Still Life -- Zeit mit Feldman

You have to purchase the programs at the Salzburg Festival and they are not cheap. The one for the Feldman cost €10, but is well worth it as it is a hefty 100 page book. Part of the reason is that it contains the program notes for not one, but four concerts devoted to the music of Morton Feldman. Two took place before my arrival and the last is on Friday so last night was the third concert. The Kollegienkirche, the church of the University of Salzburg, was the venue for all the Feldman concerts. Here is a photo I took before the concert:

It is a substantial church and last night it was nearly full--perhaps a thousand in the audience? The program book contains ten essays on the music of Morton Feldmam, five in German by Volker Rülke and five in English by Paul Griffiths and Yannick Mayaud. There are also examples from the scores to the pieces and reproductions of paintings by Barnett Newman. Feldman's approach to notation varied widely from his early graphic scores to later, fully-notated ones.

I don't really want to discuss all the material in the English essays--let alone the German ones--but I would like to quote some excerpts from the essay by Yannick Mayaud as he offers a number of interesting quotations from the writings of Morton Feldman.

• My compositions are really not "compositions" at all. One might call them time canvasses in which I more or less prime the canvas with an overall hue of the music.
• The discovery that sound in itself can be a totally plastic phenomenon, suggesting its own shape, design and poetic metaphor, led me to devise a new system of graphic notation.
• What we did was not in protest against the past. To rebel against history is still to be part of it. We were simply not concerned with historical processes.
• A painter will perhaps agree that a color insists on being a certain size, regardless of his wishes. [...] In recent years we realize that sound too has a predilection for suggesting its own proportions.

My impressions of the concert? From the very first notes, a feeling of immense peace descended on the space. Like Shostakovich, Feldman seems to have the ability to seize the listener from the first moment, though, of course, his music does not lead from event to climax in the way earlier music does. Feldman's music is about the surface of time and space, not about structure. There is always something happening, though it is not so much going somewhere. The sound simply is.

By the way, the performances, conducted by Emilio Pomàrico, were very fine. All the instrumental parts, especially the solo viola part in Rothko Chapel were beautifully played, but the laurels have to go to Cantando Admont who were magnificent in the choral parts. How can they possibly find their notes, you ask? Through the judicious and discrete use of tuning forks, is the answer.

The sound of this music was both quiet and luscious, enhanced by the resonance of the church. Except for the very hard wooden seats, an entirely enjoyable evening. The artists repeated a portion of Rothko Chapel as an encore.

Sorry for the quality of the photo! Shooting over the heads of the audience in fairly low light. I was about in the middle, in the 14th row.