Feldman's selection of events in which “everything changes and nothing changes?” Just as craftily as Feldman juxtaposed semitone movement in his chord sequences for non-functional differentiation, he also creates a pattern of primarily octave displaced oblique motion, where certain pitch classes occurring in one chord will resurface in the next, most often in another register (once again - keeping in mind that Feldman claimed to not work systematically, and so again, the pattern does not occur all of the time). Oblique motion ensures some audible sense of pitch stasis and is one of the oldest contrapuntal devices (albeit from a 20th century point of view allowing octave equivalencies). Figure 3, again found in the downloadable pdf, is a selection of events connected with sustained pitches while Chart 3 in the appendix indicates the oblique motion between all events.

One last aspect to Feldman's craft is attention to a work's “acoustical reality,” which refers to Feldman's acute ear for orchestration. Orchestration for solo piano? For Feldman, yes! Given Feldman's love for the piano and sheer amount of piano music he wrote, one might say that the 88 keys of the piano were just as potent of an orchestral palette as any other combination of instruments. Nearly every successive chord in Last Pieces No. 1 is set apart in regard to register. By differentiating the general register of these chords from their respective precedent and antecedent, Feldman is able to accentuate his desire effect of "establishing a completely different world" with each chord, creating a kind of pointillism of gesture. Figure 4 in the downloadable version shows four events that establish contrasting ranges and spacing.

It can now be seen that a closer look at the notation itself reveals a personal system of preferences that can be conceived in purely musical terms, given the abundance of particular intervallic content (the semitone as a primary interval), discernible species of motion (semitone and oblique progressions) and "orchestrated" registral contrast. This is not to say that these are conscientiously explicated rules that Feldman attempts to follow or thwart in choosing his materials, but that perhaps there was a consistency of taste in his intuitive decisions to present a style or attitude that attempts to balance coherence (that ineffable quality which perhaps continues to engage us with a Feldman piece as it occupies time) with the primacy of the moment.

editor's note: This paper is available for download as a .pdf, attached to this blog.  In it, Matthew Welch has provided musical examples and pitch-set illustrations that illuminate the text above. It is highly suggested that you download the .pdf and follow along with the figures, charts, and examples as they compliment this paper.  The paper can be downloaded here.

A fantastic recording of the movement of Feldman's Last Pieces featured in this article can be found on the Edition Wandelweiser label, featured in DRAM here.

Conjuring the atmosphere of the New York art scene is an enticing angle in enabling a broader appeal to Feldman's music, but often the music specialist wants a bit more. Regardless of the popular stance that Feldman's music is so intuitive and self-aware that it evades analysis (which for the most part is true when comparing it to the analytical techniques associated with conventionally contrapuntal, harmonic or serial music), how might Feldman view what his material is? How might his nearly instinctual urge to question what these materials become the process of manipulation?

Morton Feldman's music has been steadily creeping back into my life these days. This has come after a relaxed kind of hiatus from listening to, reading the prose of, and analyzing the scores of the late 20^th century icon. Why a hiatus? After a long obsession and thorough inquiry into the composer's works and thoughts during the blossoming of his posthumous career, I thought I had no ability to garner new thoughts about the unique musical sensibility of Feldman.

I recently attended New York City Opera's presentation of Feldman's opera to a Samuel Beckett text, Neither, and, sitting on the front row, I was enthralled by the performance. In the later portions of Neither, the dancers delivered a chorus-like unison of full body movement ambiguously rooted in popular dance.Aafter a long duration of muted or smaller gestures such as rhythmic hand gestures resembling a faux-sign language, and stage crossings, this seemed a very bold move, but it worked well.

My thoughts were: How did they pull off dancing like that to Feldman??? And that question ultimately brought me closer to the topic at hand: the degree to which Feldman's late music makes incredibly original statements on the subject of rhythm and the notation that catalyzes it. This is a point often overshadowed by the sociological contextualization of Feldman's aesthetic.

The band of Abstract Expressionist cronies that influenced the attitudes and metaphors behind Feldman's compositional choices is extremely important, as is the encouragement from John Cage and the conceptual similarities of the New York School of composition. There has been plenty said already about these relationships. What I would like to focus on is Feldman's notational procedures and how these provide clues to his ways of selecting and manipulating musical materials, and furthermore, to what extent the notation itself becomes the laboratory in which performative aggregates are born, as opposed to treating notation as a representation of the performed sound-object.

Notation in the late works

Feldman's compositional output from the late 70s until his death is typically regarded as his late period, and is characterized by pieces of long duration. Feldman's sense of material is just as concentrated as in his early work. However, in his late work a fascination with musical patterns (what Feldman may call a musical "image") emerged. Growing beyond his early predominant emphasis on merely the selection of materials (instrumentation, notational format and general stasis of gestural forms), how Feldman intuitively balances the amount of change and stasis in his patterned materials through literal repetitions, sequences of slightly altered versions of an initial pattern, or recursive iterations after intermediary material (which often is another collection of altering patterns) seems to be the larger objective.

