Samuel Andreyev is a Canadian composer, resident in Europe, for whom I have a great deal of respect. He has done a lot of very serious analyses of some important modern compositions, such as this:
But the Second String Quartet of Morton Feldman was, apparently, a bridge too far as today he put up a clip of him listening to all six hours of the piece, on headphones. We can see him and hear his comments, but not the piece itself. It is like a bizarre version of one of those strange "reaction" clips where someone who normally doesn't listen to classical music listens to something by Mozart and is visibly amazed.
I've listened to a lot of Feldman--have I listened to all of this? I don't think I have. I have listened to large sections of it, but I'm pretty sure I skipped ahead. A lot. This German quartet zip through it pretty quickly.
At this point a few questions come to mind: what was the point of the piece, especially it's very long duration? And, apart from a simple test of endurance, what was the point of Andreyev's listening to it while videoing himself? Feldman wrote a lot of good and interesting music. Did he wander a bit far off into the mystic in his later years? I dunno, let's wait a hundred years and see what people think. He might be totally forgotten or as widely loved as Mozart... Who knows?
I just went through a Morton Feldman phase a few months ago, via my Spotify subscription and driving a few hours a day for jobs I especially liked a lot of his piano music, surprising for me because for the last few years I've usually found that instrument too percussive and jarring. But I liked all the empty spaces in Feldman's music, and the capricious yet gentle and unrushed timing that transported me out of the pressures and anxieties of real-time living.
ReplyDeleteFavorite music while driving? I went through a Philip Glass piano music phase, and a Haydn phase--even an English Beat phase. Now I just ride around in silence.
ReplyDeleteYes I have since then tried the silent drive too. I used the hour a few times to attempt setting a simple prayer into a few melodic lines that could be sung, with goal of then adding bass and treble lines of instrumental accompaniment. I found it very challenging to create a melody in words not written poetically, to get an overall musical integrity of pitch and meter as a coherent and satisfying melody that also delivered the text in phrasing that strengthened literal and emotional meaning. It reminded me of a book mostly over my head I recently read on Monteverdi, how his innovation was bound up in setting madrigals (poems) in such a way that the music supported the text being meaningfully heard, as opposed to merely laying words onto lines governed by contrapuntal devices. I don't read Italian and can't mentally create his music by reading score excerpt examples in the book, but by humbly attempting simpler things in my native English I quickly discovered how important is the exact text if you want to convey it in good melody. Ultimately I dropped the project and returned to Spotify, deciding I had nothing worthy even to say under your article on phrasing, which stuck to instrumental music and gave piano recordings illustrating contrasts of tempo and maybe some timing irregularities as phrasing devices.
ReplyDeleteYou do this in traffic? Wow!
ReplyDeleteHave you ever looked at the hymns of Thomas Aquinas?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_atyGD236Mo