Morton Feldman Essays 1985 1

 

MORTON FELDMAN – ESSAYS (ed. Walter Zimmerman, 198! "ROLO#  A$O%T &'DD'S)E'T 

For many years now, you are writing these soft pieces. Sometimes I think, they are a kind of mourning epilogue to murdered Jiddishkeit in Europe and dying Jiddishkeit in America, especially in New York. Is there something true aout it! an*+)la* Met-er/

It"s not true# ut at the same time I think that"s an aspect of my attitude aout eing a composer that is mourning. Say, for e$ample, the death of art. I mean, rememer that I"m a New%Yorker and a New%Yorker doesn"t think aout Jiddishkeit. You think aout Jiddishkeit if you li&e with only '((( other Jews in Frankfurt, so I ha&en"t got that prolem. I mean, I don"t think of myself as Jewish in New York. )ut I do in a sense mourn something that has to do with, say Schuert lea&ing me. Also, I really don"t feel that it"s all necessary any more. And so what I tried to ring into my music, are *ust &ery few essential things that I need. So I at least keep it going for a little while more. I don"t think this e$plains anything, does it! Feldman/

+he only thing that applies to me as you talk aout Jiddishkeit, is the fact that, ecause I"m Jewish, I do not identify with, say estern ci&ili-ation music. In other words# when )ach gi&es us a diminished fourth, I cannot respond that the diminished fourth means h, /od. I cannot respond to that diminished fourth as a symol. )ut what my music is mourning, I *ust don"t know what to say. I said *ust earlier, that perhaps *ust mourning. . . I must say you did ring up something that I particularly don0t want to talk aout pulicly, ut I do talk pri&ately. +o some degree I do elie&e for e$ample, like with /eorge Steiner, that after 1itler perhaps there should no longer e art. +hose thoughts are always in my mind. +here was a hypocrisy, a delusion to continue, ecause those &alues pro&ed to me nothing. +hey ha&e no longer any moral asis. And what are our morals in music! ur moral in music is 23th century /erman music, isn"t it! I do think aout that, and I do think aout the fact, that I want to e the first great composer that is Jewish. NEW D'RE0T'ONS 'N M%S'0+A$O%T TE EARLY WOR)   2 Fran3 O4ara 

+he last ten years ha&e seen American composers, composers, painters and poets assuming leading roles in the world of international art to a degree hitherto une$pected. 4ed y the painters, our whole cultural milieu has changed and is i s still changing. +he 5climate5 for recepti&ity to the new in art has impro&ed correspondingly, correspondingly, and one of the most important aspects of this change has een the inter%in&ol&ement of the indi&idual arts with one another. 6ulic interest in the emergence a ma*or composer, painter poet has, in recent years, almost in&arialyofeen preceded yofhis recognition among other or painters, poets and musicians. +he influence

 

esthetic ideas has also een mutual7 the &ery e$tremity of the differences etween the arts has thrown their technical analogies into sharp relief. As an e$ample of what I mean y this, we find that making the analogy etween certain all%o&er paintings of Jackson 6ollock and the serial techni8ue of eern clarifies the one y means of the other % a seemingly 5automatic5 painting is seen to e as astutely controlled y the sensiility of 6ollock in its assemlage of detail toward a unified e$perience as are certain of eern"s serial pieces. And it is interesting to note that initial pulic response to works y oth artists was in&ol&ed in ewilderment at the seeming 5fragmentation5 of e$perience. Although these analogies cease to e helpful if carried too far, it is in the framework of these mutual influences in the arts that 9orton Feldman could cite, along with the playing of Fournier, :achmaninoff and +udor and the friendship of John ;age, the paintings of 6hilip /uston as important influences on his work. 1e adds, 5/uston made me aware of the "metaphysical place" which we all ha&e ut which so many of us are not sensiti&e to y pre&ious con&iction.5 I interpret this 5metaphysical place5, this land where Feldman"s pieces li&e, as the area where spiritual growth in the work can occur, where the form of a work may de&elop its inherent originality and the personal meaning of the composer may ecome e$plicit. In a more literal way it is the space which must e cleared if the sensiility is to e free to e$press its indi&idual preference for sound and to e$plore the meaning of this preference. +hat the process of finding this metaphysical place of unpredictaility and possiility can e a drastic one is witnessed y the necessity Feldman felt a few years ago to a&oid the academic ramifications of  serial techni8ue. 4ike the artists in&ol&ed in the new American painting, he was pursuing a personal search for e$pression e$pression which could not e limited y any system. +his is in )oulesharp, and contrast to the de&elopment, of many of Feldman"s e$ample Stockhausen, whose process has tended towardcontemporaries, elaoration and for systemati-ation of method. hich rings us ack to :achmaninoff, Fournier and +udor.? In some pieces the entrance into the rhythmic structure is left entirely to the performer, and it is in this area that unpredictaility enters and the performer must create the e$perience with an application of paint on can&as. n the other hand, one of the most remarkale pieces recorded, here is 5Structures for String uartet5 >23'2?. It is a classical string 8uartet without sonata de&elopment, without serial de&elopment, in general without enefit of clergy. 4ike Emily Bickinson"s est poems, it does not seem to e what it is until all 8uestions of 5seeming5 ha&e disappeared in its own pro*ection. form re&eals itselfse&eral after its meaning is re&ealed, Bickinson"s passion ignores her da--lingIts techni8ue. As with other Feldman pieces, ifas you cannot hear 5Structures5, I dout that studying the score would e a help, though it is a thoroughly notated field of dynamic incident, whose &ertical elements are linked shy a sort et y contrapuntal stimulation of great delicacy and tautness. In an oeu&re which so insistently pro&ides unpredictaility unpredictaility with opportunities for e$pansion and reath, the 8uestion of notation at all arises, for the graph would seem to pro&ide an ade8uate control for the e$perience and a ma$imum of differentiation. )ut differentiation is not Feldman"s point, e&en in the graph music7 the structure of the piece is ne&er the image, nor in eschewing precise notation of touch is Feldman lea&ing the field open for dramatic incident wherey the structure could ecome an image >as in )oule-?. Notation is, then, not so much a rigid e$clusion of chance, ut the means of pre&enting the structure from ecoming an image in these works, and an indication i ndication of the composer"s personal preference for where, unpredictaility should operate. Also John ;age remarked in this connection. 5Feldman"s con&entionally notated music is himself playing his graph music5. And of course the degree of precision thenotation notationcan is directly theinnature of the 25 musical e$perience Feldman e$posing.in+his e &eryrelated precise,toas 5E$tensions for iolin and 6iano >23'2?,is

 

which indicates an increasing tempo of ine$orale de&elopment from eginning to end y metronomic markings, as well as the dynamics and e$pressi&e de&elopment. Although the traditionally notated works are in the ma*ority on this record >5E$tensions @, +wo 6ianos5 for +wo 6ianos, 5+hree 6ieces5 for String uartet?, I ha&e gone into i nto the use of unpredictaility in this music at such length in order to reach a distinction aout its use in much contemporary music. In Feldman"s work unpredictaility in&ol&es the performer and the audience much in the same way it does the composer, in&iting an increase of sensiti&ity and intensity. )ut in much of the e$treme &anguard music in America and Europe, particularly that utili-ing tape and electronic de&ices along with elements of unpredictaility, the statistical unpredictaility has occurred in the traditional manner during the making of the piece# it has een employed preconceptually preconceptually as a logical outgrowth of serial techni8ue and it is dead y the time you hear it, though the music is ali&e in the traditional sense of hearing. hat Feldman is assuming, and it is a courageous assumption, is that the performer is a sensiti&e and inspired musician who has the est interests i nterests of the work at heart. +his attitude lea&es him free to concentrate on the main inspiration%area where the indi&idual piece is centered. hat he finds in these centers % whether it is the sensuousness of tone and the cantilena like delicacy of reathing in 5+hree 6ieces5 for String uartet >23'@%'G?, or the finality of the 5dialogues5 in 5E$tensions @5 for +hree 6ianos >23'%'=? % is on each occasion a personal and profound re&elation of the inner 8uality of sound. +he works recorded here already are an important contriution to the music of the (th ;entury. hether notated or graphed, his music sets in motion a spiritual life which is rare in any period and especially so in ours.

TE AN6'ETY OF ART  Where in life we do everything we can to avoid anxiety, in art we must pursue it. This is is difficult. Everything in our life and culture, regardless of our background, is dragging us away. Still, there is this sense of something imminent. And what is imminent, we find, is neither the  past nor the future, but simply  the next ten ten minutes. >6asternak?

Bo you rememer in Br. Hhi&ago the way history sweeps e&erything out of his life, e&erything creating the slightest human feeling! 1ow his identity is crushed y history, y the re&olution! 1ow e&erything personal, e&ery fantasy, e&ery e&ery human &ulneraility, loses its meaning and is swept aside! +he same type of dynamic that swept away 6asternak"s life can also take place in art. 1ere too, the fact that a thing happened, that it e$ists in history, gi&es it an authority o&er us that has nothing to do with its actual &alue or meaning. e see it life# why do we fail to see that in art too, the facts and successes of history are allowed to crush crush all that is sutle, all that is personal, in our work! Yet the artist does not resist. 1e identifies with this force that can only destroy him. In fact, it has an irresistile attraction for him, in i n that it offers him known goals, the illusion of safety in his work, the tempting knowledge that nothing succeeds in art %like someone else"s success. In a word, ecause it relie&es the an$iety of art. It is true a price must e paid for this protection, this comfort, this net spread eneath him if he falls. )ut think of what he gains when he identifies his art with a historical position. It is as though some 9ephistopheles stood ehind him, whispering, 5/o ahead. ;reate now. e"ll settle later.5 Now let us make clear that to identify with history does not necessarily refer to the past. It can refer e8ually to the newest and most e$treme de&elopments de&elopments in art. An artist can e as enamored of the as of the 1e canofe&en to and oth, )ael"s dead young soldier whonew is found withold. a picture 4enineincommitted one pocket, hislike twillim in the other.

 

In fact, this is perhaps the most attracti&e position of all. hen Schoenerg, for instance, formulated his principle of composition with the twel&e tones, he predicted this would e$tend the /ermanic tradition of music for another hundred years. 1is greatest satisfaction in ha&ing de&ised something new seems to e that he e$tended something old. And for many, Schoenerg holds the key to going ackward culturally, yet appearing to mo&e forward artistically. Bifferences in historical position, howe&er, ha&e always seemed unimportant to me. )oule-, for instance, is intensely in&ol&ed with how his music is constructed, while Buchamp selects a ready%made. Yet they oth meet in that what you see or hear is not as important as the historical stance that rought it aout. For ten years of my life I worked in an en&ironment committed to neither the past nor the future. e worked, that is to say, not knowing where what we did elonged, or whether it elonged anywhere at all. hat we did was not in protest against the past. +o reel against history is still to e part of it. e were simply not concerned with historical processes. e were concerned with sound itself. And sound does not know its history. +he re&olution we were making was not then or now appreciated. )ut the whole American :e&olution was ne&er appreciated either. Not really. It has ne&er een gi&en the importance of  the French or :ussian :e&olutions. hy should it e! +here was no lood ath, no uilt%in +error. e do not celerate an act of &iolence % we ha&e no )astille Bay. All it was, was, 5/i&e me lierty, or gi&e me death.5 ur work did not ha&e the authoritarianism. I might almost say, the terror, inherent in the teachings of )oule-, Schoenerg, and now Stockhausen. +his authoritarianism, this pressure, is re8uired of a work of art. +hat is why the real tradition of twentieth%century America, a tradition e&ol&ing from the empiricism of I&es, arese and ;age, has een passed o&er as 5iconoclastic5 % another word for unprofessional. In music, when you do something new, something original youre an amateur. Your imitators % these are the professionals. professionals. It is these imitators who are interested not in what the artist did, ut the means he used to do it. +his is where craft emerges as an asolute an authoritarian position that di&orces itself from the creati&e impulse of the originator. +he imitator is the greatest enemy of originality. +he 5freedom5 of the artist is oring to him, hi m, ecause in freedom he cannot reenact the role of the artist. +here is, howe&er, another role he can and does play. It is this imitator, this 5professional5 that makes art into aurure. +his is the man who emphasi-es the historical impact of the original work of art. ho takes from it and puts to use e&erything that can e utili-ed iin n a collecti&e sense. ho rings the concepts of &irtue, morality, and 5the general good5 into it. ho rings the world into it. 6roust tells us the great mistake lies in looking for the e$perience in the o*ect rather than in oursel&es. 1e calls this a 5running away from one"s own life.5 1ow many of these 5professionals5 would would go along with this kind of thinking aout art! +hey gi&e us continual e$amples of looking for the e$perience in the o*ect % in their case, the system, the craft that forms the asis of their world. +he atmosphere of a work of art, what surrounds surrounds it, that 5place5 in which it e$ists % all this is thought of a lesser thing, charming ut not essential. 6rofessionals insist on essentials. +hey concentrate on the things that make art. +hese are the things they identify with it, think of, in fact, as it % not understanding that e&erything we use to make art is precisely what kills it.

