October 4, 2009: The viola in Morton Feldman's life

I was glad to see that the Sunday Datebook Section in today's San Francisco Chronicle included a featured announcement of tomorrow night's performance by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at Herbst Theatre.  The announcement included a photograph of John Harbison and focused on the inclusion in the program of the commissioned work, "The Seven Ages," a setting of poetry by Louise Glück.  One had to look to the left of Harbison's photograph to discover that he would also be participating in the Contemporary Insights:  Music and Conversation event at 4:30 this afternoon at the ODC Dance Commons.  Unfortunately, limitations of space seem to have prevented saying much else about the program other than "with music by Edmund Campion ["600 Secondes dans le vieux modèle," a United States premiere], Morton Feldman [Part I of The Viola in My Life], Steve Reich ["Vermont Counterpoint"] and Charles Wuorinen ["Trombone Trio"]."  (Content in square brackets was not included in the Chronicle text and is my own.)  In addition to this afternoon's event, tomorrow's performance will be preceded by a talk at 7:15 PM.

Since Feldman died in 1987, he will not be able to speak for himself tomorrow evening.  Therefore, I thought it would be fitting to offer some of his remarks about The Viola in My Life, which Walter Zimmermann included in his anthology of essays by and about Feldman, published by Beginner Press in 1985:

"The Viola in My Life" (dedicated to the Pierrot Players) was begun in Honolulu in July, 1970 and completed after my return home to New York in late August.

Scored for flute, viola, cello, percussion and piano, the compositional format is quite simple.  Unlike most of my music the tempo is quite precise.  I needed the exact time proportion underlying the gradual and slight crescendo characteristic of all the sounds the viola plays.  The rest of the ensemble remains constantly soft throughout.

Since 1958 (not unlike an aspect of minimal painting) the surface of my music was quite "flat".  The viola's crescendos are a return to a preoccupation with a musical perspective which is not determined by an interaction of corresponding musical ideas – but rather like a bird trying to soar in a confined landscape.

Given the focus on subtle changes in dynamics, this is a composition that can make for an intense listening experience.  Feldman is another composer who has chosen to focus on what I have called "the nature of sound itself," taking an approach that transcends "the usual syntactic relationships of melody, harmony, and counterpoint."  Chronologically, The Viola in My Life is situated between Giacinto Scelsi (whose "Hymnos" was just performed by the San Francisco Symphony), of whom Feldman was probably unaware, and Kaija Saariaho, who, in all probability, has been exposed to Feldman's work.  On my Cri American Masters CD, the performance of Part I of The Viola in My Life takes slightly more than twelve minutes;  and, given the extreme durations of many of subsequent works (back in 2007 I used my blog to document my efforts at learning to play "Piano"), this should be taken as accommodating to the listener and preparation for much of Feldman's subsequent repertoire.  Also helpful to listeners getting a first taste of Feldman is a review of the ECM recording of all four Parts of The Viola in My Life on the British Boomkat Web site, which refers to how the music presents "the lead string instrument in a kind of solemnly gradual game of call and response with chords laid down by an ensemble."

Feldman received relatively little attention in his lifetime;  and, with the exception of observations made by John Cage, much of that attention was derisive.  I met him in the early Seventies and expressed great interest in writing an extended piece about him.  He replied that he would prefer that I direct my efforts towards his fellow New York School composer, Christian Wolff.  Whether he had become defensive about what he feared I might write or whether he was genuinely modest, I shall never know.  However, I heard him talk at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California about fifteen years later (not long before his death);  and that event pretty much confirmed my modesty hypothesis.  I regret have had so few opportunities to listen to Feldman's music in performance, rather than on recording;  and I welcome the opportunity to hear a "real" performance of a work that, until now, I have known only through its recordings.