What Feldman considers a musical image, its primary materials and how they are modified as time unfolds, may be more easily grasped by examining the nature of alteration applied to some example patterns. Two works from the 1980s, Triadic Memories and Patterns in a Chromatic Field provide a number of clear patterns that we can see from the score what kind of thinking is at work.

Irregular Rhythmic Groupings, Polyrhythms and Mixed Simultaneous Metrical Groupings

Rather than treat the notation of rhythms in his scores as a spatially accurate representation of how various patterns actually sound overtop of each other, Feldman is highly specific with his rhythms as they pertain to each gesture by an instrument or instrumental group. This allows their incongruent shapes to interplay or chafe as they manifest in performance. What is notated is a specific rhythmic shape, often placed irregularly in relation to the beat, or it's simplest subdivisions (by casting shapes into polyrythms like 5 in the time of 4, 9 in the time of 8, etc,), or avoiding clear downbeats. This shape is set furthermore against an equally complicated, but altogether differing figure (often irregularly grouped over the beat). In some pieces, this other figure may sometimes sit in an entirely different time signature!

Here the notation comes not from an impulse to notate a complex texture representatively, but rather to catalyze various relationships of movement of materials against each other in the manner of an instruction to be executed to the best of one's ability in relation to the other material. The total accuracy of the overall event is very difficult to ascertain analytically. This ambiguity in conceptualizing an entire texture heightens the players' concentrations, increasing the need for calculation and sensitivity towards each other's part as they play – all subtle, but palpable elements to the performance experience.

If notated exactly, they are too stiff; if given the slightest notational leeway, they are too loose.  Though these patterns exist in rhythmic shapes articulated by instrumental sounds, they are also in part notational images that do not make a direct impact on the ear as we listen. A tumbling of sorts happens in midair between their translation from the page and their execution. (from the essay Crippled Symmetry by Morton Feldman – various publications)

Further inference that the notation works with little regard to assisting an ideal realization can be seen in how various images of different length tend to fit into the same size bars! In the scores of many late Feldman pieces one can observe that the number of bars and systems per page often are identical in number, size and shape – uncannily resembling the grid he used in his earlier graphic notation pieces, but instead of numbers or other non-conventional music symbols, he supplies this grid with morsels of complex notation that occupy their own time requirements. Later in life, when Feldman was asked to elaborate on his early use of grid oriented graphic notation, he replied, "I still use a grid, but now the grid encompasses conventional notation."(from an interview with Morton Feldman by Jan Williams).

In some scores one can actually see Feldman abandon materials literally at the turn of the page. Keeping the underlying grid of bars and systems, Feldman often will fill each page with contrasting patterns and sets of materials.

Digging deeper into the details of a late Feldman score reveals much about what Feldman might consider musical material and how he controls a balance of change and stasis in non-developmental ways.

The Roaming Dot

One of Feldman's most utilized manipulations is to switch the dotting of particular notes within an asymmetrical rhythmic grouping. In the cello line of Patterns in a Chromatic Field (1981), the element of stasis in the first image (provided in figure 1) is a pattern of four sixteenth notes inside of a nonuplet irregular grouping in a meter of 8/32 time. Rhythmically, four sixteenth notes fill an 8/32 meter, but the nonuplet requires one more notated thirty-second note; Feldman creates an ever changing rhythm by assigning a dot to one of the sixteenth notes (satisfying the numerical value of the nonuplet by adding another thirty-second note) in one bar, and then reassigning the dot to another position within the bar or pattern in the next iteration. The effect is a continually changing yet always-asymmetrical gesture.

The Roaming Rest

Much like the roaming rhythmical dot, Feldman also alters figures smaller than the duration of a measure by offsetting the position of a gesture with various length rests. Observing the piano gestures in the same excerpt of Patterns in a Chromatic Field (figure 1), the sequence of pitch material and vertical spacing remain the same, but the division of the irregular grouping (triplet, quintuplet), dotting or flagging (1/16 and 1/32) and types of rests surrounding the figure all are subject to change.

Both the manipulation of the dot and rest are also at work in the first notational image from the solo piano work Triadic Memories (1981). Observe the reordering of pitches, dots and rests in the left hand, continually shifting against a steady minor third ostinato in the right hand (see figure 2).

As Feldman continues to explore every possible variant of this image, an exchange in register to various pitch elements of the pattern bring new shades of color to a mostly static collection of materials. By the second page of Triadic Memories (see figure 3), the registers of the right and left hand images have moved closer towards the center of the piano.

The cello in Patterns in a Chromatic Field is treated with a similar shift in register of the cello when the first image returns (see figure 4 and compare to figure 1). In this iteration, the pitch content of the piano part has also shifted slightly adding C#. This brings a new shade of color to the piano's pitch collection.