 

+his is what e&ery painter I know understands. And this is what almost no composer I know understands. +he prolem of music, of course, is that it is, y its &ery nature, a pulic art. +hat is, it must e played efore we can hear it. ne eats the drum, then hears the sound. +hat"s reasonale enough. ne can"t *ust imagine sound as an astraction, as not eing related to someone pounding the piano or eating a drum. +o play is the thing. +his is the reality of music. Yet somehow is something demeaning in thee&en fact ha&e that there is no other for music than thisthere pulic one. +he composer doesn"t the pri&acy of thedimension playwright, whose play can e$ist as a piece of literature. +he composer has to e the actor too. And this is emarrassing when I don"t like his act. +he lines of a masterpiece may e great, perfect, there may e no argument with them# ut I may not like the way not like the way the composer is saying his own lines. hat I want to make clear is that composers composers instincti&ely gear themsel&es to this rhetorical, almost theatrical element of pro*ection in music. +heir most delicate whisper is a stage whisper, a sotto &oce. +hough tonality has long een aandoned, and atonality, I understand, has also seen its day, the same gesture of the instrumental attack remains. +he result is an aural plane that has hardly changed since )eetho&en, and in many ways is primiti&e % as ;e-anne makes us see :enaissance space as primiti&e. Naturally, if the instrumental attack in music always creates the same aural plane, something must e done to acti&ate, to &ary it. It must e propped up to make it more interesting. +hat is why music is so in&ol&ed with differentiation. A piece like 5Socrate5 y Satie, that goes on and on, with &ery little happening, &ery little changing, is practically forgotten. f course, e&eryone knows it"s a mar&elous piece. E&ery year there"s talk aout it, e&ery year someone says, 5Yes, let"s do Socrate5 % ut somehow it isn"t e&er done... Now, as things ecome increasingly compressed compressed and telescoped, as differentiation ecomes, in fact, the su*ect of most composition, music has taken on the aspect of some e$traordinary athletic feat. +hink of a runner trained to run ackward at great speeds, or, what is e&en more difficult, to run ackward &ery slowly and steadily. hy ackward! Since music is increasingly osessed with this one idea % &ariation % one must always e llooking ooking ack at one"s material for implications to go on. ;hange is the only solution to an unchanging aural plane created y the constant element of pro*ection, of attack. +his is perhaps why in my own music I am so in&ol&ed with the decay of each sound, and try to make its attack sourceless. +he attack of a sound is not its character. Actually, what we hear is the where attackthe andsound not the sound. Becay, howe&er, thisus departing landscape, e$presses e$ists in our hearing % lea&ing rather than coming this toward us. I was once told aout a woman li&ing in 6aris % a descendant of Scriain % who spent her entire life writing music not meant to e heard. hat it is, and how she does it, is not &ery clear# ut I ha&e always en&ied this woman. I en&y her insanity, her impracticality. In reading o&er what I ha&e *ust written, I see that in an implicit way I suggest the possiility of another type of aural dimension. Actually, that is not what concerns me. hat concerns me is that condition in music where aural dimension is oliterated. hat do I mean y this! +he oliteration of the aural plane doesnt mean the music should e inaudile % though my own music may sometimes seem to suggest this. ffhand, I think of Schuert, 5Fantasie5 in F% 9inor. +he weight of the melody here is such that you can"t place where it is, or what it"s or what it"s coming from. +here are not many e$periences of this kind in music, ut a perfect e$ample of what I mean can e found in :emrandt"s self%portrait in the Frick. Not only is it impossile for us to comprehend how this painting was made# we cannot e&en fi$ where it e$ists in relation to our &ision.

 

9usic is not painting, ut it can learn from this more percepti&e temperament that waits and oser&es the inherent mystery of its materials, as opposed to the composer"s &ested interest in his craft. Since music has ne&er had a :emrandt, we ha&e remained nothing more than musicians. +he painter achie&es mastery y allowing what he is doing to e itself. In a way, he must step aside in order to e in control. +he composer is *ust learning to do this. 1e is *ust eginning to learn that controls can e thought of as nothing more than accepted practice. I, for one, listening to so much of the music of the past twenty years, must admit I still find the controls somewhat intimidating. )ut the intimidation is waning, ecause all the music seems to ha&e are these controls. I elie&e it was elen who once said of the economic goals of America, 5hat good is all this planning when the ends are so indeterminate!5 ne could make the same oser&ation aout music today. e see the same aundance % ut of what! As the old mythology dies away, as music no longer e$tols the same su*ect matter it once did, a new mysti8ue arises. +he mysti8ue of its own making, of its own construction. hat composers apparently apparently seek today is an infallile technical position. Although they claim to e so selecti&e, so responsile for their choices, what they really choose is a system or a method that, with the precision of a machine, chooses for them. In the past, if you didn"t like something, you didn"t use it# you let it alone. Now e&erything is used. I rememer certain composers who worked worked all the time. Now they ha&e ig reputations, and work an hour a week. +hey do a lot, they ha&e so much to work from. At least in the music of the past, when we find controls taking o&er, there is still a dichotomy# we can still distinguish etween the man and his machine. +his is true e&en when controls take o&er most completely. +ake the 5/rose Fuge5, possily the most re&ealing of all )eetho&en"s compositions. compositions. An aura of danger, of something gone amiss, ho&ers ao&e this music# a suggestion of a final *udgment turned against itself. ne suspects that )eetho&en in this work was pushed aside y the music"s onslaught. Bo I dare to suggest here that whate&er transcendental transcendental 8uality this work possesses might e  *ust ecause of this fact! Just ecause ecause what we ha&e here, in its most &olcanic and pathetic way, is a control in control of its master! hat will happen to my thesis, to my years of thinking and working in the opposite direction! +he answer to the parado$ may e in something I ha&e written elsewhere7 5For art to succeed, its creator must fail.5 1ow many times ha&e I felt, while listening to a work of ;age, a sense of regret, or loss for its creator! And when we meet face to face at these concerts, I would really like to say to him, 54et me e$tend my condolences to you personally, ut tell, 5Atlas Eclipticalis5 it was most thrilling e$perience of my life.5 If there is no such thing as a moral, or an honest, or a 5true5 position in art, what does appro$imate it is an art with *ust a little less control. f course, the history of music has always een in&ol&ed in controls, rarely with any new sensiti&ity to sound. hate&er reakthroughs ha&e occurred, took place only when new systems were de&ised. +he systems e$tended music"s &ocaulary, ut in essence they were nothing more than comple$ ways of saying the same things. 9usic is still ased on *ust a few technical models. As soon as you lea&e them you are in an area of music not recogni-ale as such. Agreed, we might egin e&ery age with the same handful of Assumptions, ut not with the same closely related technical procedures procedures throughout all of history +his osessi&e emphasis on a ritual which has ecome identical with the elief it symoli-es, leads us to only one conclusion % that music must e some kind of religion. +he mission of music is e&idently to

 

propagate the tenets of this religion. SchKnerg, Stra&insky, eern, )oule- % their fame is ecause they did e$actly this. Interestingly enough, it is not to these men that so many of the younger generation ha&e turned as to an almost religious force, ut to a man totally remo&ed from them % John ;age. Not since +olstoi has there een an artistic figure who has made such an impression on the youth. +he clue to this phenomenon may perhaps e found in a con&ersation etween ;age and a &isitor at his home in Stony 6oint. +he &isitor was speaking of ;age"s many remarkale achie&ements praising the the enormous hesaid, had rought to music. ;age walked o&er toand the inno&ations, window, looked out into woods,progress and finally 5I *ust can"t elie&e I am etter than anything out there.5 +his is not really an artistic, or e&en a philosophic, position. It is a religious position. Isn"t this what ;age implies when he says he created a camera for others to take the picture! if art is self%effacement to egin with, what ;age achie&es is self aolishment. e said earlier that the painter"s mastery consists in stepping aside and letting things e themsel&es. ;age stepped aside to such a degree that we really see the end of the world, the end of art. +hat is the parado$. +hat this &ery self%aolishment mirrors its opposite % an omniscient dogma of final things. It does suggest, it does ha&e an aura, of art"s final re&elation. hat does ;age gi&e us esides this camera! It would e hard to say. Yet why do we know, in the most amiguous musical circumstances, when it is the ear what is not ;age! e know at once if the performer is in&ol&ed with his own glamour, or if he is insensiti&e, or if he misunderstands. 4ike a certain 6ersonage we will not name, ;age is hidden, ut we know what"s good and ad in his eyes. If you"re asked what is ;age, that"s hard. )ut e&en Stockhausen knows when it"s not ;age. 1e does not gi&e the young people of this generation an ideal. 1e does not cry, like 9ayako&sky,, 5Bown with your art, down with your lo&e, down with your society, down with 9ayako&sky your /od.5 +he re&olution is o&er. 9ayako&sky"s, and ours. hat ;age has to offer is almost a type of resignation. hat he has to teach is that *ust as there is no way to arri&e at art, there is also no way not to. A close and &alued friend once ecame annoyed at my persistent admiration of ;age. 51ow can you feel this5, he said, 5when it"s apparent that e&erything he stands for negates your own music!5 +his was my answer7 5If anyone negates my music, it is, say, )oule-. ith )oule- you ha&e all the aura of a right or righteous gesture. It looks like art, smells and feels like nothing ut art, yet there is aout no creati&e pressure that makes a demand on me. It lulls me to sleep with its own easilyitac8uired &irtues.5 9y only argument with ;age, and there is only one argument, is with his dictum that, 56rocess should imitate nature in its manner of operation.5 r, as he put it on another occasion, 5E&erything is music.5 Just as there is an implied decision in a precise and selecti&e art, there is an e8ually iimplied mplied decision in allowing e&erything to e art. +here is a Hen riddle that replies to its own 8uestion. 5Boes a dog ha&e the )uddha nature!5 the riddle asks. 5Answer either way and you lose your own )uddha nature.5 Faced with a mystery aout di&inity, according to the riddle, we must always ho&er, uncertain, etween the two possile answers. Ne&er, on pain of losing our own di&inity, are we allowed to decide. 9y 8uarrel with ;age is that he decided. A rilliant student of Hen, he has somehow missed this sutle point.

