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Morton Feldman: The Viola In My Life
Morton Feldman
Morton Feldman: The Viola In My Life
Genre: Classical
 
  •  Track Listings (5) - Disc #1

The music on this recording illustrates the essential integrity of the work of Morton Feldman and one of its fundamental strengths--its continuously unfolding unanimity of purpose. There are few composers of his generation...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Morton Feldman
Title: Morton Feldman: The Viola In My Life
Members Wishing: 5
Total Copies: 0
Label: New World Records
Original Release Date: 1/1/2006
Re-Release Date: 11/1/2006
Genre: Classical
Styles: Chamber Music, Historical Periods, Classical (c.1770-1830), Modern, 20th, & 21st Century, Instruments, Strings
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 093228065722

Synopsis

Product Description
The music on this recording illustrates the essential integrity of the work of Morton Feldman and one of its fundamental strengths--its continuously unfolding unanimity of purpose. There are few composers of his generation whose first and last published work (in Feldman's case Journey to the End of Night of 1949 and Piano and String Quartet of 1986) span youth and final years with such a concentrated viewpoint. There are, however, landmarks in the music of Feldman that are largely technical and notational. There are the graphic pieces, the first from 150 and the last from 1964, in which some parameter of composition is not specified (often pitch). Thee are the "free duration pieces," both solo and ensemble, in which there is instruction either for sections of the piece or for its entirety. False Relationships and the Extednded Ending (1968) is a late example of this kind, although Why Patterns? (1978) is a variant of the principle. Thee are also the conventionally notated works in his oeuvre, one of which is The Viola in My Life. It may be that Feldman's music will always strike a certain kind of listener as idiosyncratic--adenial of the time-honored ways in which music articulates itself. I think that Feldman was deeply offended by this response, by this notion that his music was singular because it was, as some might say, "missing something." Though it is true that his values of graduation can be exceedingly fine, when one enters this scale and comprehends it, something truly new and wonderful opens up in the art of music--a wold in which the relative and absolute become engaged with themselves. (This recording was orginally issued as CRI CD 620)
 

CD Reviews

First-rate Feldman, but then all of his work is...
Tom Furgas | Youngstown, OH United States | 04/23/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a fine CD reissue of an early LP that helped put Feldman on the map, and the original album is amply augmented with a recording of the 30-minute "Why Patterns?", featuring Feldman himself at the piano (along with flute and glockenspiel/vibes.) The other two works ("The Viola In My Life" and "False Relationships And The Extended Ending") are two of his better-known middle-period compositions. Both are for typically unusual chamber-music combinations.

Stockhausen once asked Feldman "What's your secret?" Feldman replied "Karl, I don't have a secret." Actually he did; he simply wrote down the notes he wanted to hear, and the results were always beautiful."