In figures 1 and 4 from Patterns in a Chromatic Field, the cello is essentially meandering through a collection of four pitches. These pitches, B double-flat, A-flat, F double-sharp and A-sharp, (forming a four half-step cluster) appear in various sequences, leading one to believe that there is no hierarchy between these pitches. Feldman's harmonic style has been primarily chromatic and dissonant since his early pieces.

However, Feldman's use of enharmonic spellings in his late work plays a crucial role in eliciting a certain concentration and execution from the performer. On an instrument that can play any shade of pitch like the cello, how notes and intervals are spelled engages a performer in specific ways. In the cello line, F double-sharp and B double-flat occur in the rotation of four pitches. These pitches could be more simply written as G or A respectively, but a performer trained in the intonation of tonal music may read the double-sharps or double-flats as functioning in a directional way (G# going to A might be played sharper than Ab going to G depending on the melodic function). What arises in the performer is a question as to whether they should engage – and to what extent, at that – this directional tuning in a directionless environment (in Feldman, these pivotal tones often defy their conventional direction in the way they move from one pitch to the next). Does the cellist strive to balance the intonation in relation to the piano's equal tempered tuning, or does one present a sense of shading that respects the spelling? How micro-tonally does one present this challenge? What is Feldman looking for?

Feldman roughly makes his analogy of this enharmonic device as akin to instruments' drifting in and out of tune, leading us to take this as an intentionally confusing notational object to execute in real time, rather than a specific microtonal logic with exact pitch values intended. If the cellist chooses to engage these intonation explorations, a new dimension of color is added to the performance unattainable on the piano alone. In an already densely chromatic sonority, how does one intimate an interval smaller than the semitone or in between a semitone and a whole step? Or how does one ensure the intimacy felt through the fragility of an imperfect performance? Essentially there is no right answer or singular approach. Once again, Feldman is not notating a representation of a desirable performance sound-object, but rather is encouraging a situation that requires a type of concentration from the performer as one tries to mentally process and execute all of the complicated parts of an image.

So, how do you handle instruments that just have inherent problems of not sounding expensive? And that whole business of sounding expensive is part of the image of professional music as we know it. The expensive violin - the expensive bow, you see. Well, my approach to an instrument is finding instruments where terms like "perfection" and "imperfection" of construction are not important. The whole idea of going in tune and out of tune with more precise acoustical instruments is taken into consideration. (from an interview with Morton Feldman by Jan Williams)

Repetition, Manipulation of Meter and Duration of “Silence”

Feldman's sparse sound world has reflected the importance of musical elements of non-action. The “silence” that frames his sounds is carefully calculated. Of course Feldman's silence around actively played gestures is the most apparent juxtaposition of sound and its antithesis, but more precise control over the decay of a resonated sound has evolved analogously to the precision gained notationally over the shifts in his patterns. In the late works, Feldman allows sound-images to sustain with the piano pedal depressed (or allowing the cello to “breathe”) in “empty” bars. These empty bars reflect a duration that is just as delicately chosen as any other notational procedure. The following image (figure 5) and successive re-iterations (figures 6 and 7) of it show that the entire image contains an empty bar of 3 / 4 as integral to it's symmetry. In figure 5, an arpeggiated gesture is set beside the crucial 3 / 4 bar. Observe also the “roaming dots” within the arpeggiations.

When the image returns, Feldman favors literal repetition instead of changing the rhythmic effects. Here the 3 / 4 bar is again integral to the experience of the gesture.

When the image returns yet again, Feldman returns to manipulating the distribution of dots. Again, the 3 / 4 bar is retained. While the notational image on this third appearance has retained rhythmic and metrical materials, upon closer look, the pitch material has been raised a whole step.

What I think of it now is that I’m watching some bugs on a slide, and I’m just watching how I feel . . . (Morton Feldman Essays) 

These procedures that Feldman consistently employs to adjust the material of his late works give the listener and score reader a purely musical way to navigate through the Feldman experience. To attribute a symbolic meaning to any of these techniques may enrich a listening experience (such as relating patterns to Anatolian rugs, etc.), but are hardly requirements to perceive musical coherence in the late works. Observing the use of mixed polyrhythms and meters, relocated rhythmic dots and rests, enharmonic pitch shading, and the vehicles of image repetition (or reiteration) and framing silence, the listener may be entirely content listening for these musical signatures alone. The experience of static saturation in dialogue with minute variation is enough to draw in our fascination and focus on the subtle nature of the sounds themselves. – Matthew Welch

editor's note: This paper is also available for download as a .pdf, attached to this blog.  In it, Matthew Welch has provided musical examples that illuminate the text above. It is highly suggested that you download the .pdf and follow along with the examples as they compliment this paper.  The paper can be downloaded here.

A fantastic recording of Feldman's Triadic Memories is available in DRAM from the Mode label.  It can be heard here.