 

Earlier in my life there seemed to e unlimited possiilities, ut my mind was closed. Now, years later and with an open mind, possiilities no longer interest me. I seem content to e continually rearranging the same furniture in the same room. 9y concern at times is nothing more than estalishing a series of practical conditions that will enale me to work. For years I said if I could only find a comfortale chair I would ri&al 9o-art. +he 8uestion continually on my mind all these years is7 to what degree does one gi&e up control, and still keep that last &estige where one can call the work one"s own! E&eryone must find his own answer here, ut there is a story aout 9ondrian that may clarify what I mean. Someone suggested that since 9ondrian used areas of all one color, why not use a spray instead of painting these areas! 9ondrian was &ery interested, and immediately tried it. Not only did the picture not ha&e the feel of a 9ondrian, it didn"t e&en ha&e the look of a 9ondrian. No one who has not e$perienced something something of this will understand it. +he word that comes closest is perhaps touch. For me, at least, this seems to e the answer, e&en if it is nothing more than the ephemeral feel of the pencil in my hand when I work. Im sure if I dictated my music, e&en if I dictated it e$actly, it would ne&er e the same. )ut this whole 8uestion of eing an artist comes only after so much work and reminiscence egins to saturate your life. 6roust did not know what his 5su*ect5 was until his life was almost o&er. hat you are, or are aout to ecome, is clear perhaps to others, ut ne&er to yourself. +he fact that Flauert could say to /eorge Sand >after writing 5)o&ary5 5)o&ary5?? that he is not sure whether he wants to ecome a writer, is close to what I mean. ne ne&er has an identity as an artist, ut in a &ague way rememers oneself oneself in that role. +he troule is we use a theological dialectic to understand the whole mechanism of art. )ut theological speculation has all too often een &ery much of this world# the search for /od merely a mask for the search for knowledge. +hats why Spino-a was re*ected. All he had to offer was /od# noody wanted that. +he search for art, all too often, has een another mask for the search for knowledge. Another attempt to reach hea&en with facts. Since the +ower of )ael, this attempt has failed. You cant reach hea&en with knowledge, you cant reach it with ideas, you cant e&en reach it with elief % rememer our Hen riddle Years ack someone said to me, 5If you lo&e something, why change it!5 i t!5 +hough this oser&ation was not made aout the art of the past, it &ery well might e. +o answer it, one must understand that the lo&e of the past iin n art is something &ery different different to the artist than it is to the audience. +he artist"s life, rememer, is a short one, the ordinary span of, say, se&enty%odd. +he audience, on the other hand, goes on for centuries, and is, in fact, immortal. +he audience feels the loss in change more crucially than the artist, ecause it lo&es art with the passionate lo&e one gi&es a thing one can ne&er really possess. hat it incessantly demands of the artist is for him to make up for this loss. )ut it is &ery hard for the artist. 1e feels the audience is suffocating art with its i ts lo&e and concern. 1e doesnt understand the nature of their lo&e, or the nature of their loss. )ut this is perhaps a digression. hat I am trying to lead up to is that there is a difference etween the many an$ieties of an artist trying to make something, trying to find safeguards against failure, and the an$iety of art. +he an$iety of art is a special condition, and actually is not an an$iety at all, though it has all the aspects of one. It comes aout when art ecomes separate from what we know, when it speaks with its own emotion.

 

here in life we do e&erything we can to a&oid an$iety, in art we must pursue it. +his is difficult. E&erything in our life and culture, regardless of our ackgro ackground, und, is dragging us away. Still, there is this sense of something imminent. And what is imminent, we find, is neither the past nor the future, ut simply % the ne$t ten minutes. +he ne$t ten minutes... e can go no further than that, and we need go no further. If art has its hea&en, perhaps this is it. If there is a connection made with history, it is after the fact, and can e perfectly summed up in the words of de Looning, 51istory doesn"t influence me. I influence it.5

AFTER MODERN'SM  hat if I met 6issarro in his own time % say, when he was fifty, a man of uni8ue talent and with a uni8ue position in the art world! hat if I watched him slowly growing older, slowly falling under the influence of the younger men! ould I understand etter how an idea takes o&er in the world of art % e in a etter position to see the profound irony of idea as opposed to life! In 6issarro"s century it was disco&ered that Nature is not a fi$ed ideal, ut a thing to e reconstructed according according to the personal &ision of the artist. ith this thought egins modernity. And with this thought modernity ends. here the pre%modernists had pursued nature in terms of its omniscience >i.e., that to ecome one with nature one had to paint like a god?, modernity found its omniscient metaphor in process. 6issarro appears not to ha&e understood or had the gift for in&ention, or rather for that 5literary rightness5 so characteristic of modernity. +he actually roken rushstroke rushstrok e to which he finally capitulated % the 6ointillism of the younger men % was after a literary fact rather than a painterly one. 6ointillism, after all, is an idea aout painting. An idea e$tracted from the sensory e$perience, e$perience, ut ne&ertheless an idea. Impressionism itself is a literary idea, as opposed to an artistic rightness. +he modernist is magnificently literary always. +his is not to detract from his genius# ne&ertheless it is a practical genius. 1ow could it e otherwise, when escaping from the status 8uo of nature! A grand plan must e made ready for this escape, and ao&e all % a practical plan 6issarro did not know that for the young the emotion of eing on the arricades is enough. 1e did not know that the young do not ha&e responsiility % only audacity. 4ike ;e-anne, he was under the illusion that truth was to e found in the process. though there are slight gradations of tempo? there is a suggestion that what we hear is functional and directional, ut we soon reali-e that this is an illusion# a it like li ke walking the streets of )erlin % where all the uildings look alike, e&en if they"re not. I"m eing distracted y a small +urkish &illage rug of white tile patterns in a diagonal repeat of  large stars in lighter tones of red, green, and eige. +hough Ba&id Syl&esteiT? is right in commenting that our appreciation of rugs such as this was enhanced y our e$posure to modernistic estern art, still, this 5primiti&e5 rug was concei&ed at almost the same time that 9atisse finished his art training. E&erything aout the rug"s coloration, and how the stars are drawn in detail, when the rectangle of a tile is e&en, how the star is *ust sketched >as if drawn more 8uickly?, when a tile is une&en and a little it smaller % this, as well as the staggered placement of the pattern, rings to mind 9atisse"s mastery of his seesaw alance etween mo&ement T? !slamic %arpets from the +oseph . -c-illan %ollection.  Art ;ouncil of /reat )ritain. 23D. and stasis. hy is it that e&en asymmetry has to look and sound right! +here is another Anatolian wo&en o*ect on my floor, which I refer to as the 5Jasper Johns5 rug. It is an arcane checkeroard checkeroar d format, with no apparent systematic color design e$cept for a free use of the rug"s colors reiterating its simple pattern. Implied in the glossy pile >though une&enly worn? of  the mountainous Lonya region, the older pinks, and lighter lues % was my first hint that there was something there that I could learn, if not apply to my music. +he color%scale of most nonuran rugs appears more e$tensi&e than it actually is, due to the great &ariation of shades of the same color >arash? % a result of the yarn ha&ing een dyed in small 8uantities. As a composer, I respond to this most singular aspect affecting a rug"s coloration and its creation of a microchromatic o&erall hue. 9y music has een influenced mainly y the methods in which color is used on essentially simple de&ices. It has made me 8uestion the nature of musical material. hat could est e used to accommodate, y e8ually simple means, musical color! 6atterns. :ug patterns were either astracted from symols, nature, or geometric shapes % lea&ing clues from the real world. Jasper Johns"s more recent paintings cannot e placed into any of these categories. Johns"s can&as is more a lens, where we are guided y his eye as it tra&els, where the tidein%somewhat somewhat+hese the same % rings to mind ;age"s dictum of 5imitating nature the mannerdifferent, of its operation.5 paintings create, on one hand, the concreteness we associate with a patterned art and, on the other, an astract poetry from not knowing its origins. e might e&en 8uestion in Johns whether they are patterns at all. hen does a pattern ecome a pattern! This persistence of pattern which runs throughout the art of the East is due to the inclination of the craftsmen to let well alone.  >A. F. Lendnck and ;. F. ;. +attersall? 1and%wo&en ;arpets,

4ondon 23?

Why /atterns is

a composition for flute, glockenspiel, glockenspiel, and piano consisting of a large &ariety of  patterns. +he work is notated separately for each instrument and does not coordinate until the last few minutes of the composition. +his &ery close, hut ne&er precisely synchroni-ed, notation allows for a more fle$ile pacing of three &ery distinct colors. 9aterial gi&en to each instrument is idiomatically not interchangeale with that of the other instruments. Some of the patterns repeat e$actly %others, with slight &ariations either in their shape or rhythmic placement. At times, a series of different patterns are linked together on a chain and then  *u$taposed y simple means.

 

+he most interesting aspect for me, composing e$clusi&ely with patterns, is that there is not one organi-ational procedure more ad&antageous than another, perhaps ecause no one pattern e&er takes precedence o&er the others. +he compositional concentration is solely on which pattern should e reiterated and for how long, and on the character of its ine&itale change into something else. I en*oy working with patterns that we feel are symmetrical >patterns of , @, O, etc.? ut present them in a particular conte$t7 E$ample 2 is characteristic of a &ertical pattern framed y silent eats# in this instance the rests on either end are slightly une8ual. 4inear patterns are naturally more ongoing, and could ha&e the 5short reath5 regularity of E$ample  or anticipate a slight staggered rhythmic alteration such as in E$ample =. Another de&ice I use is to ha&e a longish silent timeframe that is asymmetrical# in this instance, with a 8ui$otic four%note figure in the middle7 or a symmetrical silent frame around a short asymmetric measure7 >A. F. Lendrick and ;. F. ;. +attersall? 1and%wo&en ;arpets, 4ondon 23? Why /atterns is

a composition for flute, glockenspiel, glockenspiel, and piano consisting of a large &ariety of  patterns. +he work is notated separately for each instrument and does not coordinate until the last few minutes of the composition. +his &ery close, ut ne&er precisely synchroni-ed synchroni-ed,, notation allows for a more fle$ile pacing of three &ery distinct colors. 9aterial gi&en to each instrument is idiomatically not interchangeale with that of the other instruments. Some of the patterns repeat e$actly %others, with slightpatterns &ariations their shape rhythmic placement. At times, a series of different areeither linkedintogether on a or chain and then  *u$taposed y simple means. +he most Interesting aspect for me, composing e$clusi&ely with patterns, is that there is not one organi-ational procedure more ad&antageous than another, perhaps ecause no one pattern e&er takes precedence o&er the others. +he compositional concentration is solely on which pattern should e reiterated and for how long, and on the character of its ine&itale change into something else. I en*oy working with patterns that we feel are symmetrical >patterns of , @, O, etc.? ut present them in a particular conte$t7 E$ample I is characteristic of a &ertical pattern framed y silent eats# in this instance the rests on either end are slightly une8ual. 4inear patterns are naturally more ongoing, and could ha&e the 5short reath5 regularity of E$ample  or anticipate a slight staggered alteration such as in E$ample =. Another de&ice I use is to ha&e a longish silent rhythmic timeframe that is asymmetrical# in this instance, with a 8ui$otic four%note figure in the middle7 :epetiti&e chordal patterns might not progress from one to another, ut might occur at irregular time inter&als in order to diminish the close%knit aspect of patterning# while the more e&ident rhythmic patterns might e mottled at certain *unctures to oscure their periodicity. For me patterns are really self%contained sound5groupings sound5groupings that enale me to reak off without preparation into something else. In String 0uartet  there  there is an almost osessi&e reiteration reiteration of the same chord % dispersed in an o&erlay of four different speeds7 +he rhythmic structure of the lock consists of four une&en ar lengths with four permutations that incorporate the instrumentation of the 8uartet. I must caution the reader not to take the arlines here at face &alue. +his passage ecomes rhythmically oscured y the complicated nonpatterned syncopation that results. nly after rehearsals, and y following the score, could I catch an indi&idual pattern as it crisscrossed from one instrument to another.

