Page 56 - BBC Music (January 2020)
P. 56
COMPOSER OF THE MONTH
FELDMAN Life&Times
monolithic visual art. Feldman was also
1926 interested in alternative types of musical
notation and created his own graphic
LIFE: Morton Feldman is born in scores. He experimented with grids as
Queens, New York to Irving and a form of depicting rhythms, as well as
Frances Breskin Feldman, both incorporating space for improvisatory
émigrés from Russia. His father runs work for the performer. Examples of these
a business making children’s clothes. include Intersection III (1953), a piano piece
TIMES: Representatives from the written as a ‘graph score’ and Projection
Soviet Union and Germany sign the IV for violin and piano (1951), which look
Treaty of Berlin, agreeing their nations a little bit like a bird’s eye view of a room’s
will remain neutral if either is attacked layout. As a note on the score explains:
by a third party in the next five years.
‘Duration is indicated by the amount of
space taken up by the square or rectangle’.
This dalliance with unorthodox rhythms
1941 1950 and melody had ended by the 1970s, when
precision becomes an enduring feature of
LIFE: After meeting composer John Feldman’s music.
LIFE: He begins Cage at a New York Philharmonic
lessons with
concert he moves into the same
Wallingford
building as him. Through Cage he
Riegger, a 12-tone meets various well-known artists, Two decades a!er
composer and
sculptors and composers.
champion of his death, Feldman’s
TIMES: The Soviet detonation of
Schoenberg.
Feldman an atomic bomb the previous year music continues to
prompts President Truman to order
disagrees with his teacher’s views and
the creation of a grow in stature
they spend their lessons arguing.
hydrogen bomb.
TIMES: In December, Japanese aircraft Albert Einstein warns
attack the Pearl Harbor naval base in
that nuclear war Feldman described the permissive
Hawaii, killing 2,400 Americans and
may bring mutual environment in which he worked in
prompting the US’s formal entry into the destruction. as ‘a frontier atmosphere in which an
Second World War. extraordinary laissez-faire prevailed.
1960 1972 Men worked and talked with the
recklessness of the Forty Niners, and a
LIFE: He becomes vote of confidence was given to all.’ It is
LIFE: Having experimented with the Slee Professor in no small part down to the collegiate
different types of notation, he begins
of Music at the State University of support of Cage and the New York School
writing Durations, a series of chamber New York at Buffalo where, despite
pieces, in which he specifies pitch and insisting that composition cannot be artists that Feldman felt able to compose
tempo but not note duration. in his highly distinctive, unparalleled
taught, he lectures in composition.
TIMES: At the 32nd Academy Awards, style. In 1987, Feldman became ill with
TIMES: At the Olympic Games in
the epic film Ben-Hur, starring the Munich, Black September terrorists a particularly aggressive form of cancer.
American actor Charlton Heston in He married Canadian composer Barbara
enter Israeli athletes’ apartments
the title role, wins a record-breaking Monk shortly before his death at 61, just a
and take hostages. Eleven people are
11 Oscars, including Best Picture. few months after his diagnosis.
killed during a failed rescue attempt.
Two decades on, Feldman’s music
1987 continues to grow in stature – with
performances recently given by the
LIFE: He marries Canadian composer American Composers Orchestra at New
Barbara Monk, three months before York’s Carnegie Hall, pianist Alexander
dying from cancer at home in Buffalo, Melnikov at London’s Wigmore Hall and
New York. He is buried in Beth Moses the Arditti String Quartet at (somewhat
Jewish Cemetery on Long Island. ironically) the Boulez Saal in Berlin. While
TIMES: The Simpsons family is the greater emphasis tends to be given
introduced to US TV viewers for to his colleague Cage, there is no doubt
the first time, as a series of short of Feldman’s place in the history of great
GETTY cartoons on The Tracey Ullman Show. American composers.
58 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
