Writings about the music of American composer Morton Feldman (1926-1987)
(This text was written to accompany Mode Records CD 327 John Cage: The works for piano 11) In June of 1980, Aki Takahashi was preparing to leave Buffalo, New York. Morton Feldman, knowing her reputation as a pianist specializing in new music, had invited her to be an artist in residence at the university where […]
Cage, Satie, Feldman, Takahashi Read More »
I spent a recent Saturday morning chatting with Laura Kuhn of the John Cage Trust, a conversation now available online in the latest episode of her program “All Things Cage” for WGXC.
Memories and Imitations Read More »
I’ve just posted the essay I wrote to accompany Aki Takahashi’s beautiful recording of Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus.
Notes on For Bunita Marcus Read More »
Notes for the Mode Records release of Morton Feldman’s “For Bunita Marcus”, performed by Aki Takahashi
Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus Read More »
Triadic memories, like all late Feldman, is a series of repeated patterns, musical images that are extended in time by repetition. In some pieces these repetitions are of larger chunks of music, with a system, set of systems, or even pages of music reappearing, often with permutations. I’ve always thought of these larger-scale repetitions in terms of the whole pattern: pitch and rhythm together. Playing through Triadic memories, I’ve become aware of them rhythmically, repeating even as the pitches are moved around.
Triadic memory 4: Rhythms and structures Read More »
An ongoing, sporadic series examining aspects of Morton Feldman’s Triadic memories for piano. The series has no overarching structure, but instead takes up individual moments, images, and questions about the piece and follows them where they lead. Triadic memory #1: Hand-made music Triadic memory #2: A question about rhythm Triadic memory #3: A figure in memory
There is a figure that appears about a third of the way into Triadic memories. It catches my attention, wakes me up: it is a signal that something is changing. Where are we going now? And haven’t I heard this before somewhere?
Triadic memory #3: A figure in memory Read More »
On the Cage/Feldman Radio Happenings This is a series of posts about the Radio Happenings shows of 1966–1967, over four hours of conversations between John Cage and Morton Feldman broadcast on WBAI in New York. It covers the history of these shows, including the story of how I rediscovered them twenty years after their initial broadcast. 1. The Happenings
On the Cage/Feldman “Radio Happenings” Read More »
For me, there is a more personal history of the Radio Happenings: the story of how they came to light and were preserved. It all happened because of procrastination and the pre-Internet digital social world of Bulletin Board Services in New York City. It was a rare musicological adventure.
How I happened upon the Happenings Read More »
In this installment of my series on the Cage-Feldman “Radio happenings”, I describe where Cage and Feldman were in their lives at the time of the recordings, and present highlights of their conversations.
What happened at the Happenings Read More »