 

In Spring of %hosroes for &iolin and piano, the 5pattern5 of one section consists of heightening the effect of the plucked &iolin figure >encompassing three pitches? y not estalishing any clear%cut rhythmic shape e$cept for its constant displacement within the 8uintuplet. +his allows for fi&e permutations, which are then *u$taposed in a helter%skelter fashion as the series continues. +he use of three pitches against fi&e une&en eats created, in my ears, a crippled symmetric constellation of 5eight5 as I was writing it. Aginst the &iolin"s pattern, the piano has an independent rhythmic series of the same three pitches, played in a symmetric unit of four e8ual eats to a measure. +his functions as still another deterrent to the natural propulsion of the 8uintuplet. If my approach seems more didactic now % spending many hours working out strategies that only apply to a few moments of music % it is ecause the patterns that interest me are oth concrete and ephemeral, making notation difficult. If notated e$actly, they are too stiff# if gi&en the slightest notational leeway, they are too loose. +hough these patterns e$ist in rhythmic shapes articulated y instrumental sounds, they are also in part notational images  that do not make a direct impact on the ear as we listen. A tumling of sorts happens in midair etween their translation from the page and their e$ecution. +o a great degree, this tumling occurs in all music % ut ecomes more compounded in mine, since there is no rhythmic 5style5, a 8uality often crucial to the performer"s unders understanding tanding of how and what to do. I found this *ust a true in my music of the fifties % where rhythm was not notated, ut left to the performer. performer. +he attempt to find a suitale notation for musical ideas has een a ma*or preoccupation of )oule- throughout his career. +here is a significant re&ision of 1e Soleil des Eaux  that  that comes to mind. +he original &ersion is in the 5Llangfaren5 manner7 rief segments of the musical line distriuted from one instrument to another. +he re&ised &ersion has the indi&idual instruments follow through with a more continuous line. +he notation of the earlier &ersion looks 5good5 in the manner of the times# ut the re&ised score sounds etter % rather, it sounds like )oule-. In contrast, my notational concerns ha&e egun to mo&e away from any preoccupation with how the music functions in performance. It is difficult to descrie what characteri-es notational imagery.5If imagery.5If we could suspend for *ust a moment all the reasons we think distinguish one era from another % and riefly glance at the pages of the last mo&ement of the 2ammerklavier , or a florid ar or two from ;hopin, or any work of eern"s % we will oser&e that these pages do not &isually resemle the music of their contemporaries. +he degree to which a music"s notation is responsile for much of the composition itself, is one of history"s est kept secrets. +he following e$ample from Trio for &iolin, cello, and piano might est illustrate this, as well as my increasing mo&e away from the practicality of how musiccoordination will come offprolem in performance. Starting with the metronome indication > C ?, there is athe difficult prol em etween the three instruments. +he performers must pace se&en eats into si$ e8ual ones, and sudi&ide another rhythmic idea in which each pitch of the four%note piano chord, and the separate notes of the doule%stops in the &iolin and cello are all of different, finicky durations. +his 5machine5 goes on for thirty%si$ measures, with other prolems de&eloping along the way. +echnically, the music is oth idiomatic and playale# ut depends, to a ta$ing degree, on the performer"s performer"s concentration. 9any composers and theorists will disagree with the almost hierarchical prominence I attriute to the notation"s effect on composition. +hey would argue that new musical concepts, resulting in inno&ati&e systems, necessitated changes in notation. +his is then referred to as, say, a new 5piano style5, as 4eiowit- did in discussing an important early piano piece >p. 22, 23(3? y Schoenerg. +his interpretation cannot e refuted, ut some room should e left open to 8uestion it. 9y speculation o&er how a ,,notational look5 may ha&e contriuted this, since at that time I rememer I was dangling etween &arious procedure proceduress that I knew didn"t apply to my music. yet, I had met the me. painters tactical contriute so much toAnd this as prolem thatnot confronted In nowhose way do I wantsolutions to implywere that to youthful

 

arrogance ignored all that I could learn from the study of composition. )ut my approach, which was not conscious at the time and only re&ealed itself many years later, was7 work first, study later. :ecently I was in a ookstore in )erlin where the clerk, not understanding English, found it impossile to help me find certain /erman ooks on rugs. A distinguished man inter&ened, and from our con&ersation it turned out that he too was an a&id rug enthusiast. 1e then took out of his pocket sheets of paper with singlespaced columns of his countless rug ooks in many languages. 5;ould it e possile for me to see your rug collection while I"m in )erlin!5 I asked with some hesitation. 5I ha&en"t collected any rugs as yet, only ooks aout them. You see,something I first want to learn there is to know aout them5, he off replied. I rememer )oulesaying similar7 5I all must know e&erything efore I step the carpet.5 9y first lucky encounter with a painter who was to ecome crucial to my music occurred soon after meeting John ;age in the latter part of 23'(. ;age knocked on my door and announced that he had *ust met an e$traordinary young artist and that 5we"re going down to his studio5. +he artist was :oert :auschenerg. hile looking at a large l arge lack painting in which newspapers >also painted lack? were glued to the can&as, :auschenerg :auschenerg *okingly suggested I uy it. 51ow much do you want for it!5 5hate&er you ha&e in your pocket.5 I had aout se&enteen dollars and change % which I happily ga&e him, and which he happily accepted. e put it on the roof of ;age"s old Ford and off we went. I"m looking at it now >>thirty thirty years later? as I write this. After li&ing with this painting and studying it intensely now and then, I picked up on an attitude aout making something that was asolutely uni8ue to me. +o say that the )lack 6ainting could e relegated to 5collage5 simply did not ring true. It was more7 it was like :auschenerg"ss disco&ery that he wanted 5neither life nor art, ut something in etween5. I :auschenerg" then egan to compose a music dealing precisely with 5inetween%ness57 creating a confusion of material anddirected construction, a fusion of difficult method to and application, y concentrating on how they could e towardand 5that which is categori-e5. Soon after meeting :auschenerg I met Jackson 6ollock, who asked me to write music for a film aout him that had *ust een completed. I was &ery pleased aout this since it was *ust the &ery eginning of my career. 6ollock li&ed way out on 4ong Island and only came to the city sporadically, making it difficult to estalish a real continuity to our relationship. In thinking ack to that time, I reali-e now how much the musical ideas I had in 23'2 paralleled his mode of working 6ollock placed his can&as on the ground and painted as he walked around it. I put sheets of graph paper on the wall# each sheet framed the same time duration and was, in effect, a &isual rhythmic structure. hat resemled 6ollock was my 5all o&er5 approach to the time%can&as. :ather than the usual left%to%right passage across the page, the hori-ontal s8uares of the graph paper represented the tempo % with each o$ e8ual to a preestalished ictus# and the &ertical s8uares were the instrumentation of the composition. As I came to know 6ollock etter % especially from those con&ersations where he would relate 9ichelangelo"s drawings or American Indian sandpainting to his own work % I egan to see similar associations that I might e$plore in music. I must point out here that the intellectual life of a young New York composer of my generation was one in which you kept your nose glued to the music paper. olpe was intimate with many painters and constantly spoke of other things esides music. arese, too, was a composer with &ast interests in other areas. this suliminal mathematics? is not gi&en to us in estern culture, ut must e arri&ed at indi&idually in our own work and in our own way. 4ike that small +urkish 5tile5rug, it is :othko"s scale that remo&es any argument o&er the proportions of one area to another, or o&er its degree of symmetry or asymmetry. +he sum of the parts does not e8ual the whole# rather, scale is disco&ered and contained as an image. It is not form that floats the painting, ut :othko"s finding that particular scale which suspends all proportions in e8uilirium. Stasis, it is utili-ed in painting, is not traditionally of the apparatus of music. 9usic can achie&eas aspects of immoility, or the illusion of it7 i t7 thepart 9agritte%like world Satie e&okes, or the 5floating sculpture5 of arese. +he degrees of stasis, found in a :othko or a /uston, were perhaps the most significant elements that I rought to my music from painting. For me, stasis, scale, and pattern ha&e put the whole 8uestion of symmetry and asymmetry in aeyance. And I wonder if either of these concepts, or an amalgamation of oth, can still operate for the many who are now less prone to synthesis as an artistic formula.

D%RAT'ONS (19=:1! 

In $urations, I arri&e at a more comple$ style in which each instrument is li&ing out its own indi&idual life in its own indi&idual sound world. In each piece the instruments egin simultaneously, and are then free to choose their own durations within a gi&en general tempo. +he sounds themsel&es are designated.

FALSE RELAT'ONS'"S AND TE E6TENDED END'N# (198!   3alse *elationships and the Extended Ending  uses

two instrumental groups >piano, &iolin, tromone# two pianos, cellos, chimes?. +hey egin together ut thereafter are independent of one another. +he work alternates etween e$act time proportions in the pauses and a free time >slow? duration for the sounds. E$cept for a recurring roken chor chord d in all three pianos, the material for each group is different and non repetiti&e. +he dynamics are &ery low throughout.5

TE ;'OLA 'N MY L'FE (19>=:>1!   The iola in -y 1ife >dedicated to the 6ierrot 6layers? was egun in 1onolulu in July, 23D( and completed after my return home to New York in late August.

Scored for flute, &iolin, &iola, cello, percussion and piano, the compositional format is 8uite simple. as in all my music? is to sustain a 5flat surface5 with a minimum of contrast. Frank "1ara was the 56oet 4aureate5 of the New York art world during the 23'(s. 1e was gra&ely wounded >at forty? y a each ta$i on Fire Island on July @, 23GG, and died the following day.

A$O%T SON'A SE)%LA (19>1! 

She was totally charming, eautiful, witty, tiny# the silent mo&ie star type. She had a fantastic, unusual facility with words. She was unusually gifted# her work had a con&iction, an authenticity that made you wonder who this person is and what is going to happen to all this talent. She was an addition to that world, that whole cast of 1emingway characters# she was &ery gifted, that little spice that added to the scene tremendously.

STATEMENT (19>! 

4aughter? She"d tell me e&erything aout )usoni. ;ertain attitudes. +hat was history for me. ;ertain attitudes people had. ho was my first teacher! allingford :iegger studied in 4eip-ig. And he would go o&er the )eetho&en. 1e lo&ed the &ariation mo&ement in the 5Eroica5. 1e would always forget that he was ra&ing to me aout it ecause it"s as if he de&eloped a senility aout the &ariation mo&ement. And he"d take out that from paper, and I rememer I didn"t elie&e it, ounded where the&olume clef went the4eip-ig other with way, that you mar&elous know. >4aughter? Incredile. +he other way. I thought this was the way it was really done. And sometimes when I"m really depressed and I"m working 2' or ( hours and falling asleep, I make that, and I ha&e a little laugh, and I wake up, and then I put in my ass clef the wrong way. +hat was my teacher. +he first twel&e%tone composer in America. Ne&er talked to me aout twel&e%tones. I wrote a modal little piece when I was 2@ years old I wrote a modal little melody and an elegant piano accompaniment, and I put it i t in my little riefcase, and :iegger says, 59orty, could you lea&e it here! I"d like li ke to show it to 1enry ;owell. 1e wasn"t interested in the fact whether my music was chromatic or not. )ut efore I forget it, there"s a charming little story aout Stra&insky and John ;age. John ;age got &ery friendly Stra&insky Stra&insky"s last Stra&insky his ackground, and hewith asked John whoinhe had liked as a days, youngand man, and John didn"t said, know 5Scho5nerg5. 5Scho5nerg 5. And Stra&insky said, 5hy!5 And John said, 5)ecause he"s chromatic.5 And Stra&insky said 5)ut I am too5 So what I"m really trying to say is how do you represent history! 1ow close to a model do you mo&e! 1ow much is really needed! hat are the leaps that you yourself could make! 1ow ha&e you used the model! hat 8uestions do you use aout the model! Jackson 6ollock, he has this mar&elous summer home, and I was in&ited there for a weekend, and all he had was ooks on 9ichelangelo. And what he liliked ked aout 9ichelangelo was the drawings, the unending rhythm. 4ike his 5Autumn :hythm5, if you know that. +hat"s a leap. +hat unending rhythm. +hat incessant, unending rhythm that you find. And that"s a leap. I once went to the 9etropolitan with 9ark :othko, and we"d look at a :emrandt painting and the way :emrandt leeds to the edges. +ake a look at :othko, the way he leeds to the edges. +hat"s a leap.

 

r mood. A certain type of mood that is transfi$ed on the can&as. Fi$ed onto the can&as, in the sense that one might get from 6iero della Francesca. +hat"s a mo&e. An historical mo&e. And so forth and so on. An atmosphere of Schuert. hen we had the rehersal in +oronto, and I walked in, andI wanted to con&ey the mood of the piece to ten musicians I said to the mar&elous Lronos8uartet, Lronos8uartet, 5ell5, I said to them, 56lay it like "Beath and the 9aiden".5 And they played. +hat"s it. +hat kind of ho&ering, as if you"re in a register you"d ne&er heard efore. +hat"s one of the magics of Schuert. +o gi&e you something in a register you all tinkle with, and it sounds terrific, and you hit that register, you"ll make an image of that register, you"ll focus into that register# you hear the notes in that register, and it"s some place. here is it! You go to the piano and you can"t find it. +hat sense of place. >1ums a tune.? here is it! Fantastic composing. Another &ery close friend of mine that I learned perhaps more aout art and attitudes from than from anyody else was someody connected with the )auhaus as a young man. 1e went to the )auhaus. 1e was 8uite a character. 1e was a &isionary and architect, y the name of Freddy Leisler. And I met Leisler on a illage street one day, I was aout ', @, and he said 5I"m *ust coming ack from a ig architectural department in +e$as.5 And he tells this story. 1e said, 5I went into this tremendous room, and on e&ery desk there was an electric sharpener. So all the kids there were sharpening their pencils.5 Leisler went, and he sat down at a desk, and he took out his old iennes penknife, and he started to sharpen a pencil. And he said to them, 5All you did was sharpen a pencil.5 1e said, 5I *ust had an idea for a uilding.5 >4aughter? I don"t think I e&er heard anything interesting from an American in New York. )ut you ha&e to know what New York was like at that time. +here were all these emigrants and refugees from Europe. 9ondrian was there. 1e affected the whole climate. 9a$ Ernst was there. Although not necessarily in New York. 1e was out est. 4eger was li&ing there. And then those really classy surrealists. ery important to the intellectual attitudes of New York in 23@D, 23@O, 23@3. ery important was Andre" )reton. And John ;age"s connection as a young man coming from New York to the est ;oast was in that particular world. ery, &ery interesting people. +he whole European intelligentsia dominated. Some of them felt that in the sense that they came from &ery autocratic ackgrounds, ackgrounds, like Alers, that created a kind of place somewhat like the )auhaus. )lack 9ountain ;ollege. And you *ust think of this )ohemian place with this kind of &ery proper man, and he once told John ;age that he thought that he went too far. In other words, he was too permissi&e at )lack 9ountain ;ollege, ecause of the nonauthoritarian ackground, you see. And Yale 4aughter?

 

So if we want to ha&e a look at history, let"s forget aout concepts. ;oncepts come and go. +hey"re like the planets in the uni&erse. % uestion asked y a woman in the audience7 5)ut what do you think if you had...5 %>9r. Feldman interrupts the 8uestion.? It"s not the 8uestion time, and if you"re coming to )uffalo, you"ll ha&e plenty of time to talk to me. >4aughter? % Same woman7 5I"m not sure I"ll come. %.L., then talk. >4aughter? 5If you had nothing else than an accordian, on what would you play then!5 %6lay on your skull. I don"t care. )ut listen tome, will you! 4isten. I"m saying to make a leap. hat is our, tradition! hat do we ha&e! I want to tell you what I feel is our tradition, I am saying our estern tradition. I think if we lea&e it with slumming, it"s like me going to 1arlem. >4aughter? In fact, I don"t e&en feel I"m in the est here. +he tuning is too high. >4aughter? I feel I"m in some underde&eloped country with some cra-y... % :emark from the audience." 5You are5 %>4aughter? I was in ienna, and I heard my, music, and I didn"t recogni-e it, it was so high%tech. >4aughter? hat I"m really trying to say is this7 instead of the twel&e%tone as a concept. I"m in&ol&ed with all the OO notes. I ha&e a ig, ig world there. I rememer in the G(s when I was seeing a lot of Stockhausen, who was in New York, and he says to me, 59orty, you mean to tell me that e&ery time you ha&e to choose a note, you ha&e to choose it out of the OO notes!5 So I looked at him, and I said, 5Larlhein-, it"s easier for me to find a note on the piano and handle it >the choice of the note? than to handle one woman.5 >4aughter? +o e married, or to ha&e one girlfriend, is more complicated than to find notes. I hear them. f course, maye you don"t hear them. 9aye you didn"t know that was music. 9aye you thought music was words without music. I don"t know. +alk without music, concepts without hearing. I don"t know. E&en John ;age said to me recently, 59orty, you mean to tell me you hear all that!5 And I said, 5No, I write it down to hear it.5 And he said, 5ell, I understand that.5 >4aughter? So actually when, say, I write it down to hear it, we get to another parameter. +here are &ery, few of you who see it. 9ore and more, you"re all in&ol&ed in how to get your notes, which I understand it is like how to make a li&ing. >4aughter? So there"s an an$iety. 1ow do I get my notes! +here are other things esides notes, of course. :egistration. hat"sstatements that! I would say that I were forced to -usammen. confess the one thing. . . I hat to make hierarchal ecause the ifhierarchy is, alles I"m serious E&erything together.,. In fact, I cant"t hear a note unless I know its instrument. I can"t hear a note to write it down unless I know immediately its register. I can"t write a note unless I know its suggested shape in time. )ut that"s another aspect in the sense that I retranslate. nce I hear it in the terms of  rhythmic shapes, almost in a kind of Stra&insky way# that is, the eat in relation to the meter. Sometimes I hear it where it"s *ust a kind of o&erall durational lock, where it"s almost a kind of a cuist lock. And I"m dissecting the time. +hat"s translation. )eat in relation to the meter. It"s as if one minute I"m working in inches, and the ne$t minute I"m working in centimeters, and the ne$t minute I"m working in millimeters. And then I put them all together, and then I *ust use two, and then I *ust use one, and then I *ust go into inches for e$ample. And I use that &ery much as a md of rhythmic images. And then I"m looking for, I"m really *ust hoping for, I"m panning for gold.

 

A term I like that Freud used... I don"t think of myself as a composer, or ha&e an osession with professionalism. Be Looning again, 5I work# other people call it art.5 And I ha&e that kind of conflict. )ut where was I! % 9emer of the audience7 ;;Freud.55 %Freud"s great remark7 he ne&er referred to himself as a scientist. 1e always called himself an ad&enturer. I always liked that. )ecause I"m an ad&enturer. An interesting idea, isn"t it! I"&e spoken to a few of you here and a &ery, &ery serious prolem is that you don"t know how to consult the criticism. You don"t know how to study with anyody. You ring something, you want to get some opinion, you get some opinion, you immediately don"t want to hear it. And so it"s o&erly defensi&e, and then you reali-e you"re walking on eggs. And rememer, I"m saying this and eing a little rough sometimes. I was in&ited to. . . % ell, let"s say the kids weren"t good enough to get into Julliard % the erlin ;onser&atory. ;onser&atory. And *ust efore I walked in to gi&e my criticism, the chairman walked o&er to me and said, 59orty, we"re walking on eggs here5. I said, 5I understand5. So then a young fellow had a tape and played a flute piece. And the piece, like anyody would like, a sweet piece, starts low, uilts up high. You might not go that high 5c5 like in 5Bensity5 and then you come down, and that"s what this fellow did. And then I kind of used it. I got turned on with the idea, and I said, 5Isn"t it interesting, the whole idea of going up and coming down.5 I said, 5;an anyone think of pieces that go this way, like a 55, start high and go down!5 +he fellow walked out of the room. >4aughter? 1e was insulted. It"s interesting. Bo you know any pieces that start high and go down! Bon"t write it >4aughter? Now as far as the pitches and the notes, I would say that the 5II. String8uartet5, inter&allically, is essentially an interest in the minor nd and the ma*or nd. +hose three notes. I like it that way ecause I could % in a sense % di&ide the octa&e etter. As far as why the piece is so long, or why I"m writing long pieces. . . In fact, I could find some &ery interesting, either social idea, or whate&er7 I"m tired of the ourgeois audience# the audience is for four mo&ements. I mean, I could say that. )ut I think the reason I write long l ong pieces is that I ha&e the time and the money to write long pieces. >4aughter? +hat"s what they asked 1enry 9oore. +hey said, 5hy are these things so ig!5 5hen I was a young I didn"t ha&e any money5, he said. asthe I would e ale afford it5,real he said, 5I reallyman, wanted to produce things ig and send 5Soon them to foundry. Andto gi&e them shape.5 So it"s all a 8uestion of economics. Sometimes it"s no good to get money. For e$ample, there was a great painter, Fran- Lline. And e&en Be Looning early pictures. +hey didn"t ha&e any money. +hey didn"t ha&e any money at all. And so they used cheap house paint and had a great look. It didn"t ha&e an educated look. You ha&e no idea. +here are so many things working for you. +he sound of a &iolin is educated... You ha&e no idea of all the work that"s gone in efore you e&en write. +hat"s part of our assemlage in estern ci&ili-ation. +hings are handed to us on a sil&er platter. e don"t e&en know it. e think it"s raw materials. I"d stop writing music unless I had a eautiful piano. I wouldn"t e interested unless I had a fantastic &iolin. +oci&ili-ation. me, that"s All estern ci&ili-ation. 6erfected instruments. chromatic scale is to me estern the other things, as I said, were satellites,+he planets on our way to the gra&e.

 

.L., genug. And now maye 2(, 2' minutes of 8uestions. I would like to gi&e you something technical. )ut it"s a 8uestion of words. I like words. 4ike tell me, what"s the chromatic scale! It"s like saying to someody, if I said 54ook, you"&e got the chromatic scale.5 9y father said to me, 59orty. I"m going to gi&e you what my father ga&e to me, the world5 >4aughter? You don"t want the world. hat you want is money for a house. You want to go to Barmstadt. hat good is Barmstadt if  you don"t ha&e the money to go to it! So you don"t want the world. You might not e&en want Barmstadt. >4aughter? You want the money to get to Barmstadt. >4aughter? % Someone from the audience. %5;an you imagine you didn"t ha&e any money to get away from it!5 >4aughter and applause.? See what a piano means to me! I saw that glass on the piano immediately. 9y refle$ took the glass off the piano. See that! It"s not ecause I"m middle%class. It"s ecause I llo&e o&e the piano % oice from the audience7 51ow aout the &iolin! You can"t put a glass on the &iolin.5 %You"re right. You know how cra-y concepts are, speaking of &iolins! I did a wonderful concert in 6adua with Aki +akahashi. e did some two piano pieces of mine. And we"re sitting in a little restaurant afterwards. And there was a nice young man sitting there, and I thought he was friends of the people that in&ited us, ut he"s *ust a student who came along from the uni&ersity there and sat down with us. And I asked him aout himself, 5ho are you!5 And he said that he"s writing a long paper. I said, 5hat"s it on!5 /et this 1e wants to show with diagrams and measurements that the &iolin was only made for man"s hand. >4aughter? I notice that e&en here % and I"m saying this in a humorous way % e&en people people I like &ery much, there"s something when you start talking aout your concepts, something happens. You hear it in the ackground. >9r. Feldman hums pathetically a tune.? And a look comes into the eye, like a Jeho&ah"s itness. >4aughter? I mean, if you want to e modish, concepts are out of style. +hey"re ased on the 's or G(s, and they"re usually misunderstood misunderstood.. And they"re usually other peopls concepts. oice from the audience7 55E$cuse me, I came to hear aout your string 8uartet, and I"&e heard predous little aout it. +his is supposed to e a 8uestion hour which is not e&en a 8uestion hour.5 %You"re not nice. >4aughter? I wouldn"t answer anything you asked me. You"re horrile You"re hostile % 5h come, uy me a drink and then you"ll get to know me etter.5 % >4aughter? I don"t want to get to know you at all You see, I actually can"t gi&e you that kind of information you want. hen I sit down and write a piece. I"m in thought. And as I"m mo&ing, I"m focusing from one thought to another. And the whole idea of eing in thought is to find the right kinds of notation at that moment that presents that thought. 1ow can I talk aout my work! I"m intensely in&ol&ed as I do it. And the minute I draw the doule%ar line and I wake up the ne$t morning, I hardly rememer anything aout it. It"s o&er. A piece doesn"t li&e when you finish it as a composer. hen you draw the doule%ar line, the piece is ended, finished. +he piece is dead. I don"t want to e nostalgic. You know, I"m not a person who goes around and says, my piece So I spoke aout certain asic, general attitudes. I was talking aout )eckett, and now I"m doing this. And those are analogies. It seems that they didn"t gi&e sufficient information.

 

% oice from the audience7 5"ell, I found that you threw up some &ery interesting concepts, in a sort of *umled style you use.5 % I keep no sketches. 9ost of the time I write in ink. And I don"t write in ink ecause I feel the work is 5e$ cathedra5. I write in ink ecause it is a way of telling me how concentrated I am. +hat is, if I start using my eraser, or if I start changing things, I get up and I ha&e reakfast. I"m not concentrated. I thought I was concentrated. I"&e got no plans for the day, ut I put in a day"s work. And that"s an intuiti&e feeling. I might work around the clock. I might work 2( hours, 2' hours. I might work  hours. I ha&e to feel I did a day"s work, that I shouldn"t go on. )ut I don"t lea&e the house. I"m waiting. Another strategy I ha&e to compose, which might mean nothing to you, ut without that ad&ice, I ne&er would ha&e ecome a composer. Again, it might mean nothing to you. hen I met John ;age, I asked John how he works, the practical elements of how he works. I asked him what kind of pen he used. It was through John ;age that I learned aout a great /erman pen, the :apidograph. )efore, I didn"t know it. e didn"t ha&e that particular type of precision pen at that time in New York. I looked. hat kind of ruler does the man use! hat kind of an eraser does he use! If you would notice my early graph music, three graphic pieces, he copied it. T? It"s in his, in ;age"s handwriting. 1e spent the whole week copying things, showing me how to set up a page. 1is idea of professionalism professionalism was that things had to e eautifully, and neatly, and cleanly presented. )ut the ad&ice he ga&e me was the most important ad&ice anyody e&er ga&e me, and I"m going to gi&e it to you. 1e said that it"s a &ery good idea that after you write a little it, stop and then copy it. )ecause while you"re copying it, you"re thinking aout it, and it"s gi&ing you other ideas. And that"s the way I work. And it"s mar&elous, *ust wonderful, the relationship etween working and copying. And what"s mar&elous aout it to me is that e&en if I"m writing long pieces, I don"t feel that I got G( pages which I then ha&e to copy. And it worked out eautifully. All those things, ha&ing the right pen, a comfortale chair. I once wrote and article and said that if I had the right chair, I"d e like 9o-art. >4aughter? I mean, are you comfor comfortale tale in your chair! Bo you think aout your chair! I work at the piano as a desk. +here"s *ust something aout. >a&es around? +his is low. I ha&e a stool which is higher. >Sits down on a chair? +here"s something aout the*ust distance the stool you made, write. >;hanges hisstool stool? It"s fantastic*ust now, &ery comfortale, right.with If I e&er had aasdesk I"d take my and measure it. +hose things are &ery important. +hose are strategies to get you going. I mean, my ideas may get you going. If I can annoy you with another on mot. Begas, you know, spent too much of his time writing sonnets. So he meets 9allarme" on the street, and 9allarme" says, 51ow are the sonnets going!5 And Begas says, 5I don"t ha&e any ideas.5 9allarme" says, 5You don"t write poetry with ideas. You write it with words.5 >4aughter? European, you know, 9allarme". Are there any 8uestions! % oice in the audience7 5Yes, there"s a 8uestion here. ;ould you gi&e us an idea of how you knew you were approaching the end of the composition! hen you were writing it. %

 

John, did you e&er see that film with )oule- and Stra&insky in 1ollywood! >4aughter? )oule- is on camera, and he says, 5 Stra&insky5, Stra&insky5, % you always had to call him 9r. Stra&insky. A friend of  mine who knew him for four years once called him Igor, and Stra&insky stopped talking to him. >4aughter? % 6erson in the audience who had asked the ao&e 8uestion7 55ell, 9r. Feldman, how did you come to the end of the. . .5 % >/eneral laughter.? John >4aughter?, I"m telling you aout that film. So )oule- in the film, says, 551ow did you know hows many times to do 5"Sacre5 >22 eat passage from 5Sacre du printemps5? >4aughter? Stra&insky looks at him like >9. F. stares? and really couldn"t answer the 8uestion. ord the 8uestion *ust a little l ittle it different. % Same person in the audience7 5ell, you"re writing music, and you"&e heard the music internally, I imagine, to some e$tent# and you"&e arri&ed at a certain point. &iously, physically, you ha&e a numer of manuscript pages on the right, ut you must ha&e a sense of  a kind of internal workings of your music to gi&e you the feeling that you"re coming towards the last page. 1ow did you know that the last page weas the last page! I must tell that I thought the last page was the last page, musically % if I can use the word musically. It seemed as if we were approaching the end of the piece, ut I didn"t know why. %ell it"s what I said in the con&ersation I had with 9et-ger. I find that as the piece gets longer, there has to e less material. +hat the piece itself, strangely enough, cannot take it. It has nothing to do with my patience. I don"t know, my patience, how far it goes, you know. And I don"t think aout what your patience would e. I don"t know that. In other words, I don"t ha&e a kind of psychological situation. 4et"s put it this way. I don"t ha&e an an$iety that I"&e go to stop. )ut there"s less going into it, so I think the piece dies a natural death. It dies of old age. >4aughter? 4ike a cousin of mine said to his daughter, 5Sweety, pull out the tue.5 So, that"s what happens. I decide, you know. 4ittle y little, as I got into middle mi ddle age, I asked myself a 8uestion. I said, maye music is not an art form. After all, you don"t see a congress of young painters like this. It must e interesting that composers get together like this. 6ainters don"t ha&e their Barmstadt. hy! % oice in the audience7 55+hey"re too rich.5 %>4aughter? % Another &oice7 5 am a painter and...5%6lease, eha&e yourself. >4aughter? So I asked myself that 8uestion. 9aye music is not and art form. 9aye music essentially only has to do with music forms. And then I got in&ol&ed with other ideas connected with music forms, and I came up with memory forms. +hen I spoke to an anthropologist friend of mine, and he recommended a &ery good ook, which I recommend to you. It"s a paperack. It"s y an English woman y the name of Francis hite % who *ust died recently %, and she wrote a ook called "5+he Art of 9emory5. It will e as if you would ha&e the history of the computer written, ,((( years from now. And I went out of my head with this ook. It"s fantastic. +he props that they would use for memory. For instance, the /loe theater, Shakespeare, 5all the world"s a stage5. "All the world"s a stage5, was the /loe theater. ith reference to all the things. +he 6alladium theater and the whole history of memory forms and what happened. And the whole rigidity of memory forms. For e$ample, )runo >/iordano, 2'@O%2G((, 2'@O%2G((, the transl.?. An interesting character. was urned the than stakethe after a 2D year in8uisition. 1isform heresy that he included other 1e memory forms at other 1oly +rinity. As a memory he was rought in the Laala, Egyptian. 1e was &ery eclectic. 1e was an historian. 1e was a cultural

 

anthropologist. 1e was a philosopher. And that was the reason he had to *ustify his use of other memory forms. And then I felt that the memory forms in music were primiti&e. +hat they were ased on small attention. +hey were ased on a con&ention. +hey were ased on things that worked, and they worked eautifully. I mean, I did say to my own students, say, the slow mo&ement of the Beussy 8uartet, the 5A%)%A5 construction. And Beussy is &ery interesting in his 56iano Etudes5. +here"s one piece where the 5)5 has nothing to do with the 5A5. It"s *ust a mar&elous piece in relation to what what you can do in terms of the relationship of an 5A%)%A5. +hey work. +hey"re wonderful. wonderful. And I said, 5hat would happen if you got rid of the 5A%)%A5 forms! hat happens!5 So what am I doing! I"m not doing anything different than )eetho&en, who was writing a piece which is getting longer. And he does something else that noody else e&er did. 1e threw in another three tune. I"m not throwing it in as a memory, I"m throwing it in in a more 6roustian sense. hen he goes out in the car with, rememer, his chauffeur to smell a little li ttle something and then goes home and writes aout it. And many times I would turn and say, 5Bidn"t I do this o&er here!5 And I would go o&er and look through it and use it and then use it in another way, of course. 4ike 6roust 6roust,, the no&el. +his piece is also that when you first get material, you"re idealistic. And what happens in this piece, there"sthe a disintegration of it, like 6roust. It"s &ery much I can to 5:ememer +hings 6ast5, where youinegin idealistically, and like thenit.you getcompare more andit more into reality as you e$perience grows. For e$ample, there is one section in the 5II. String8uartet5 which comes ack all the time. E&ery time it comes ack now, the modules are different than any time efore. )ut if I did it the first time, it would e less acceptale for your ear. As it ecomes saturated and saturated, you accept it more and more and more. You"re less idealistic. You are less willfull. You *ust let it happen. You hang loose, so to speak, artistically. You *ust let it happen without trying to e deterministic. So what I try and do is make it close to, maye not an art form, ut to a metaphor, what I would feel could e an art form in music. 6roust didn"t e&en know the su*ect of his last ook until the end of his life. I think you do know what you"re doing. I don"t e&en know to what e$tent Immanuel Lant was right when he talks aout intuiti&e i ntuiti&e knowledge. I don"t e&en know if I really elie&e in it. )ut you ha&e to know your instrument. You ha&e to know what happens in registration. You ha&e to know how to notate &ery difficult images. Isn"t that composition! None of my students think so. I"m going to gi&e up. >4aughter? +hey don"t think it"s music. +hey don"t think instruments are music, or notation is music, or registration is music. 1ow to get the notes is music. % uestion from the audience7 "5 would like to know why you keep saying to get the notes and not get the sounds.5 %)ecause they"re notes. >4aughter? +hey"&e got names. +hey"re pitches. +he magic is to make sounds out of pitches. r the magic is to ring ack pitches. +hey might e sounds. f course, I do that in my 8uartet. I"m going from pitches to sounds. Again it"s a retranslation.

 

% Same memer of the audience7 55ell, that"s why I felt the word note was a little it limited. +here"s more in your piece than *ust notes.5 %ell, notes is the slang term. No more 8uestions! % uestion y a memer of the audience7 5;ould I ask, please, what do you think of this carpet that drawing 9r. Himmermann did of your piece!5? It"s not a painting. +his is an analysis of the 8uartet where the information duplicates itself and comes ack in &ariation. %Same memer of the audience7 "5hat do you think aout it!5 % It"s *ust a duplication graphically of the kind of material that comes and goes in the piece. It"s an aspect of something called the 5new criticism5, like li ke counting commas. >4aughter? And I learned a lot. I like to see it. I think you"ll learn a lot. +he only prolem is that one might think that what comes ack is hierarchal material. hat usually comes ack is the material I wasn"t sure aout and wanted to hear again, ecause of the taste. Another &ery important attitude I ha&e when I work is that % and again this might not help you %I ask myself all the time7 what is material! hich is a &ery interesting thing. A student of mine came to study some place in Europe, and she mentioned to her teacher that Feldman always uses the word material, and the teacher said, 5e don"t use that term here.5 And I think that"s a &ery interesting thing. And that also in translation. And my confusion aout definitions, the difference etween material and an idea. +he young English oy that was talking aout his material in relation to his process! E&identely we wouldn"t agree on what material is. +here"s an a&ant garde aspect which has a &ery religious, St. +homas attitude aout the 5truth of material5. In that sense, I don"t feel that material has any 5truths5. It has our truths. e ring it in. If you write a random piece, if we write it, we like it. e call it 5material5. If we hear someone else"s random piece, we don"t like it. )ut that"s a &ery interesting thing. hat is material in a piece! +here are things in this piece that I ne&er would ha&e put in a shorter piece. +hat"s where the whole idea of material comes in. Just four notes, chromatic little groupings. Just something anal, to some degree. And when I first came across it % not that I know the difference etween one thing and another % and I said, 5hat am I doing7 what am I interested in!5 And I had a kind of curiosity as it started going. As to how it starte to mo&e. And that particular type of rhythm. And then with the orchestration. +here are really no fancy syncopated offeats to try to make it interesting. Just a change of its color. ;olor itself and registration created the rhythmic shaping. +he color was shaping out all kinds of designs and shapes. And as I"m watching it, and as I"m listening to it, I *ust let it i t go. 9any times the reason the passage is &ery long is ecause it"s not that I"m thinking aout its natural length. As if I ha&e some idea aout natural orders. I"m more or less like a scientist or someody looking at a slide, watching these microes *ust go in this field. And I mean, our music is not as complicated as what"s going on inside a termite. So that"s a &ery interesting idea, aout a termite. Now I"m trying to figure out why I was interested in it as an analogy to music. I"m really thinking aout it all the time, ti me, and I can"t get a handle on it. You know a termite. +he one that eats wood. So it"s &ery, &ery interesting. ho chews the wood! +he termite has no apparatus himself to chew the wood. )ut inside it there are millions ofaout thesesomething microes and chewing +here"s some analogy aout composition, elsethey"re doing the work. the Andwood. I like that idea.

 

f course, if you want to go ahead and make images, that"s another prolem. I don"t go ahead and ha&e images. +akemitsu once &isited me, and he was showing me his sketchook. 1e said that the Japanese are emedded in nature images7 that it"s so much a part of their culture that they can"t think otherwise. +hat"s why, you know, he has all those titles, 5+he ater5, and 5Sea5, and that. So he shows me a &ery nice drawing and it has a unch of irds, and in the middle there"s a lackird. And I said, 5+ore, what"s the lackird!5 1e said, 5h5, he said# 5+hat"s "" sharp.5 >4aughter? I don"t mean those kinds of images. ne last 8uestion. % 9emer of the audience7 5I don"t 8uite understand why you always a&oid the term &ariation. You said in the eginning, "I hate the term &ariation.5" %I don"t hate the term. I don"t use it. I"m not &arying anything. I don"t feel I"m &arying anything. I"m seeing it in another language. It"s another focus. It"s not like I"m taking a tune and &arying it. It"s not that I"m doing that >hums a tune with a &ariation?. )y the way, if I go for that as &ariation, then eern"s Second 9o&ement 9o&ement of 5pus 25 &ariation, how he got the 6aganini thing to sound ackwards like :achmaninoff. >4aughter? No, I"m not in&ol&ed with &ariation. f course, it"s &ariation7 I"m doing it one way, and then I"m doing it another way, with a different kind of focus. And I"m not iin&ol&ed n&ol&ed with how I understand &ariation. +o me, &ariation is )eetho&en and SchKnerg. I"m not doing it that way. h, I did get distracted earlier when I said at the eginning of my talk that I"m working with two aspects which I feel are characteristic of the (th century. ne is change, &ariation. I prefer the word change. +he other is reiteration, repetition. I prefer the word reiteration. So I"m in&ol&ed with oth. I don"t make a synthesis, ut they"re going on at the same time. +he change then ecoming that which then ecomes the reiteration, and the reiteration is changing. So you ha&e these oth things going on all at the same time. And it"s not a calculated dialectic ecause I ha&e to watch when it happens. 9y music is handmade. so I"m like a tailor. I make my uttonholes y hand. +he suit fits etter. ne of the most interesting things that I"&e heard recently, speaking of high%tech. I was in&ited y one of the largest l argest companies in the world that make farm e8uipment, called the John Beere ;ompany. And I was in&ited out to the 9idwest to talk to their research department. +hey ecause feel thathe theproduces. engineers to hear howI an artist thinks7 thein&ite leapsartists he makes, thethey conclusions Sowould I waswant in&ited i n&ited out, and walk into this room, and there were '( people there. 9any of them were e$professors, chemists, engineers, making &ery ig salaries, &ery nice looking people. E&eryone had a tie, e&eryone &ery interested. 4ater, they took me around, and they would ha&e a computer on an a$le >mo&es his hands?. And there"s a computer, and there"s a lackoard, and e&erything is geared for a ten%year cycle. +hey feel it should work ten years. And they want it to e pretty good for ten years. You would see a tractor going through a kind of simulated field. Just ack and forth. And it goes on and on, this cycle. So I said to one of the gentlemen, 51ow much do you know!5 And he says, 5e egin with O' percent. +hink of it, O' percent +hat"s what they know. +he other 2' percent is where the millions of dollars in research go to. So I *ust want to tell my young colleagues that John Beere ;ompany only knows O' percent. Bo I ha&e to say it! >4aughter? I"ll gi&e you four percent +hank you. >Applause?

E"'LO#  

 

0ON;ERSAT'ON $ETWEEN MORTON FELDMAN AND WALTER Z'MMERMANN    #our pieces seem to me very enigmatic in a certain sense. !f one tries to find out, he won't find out. #our really don't know how -(*T(4 3E1$-A4 composes. 

ell, I don"t know how A4+E: HI99E:9ANN li&es and spends his time, and you don"t look to me like an enigmatic young man. ell, when I first started to work, that was my fault. Now it"s ecoming my &irtue. As a man gets older, his sins ecome charming. ne cannot help ut notice in the course of writing a piece that some underlying principle seems to e there. Now, the 8uestion is to what degree you want to emrace this underlying principle. And also e&ery piece has a different degree. Sometimes you meet it halfway. Sometimes you *ust shake its hand and it lea&es. Sometimes you decide not e&en to use iit, t, though the suggestion ho&ers o&er the piece. hy don"t you do this! It"s crying out for this. And it"s not done. And it is almost as if it"s in. nly ecause of its impact... So I"m aware of these things. )ut all this in a sense is really not a compositional prolem prolem.. I think I can make my pieces the way I do. And recently in the past si$ years. I"&e een writing &ery long pieces... only ecause of my concentration. 9y pieces are to some degree a performance. I"m highly concentrated when I work. In fact I found ways to arri&e at concentration. ne of the most important ways is that I write in ink. So if I egin to work and I see that I am crossing out ime, I reali-e in a sense that I thought I was concentrated, ut in fact I wasn"t concentrated. So the writing in ink is an inner parameter to how concentrated I really am. And then I go ahead and write the piece, again using the ink as a parameter. And if I see that I"m crossing out, I *ust lea&e the piece and go to it at another time. So to me that concentration is more important than someone else"s pitch organi-ation or whate&er conceptual attitude they ha&e aout the piece. +hat"s a &ery underlying all important approach.  ! see in your pieces that every chord which follows tries to establish a completely different world from the former one. 

Yes. Actually now I *ust try to repeat the same chord. I"m reiterating the same chord in in&ersions. I en*oy that &ery much, to keep the in&ersions ali&e in a sense where e&erything e&erything changes and nothing changes. Actually efore I wanted my chords in a sense to e &ery different from the ne$t, as if almost to erase in one"s memory what happened efore. +hat"s the way I would keep the time suspended... y erasing the references and where they came from. You were &ery fresh into the moment, and you didn"t relate it. And now I"m doing the same thing with this relation. And I find it also &ery mysterious. )ut let me play you a series of chords, which is e$actly the same chord. Now, I"m not impro&ising the time. +he time is actually there. I"m playing e$actly what happens. 53eldman goes over to the piano and plays softly some chords.6 

I think there are three things working with me7 my ears, my mind and my fingers. I don"t think that it"s *ust ear. +hat would mean that I"m *ust impro&ising, and I"m writing down what I like, or I"m writing down what I don"t like. )ut I think those three parameters are always at work. Not that I write e&erything at the piano. ell, one of the reasons I work at the piano is ecause it slows me down and you can hear the time element much more, the acoustical reality. You cannot hear these time inter&als, i nter&als, especially if you work with larger forces like orchestras. You can"ta hear time etween. Just sitting downofattime. a tale, ecomes too fancy. You de&elop kind the of system, asymmetrical relations You itget into something that has

 

really nothing to do with acoustical reality. And I"m &ery into acoustical reality. For me there is no such thing as a compositional reality.  And exactly that's what distinguishes you from the European approach to making music. #ou once said, 73or centuries we have been victimied by European dviliation.7 So ! see this working together with %age and Wolff in the fifties as one step out of the victimiation. 

Yes, I think one of the interesting things in a sense where ;hristian olff and Earle )rown and John ;age and myself met, I think we might ha&e met in some kind of common field was one week. )ut the week was important... was that we egan to listen, we egan to listen. . . for the first time. Ja-- musicians they work within changes. +hey listen for the kind of change that might go into a more inno&ati&e change, you know. )ut they"re working in the confines of gi&en situations e&en when rnette ;oleman took the piano out, so it wouldn"t influence the harmonic thinking of the trip. )ut my argument with past music is. I noticed how... say with eat... e&en if you want to say, say twenty%fi&e years ago, 54et"s get rid of the eat5, you only got rid of the eat y pul&eri-ing it, which means... that you were finding ways to get rid of the eat... which means... that you were working with the eat, you see. And I felt the thing aout the eat was to ignore it. And that"s why alot of my early music at the time didn"t look to interesting to alot of people, American and European.  8ut now you've regained a kind of a pulse through the experience of listening over the years. 

Yes. ne of the prolems aout my chance music is i s that essentially it was too conceptual.  !t's like one of the paintings hanging on the wall here, like *auschenber *auschenberg g and those. 

Yes, well, they were my friends. +hey were my friends. )ut not only that. +here"s something aout a concept that is hard to reak into. So you ha&e an image. And then you lea&e it alone. ne of the ig prolems in my work was that, you know, as e&erything started to go into motion, I always felt that the performers in a sense were sensiti&e as to how to play the sounds, ut they were not listening. And they were not sensiti&e to the pauses I gi&e. So, the reason my music is notated is I wanted to keep control of the silence, you see. Actually, when you hear it, you ha&e no idea rhythmically how complicated that is on paper. It"s floating. n paper it looks as though it were rhythm. It"s not. It"s duration.  #ou )ust mentioned that there was one week, twenty years ago, where %age, Wolff 8rown and you shared some experience together. And Wolff mentioned too that you have like attachments to this time, and you look back onto it as a 79arden of Eden7. 

Yes. . . You see, the difference etween America and Europe in the relation to the /arden of Eden could e est e$plained y oltaire. 4et"s say oltaire is Europe. You can"t e more Europe than oltaire. And let"s take a ook like ;andide. In ;andide there were three gardens. Each one, the first two were &ery sulime. In the first he disco&ered making lo&e to someody else"s wife. And he"s thrown out of that garden, down the steps. Ne$t we find him in Eldorado, also the /arden of Eden. And he finally has to lea&e there. And in the end he"s in a little garden outside of ;onstantinople with a lot of *unk. You see! >laughing? +he Europeans change, ecause they"re thrown out of Eden. 6lagues come, uphea&als come, cultures come, and they ha&e to get out, from tonality, from atonality. ell, Americans in a sense 4ea&e the /arden of Eden. I"m a little too esoteric perhaps in my thinking, ut I think that Americans ha&e the aility to get out while the getting is good.  There's first more space. 

 

+here"s cultural space. +here"s artistic space.  And also not this feeling of being embedded in a culture. 

I don"t know to what degree we dont"t ha&e a culture.  ! didn't say that. 

No. ell, for e$ample... we found eautiful sustitutes for culture. For e$ample, it would e &ery interesting if you would look into nineteenth century painting. So we had no culture. No matter how good you were, you were an amateur.  8ut exactly that's the advantage. 

No, ut it wasn"t an ad&antage. It wasn"t an ad&antage in American painting in the late nineteenth century. 4et me tell you a little it aout it. )ecause it"s a field in a sense that most Europeans don"t know, American painting in the nineteenth century and what happened, especially earlier. So no matter how good you were, you were an amateur. So, eing that we were still part of England, the young American, English American would go o&er and study in 4ondon. And all he was doing here was he was painting portraits. And he goes to 4ondon and he sees.. . ell, it"s like me going to Europe for the first time. I"m painting portraits, and I see that there"s not enough information, that the portrait in England is out in the garden, that you ha&e to handle nature and the sitter or family, you see. And what happened to most of the early American painters is that they started not only to ha&e more information, ut they had to deal with significant material. So they started to paint great things. +hey were told y important English painters that you must look for things outside yourself. therwise you *ust repeat yourself. And then toward the middle of the nineteenth century they still didn"t ha&e a history. And they disco&ered something else. +hey disco&ered something in a sense that Europe really didn"t disco&er. +hey disco&ered landscape painting. So nineteenth century American painting is where landscape painting ecame a su*ect. Now I"m not *ust talking aout a field and a cow. I"m talking aout a whole landscape ecame a kind of philosophical and aesthetic prerogati&e. +hey disco&ered what someone called a kind of pantheistic idealism, where nature ecame the ideal, not as a su*ect for art. )ut it ecame. perhaps not as great as a ;ouret, ut philosophically it ecame a little more interesting. ell it was still a work of art, ut it was little more. It started to get in&ol&ed with the metaphysical aspect of nature. Now this metaphysical aspect of nature, I think egan to effect the literature %1awthorne, 9el&ille % that"s all strange stuff in relation to nature. And I think it had a lot to do with the music in the fifties. +hat is that pantheistic idealism. If you sustitute sounds for nature, and try to arri&e at some philosophical truth aout it. )ut ;age and myself are more lucky than the nineteenth century painters, ecause we know as much as the European, and we"re *ust as smart as the European. . . e are on e8ual footing, you see. And that"s why the work, you see, has a terrific sur&i&al element. +here"s no 8uestion aout it. If we wrote this music like I&es did, I think in a sense we wouldn"t e ale to sur&i&e. e would take too much. It would e too literary. ne of my prolems aout I&es is that the work is *ust too literary. It"s like an o*ecti&e 9ahler. You know, where 9ahler was su*ecti&e, and yet it"s literary. )ut e&en that o*ecti&ity has to do with the fact that a self surrenders into this kind of phanteistic idealism.  #a, because it was never important for !ves to write )ust music. !t 7was only important to transport thought through his musc. 

:ight. )ut unfortunately me it is was really not musical think where ;age and myself differ from I&es infor a sense we"re writing 9usic. thought.I In fact, one of the most interesting things is perhaps at the time we were the only ones writing music.

 

 8ecause you didn't use anything which was transported by historical. . . 

ell, that"s right. e weren"t fed in. . . ell, let"s l et"s say ;age"s relation to Buchamp is completely misunderstood. misunderstood. So they"re the other side of the coin. I mentioned it to ;age, I mean *ust in con&ersation. And he didn"t say anything. 1e *ust listened. +hey"re the opposites. For e$ample, the interest of Buchamp for so many young people is that he took the e$perience out of the eye, out of the retina, and he made a concept. ;age took it out of the past conceptual nonhearing aspect, formal aspect of putting music, and he put it directly to the ear. So that"s asolutely the difference, you see! For all I know the greatest musical Buchamp was )eetho&en.  And it's true with !ves. 2e's transporting thought within historically and musically accepted structures. 

ell, that was the historical period. 4et"s not hit him o&er the head ecause he was orn in that time. I mean he was *ust an outstanding person. person. )ut to what degree would he ha&e e$isted without his literary references . . . is &ery difficult to ascertain.  8ut he at least stimulated, and ! think he is still stimulating the practice of living where you are and finding there universals, even if you're in the midst of a cultural desert. And that's a typical advantage in America for doing art.  Well, you're certainly more successful than 2auer, you know, the iennese twelvetone architect. 8ut there is this difference ! think in  America the references references are more hidd hidden. en.  Another thing that ! like, or )ust what ! see here in American individuals is the aspect of being a *ousseautype, living in a *ousseau like situation. 

I think that"s a mistake. e"re not primiti&es.  ! don't know if that's the only thing which characteries *ousseau. *ousseau. 

I think :ousseau is a &ery dangerous, &ery dangerous... dangerous... ah... +here"s only one :ousseau.  And then there is another one, Thoreau, who is more and more refered to now. 

ell ;age is...  8ut ! see your music as a kind of living on your own, and that goes along with Thoreau. 

I think one of the things has to do with identity. Either I ha&e no identity as a composer, which makes me do what I do, or I ha&e so much identity that I could open up and not worry aout my identity. And I think the latter is true. I feel that I ha&e a lot of identity as a person. And so I don"t ask myself, 5Is this music!5 For years I didn"t e&en ask myself, 5Ah, how could I e a composer and not li&ing a professional life!5 )ut the Americans I know, e&en of other generations, ne&er thought of composition as a profession. Yesterday"s amateurs ecome today"s professionals. Yesterday"s Yesterday"s professionals ecome today"s amateurs. )ut I always felt that the European needed that identity in order to sur&i&e. And conse8uently they had to pay triute to historical processes. processes. And of course this attitude also produces &ery funny and at the same time &ery tragic attitudes. 4ike ;arl :uggles. 1e *ust didn"t write enough music. 1e painted water colors for forty years, you see.

 

)ut what I asked you earlier, when you came into the house, aout why is ;age and myself and olff in this whole series of con&ersations that you will e ha&ing. 9ost of the people you mentioned to me ha&e completely different interests. here do you see the tie%up!  3irst of all, ! don't care if you are from a different generation. !t's )ust that your music is still interesting. And all these people !'m going to visit demonstrate in their work being real  American composers composers insofar that they are as inde independent pendent of European Europeanlike like historical thinking as Americanlike commercial thinking. And because of the present situation these musicians are challenged to think again about basic forms of music making. And that's what ! want to find out. (n the other hand, !'m presenting you at the very beginning because ! would like to have a 7summing up of an experienced man .

1a, 5a summing up of an e$perienced man5... +hat sounds like the title for the summing up of an e$perienced man. ell, who am I supposed to sum up!  Well, if you especially compare the early fifties where you were together with %age and so on, how the music developed and how you see the situation now. And how do you think the music will grow in the future" 

I feel that the lesson that ;age and myself at least. . . well, let"s not e&en speak for ;age. 1ow could I speak for ;age!. . . I would feel that whate&er implications in my own music is, I was telling other composers that they could e asolutely themsel&es. And I feel in a sense that this message I was gi&ing them in a sense has failed.  2ow come" 

ell, I feel a failure ecause. . . ne of my complaints aout the younger generation... is that for me at least sound was the hero, and it still is. I feel that I"m suser&ient. I feel that I listen to my sounds, and I do what they tell me, not what I tell them. )ecause I owe my hfi to these sounds. :ight! +hey ga&e me a life. And my feeling is in a sense is the young people... instead of thinking of sound as a hero, of e$perience as the hero, you get to think that they"re the heros. And I find a little it too much drawing attention to themsel&es . . . in their work, drawing attention to their ideas, whether they"re anti%society, or whether it"s political. In other words, I wanted to gi&e them the freedom to e esoteric. )ut e&idently it"s not considered a &irtue. Now, I"m not asolutely clear. And one of the reasons I"m not clear is ecause I"m not mentioning any names. I will not mention names. In a sense this is not really a criticism. It"s the way things are. And they"re all fine men and women. I feel that the whole idea was a little too hot to handle, and that one of its manifestations was7 if sounds are free, then people are free. And if sounds and people together... you know ring around the sound with society, hand in hand.  This concept of art in fact doesn't work any more. Today it's more urgent to think about the  people who should should be free than the people w who ho are free. 

+o take a militant attitude towards society means that you"re in&ol&ed with that aspect of society. You"re not in&ol&ed with life. +o take a militant action in relation to life, that"s more mysterious. +hat needs thought. +o me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to e a metaphor, that they could e as free as a human eing might e free. +hat was my idea aout sound. It still is, that they should reathe. . . not to e used for the &ested interest of an idea. I feel that music should ha&e no &ested interests, that you shouldn"t know how it"s made, that you shouldn"t know if there"s a system, that you shouldn"t know anything aout . e$cept life. . .it. if .you"re intothat it. it"s some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your

 

I don"t know what a composer is. I ne&er knew as a young man, I don"t know now, and I"m gonna e fifty ne$t month, in two months. And I think that whole usiness of control is &ery important. ne wants to e in control of society, one wants to e in control of art. ne wants to e in control, control, control. Now,  *ust ecause the control is for something that"s on on the good side, it"s still control. control. . . . See, when you get into society, you see the ig dilemma in society I think was e$pressed eautifully y ;amus, where he says that one man, when he desires freedom, will e at the e$pense of others. In other words, one man ' freedom makes someone else a &ictim. You understand! And I%feel the same way in music, that if you"re idealistic, and you insist that music e a certain way, then it"s at the e$pense of the music. If you use the music for means, then it ecomes a polemical thing.  And do you think that any kind of social reality could make this understanding of what music  has to be livable" 

+o understand what music has to e, you ha&e to li&e for music. ho"s ready to do that!  8esides devoting yourself to the music to make it to a pure space in the world, you'll have to reach this point where you can afford it. 

)ut you ha&e to make the distinction etween social realities and social an$ieties. I mean, we could always e socially an$ious. I mean if you think New York is ad, you should go to ;alcutta I feel that music should e left alone and not e used as a tool for peoples" ideas. . . to make propaganda, to make masterpieces, to force it to li&e in skyscrapers, to force it to li&e in mud huts. )ut a person should ha&e a rapport with the sound world around him. And actually, I am manipulated. I hate manipulation. E&ery time I try to manipulate my work, for what I think is a terrific idea, the work drops dead. After working so many years, I"m not e&en allowed to manipulate. I know in a minute I"d hear my music screaming EL"@

In that sense I ha&e a &ery philosophical sense for my work.  2ow does it influence the thinking of the younger generation" 

I don"t think it influences it at all. . . I think new music now again is used to draw attention to themsel&es or their ideas. Sound perhaps is dead. 9aye sound was *ust the fifties and the si$ties. 9aye sound *ust dropped dead, or will drop dead with me, or will drop dead with ;age. Anyway, it was a mar&elous period as long as it lasted. For the first time in history sound was free. )ut, like most people, they don"t want freedom. +hey don"t know how to handle it. ith ;age freedom ecame license, so they could act like idiots. ith me, my freedom was misinterpreted misinterpreted as taste, as an elitist approach. . . hat I want to say is I feel &ery isolated from e&eryody e&eryody you are going to inter&iew. I don"t feel any connection at all. And to e connected with them, as if you would ring me a photograph of someone, and say, 5Bolike you recogni-e it!ut I mean i t"smy it"s your daughter.5 ... some And I of would 5"ell, it almost looks my daughter, it"s not daughter.5 And themsay, work '

 

closely together, you know. I think, there is nothing wrong there. +here is a kind of sociological need, a phenonemon.  -aybe you have the most patience of all of them. 

Also a lot of them are &ery amitious. Now, if the time says e&eryody e&eryody lo&es each other, e&eryody"s e&eryody "s good to each other, e&eryody has to help each other. I find that as true. At the same time INoody find thatlo&ed an aspect of careerism at its height. hen I was noody liked each other. each other. And careers *ust happened. E&enyoung, to Stockhausen, it *ust happened. erste! 1e was a young man with fantastic energy, with fantastic intellectual curiosity. 1e wasn"t arrogant. 1e didn"t think of himself as a hero. I think he"ll wind up a hero. You don"t egin as a hero... I think that"s essentially the difference. . . that e&eryody e&eryody waited.  And so you're the peifect example of one who is true to himself over the years then. 8ut you see, time changes. 

4isten +his is a ig prolem. &iously things change. See, I li&ed with the thought that my whole life might e a mistake. )ut if someone who is writing a piece for Attica, I don"t think that their life is a mistake. I feel that the young people, and this is also related to the whole sociological change, the young people *ust don"t want to compete. +hat"s a ig mistake amongst young people now anyway.  8ecause they have seen where competition leads. 

Not that much in a sense, that I was competing or that I am competing. )ut when you recogni-e &ery strong &oices around you. You are on another consciousness le&el. I had to ring myself into a certain creati&e pressure, and concentration. )ut what I do is what I mean, not *ust some idea that is gonna knock off in the afternoon. +he word competition is not right. )ut I was perhaps one of the last sur&i&ors in a kind of art arena. And I think the young people are not in an arena... You see it comes from within. +hey think aout society ecause they are directed y society And they get their cues from society. And when society says, 5"ell, that needs changing5 they cannot e oli&ious to this change. I think the ig prolem in a sense is that they"&e een &ictimi-ed and manipulated y society. And their whole thinking in a sense apes, reflects society in terms of what they want to manipulate. So they are not competing with art. +hey are competing with society. And the &alues of society. :ememer, society changes. changes. +o compete with art is like competing with life. It"s too much of a force. +he dynamic is too powerful.