Almost Too Beautiful (2003)

I'm always fascinated by the response of everyday people to music like this. I'm a former professional musician — my degree was in viola performance, and I freelanced for a number of years before I decided paying the rent was important — and my perspective on contemporary music has changed since I ceased actively performing. I think the largest change is that I've become less concerned with <i>interesting</i> music, and more concerned with beauty; in this, I think I've become more like a regular audience member, who is less concerned with novelty and innovation and more concerned with whether listening to the piece is an enjoyable experience.<p>I think Feldman straddles that boundary with remarkable balance. I haven't listened to his second quartet, but I've listened with intensity to his first (only an 1/½ hour work), and it's effective on both levels. It is non-traditional in its organization and its sonorities, but it has a straightforward structure that is simple enough for a lay listener to at least partly grasp in a single hearing, allowing them to appreciate it as an object of beauty. At the same time, its form and content are original enough to pique a more demanding student's interest. From the OP's description, it sounds like the second quartet is similar.<p>Feldman strikes me as a composer who has partly avoided and partly succumbed to the trap — all too common, as I see it — of deciding that the state of constant revolution that music has been in since about 1885 means that they can do anything they please and write music according to their own inscrutable (and often mechanical) system, shattering so many expectations so their music defies evaluation and nobody can tell them it isn't good. (The stories I could tell about some "composers" and their methods…) I blame the vast difference between the expectations of academia, which is the main supporter of contemporary composers, and those of the general audience.

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was convinced that he was a major 20th century composer. That point of view put him in the minority. Now, 26 years after his untimely death, people are starting to agree. Classical music-lovers, numb from all of the brutal, post-war contemporary music, are intrigued by this unusually intuitive composer and his tender, obsessive music.<p>Feldman's "late" works are the most remarkable. Often spanning hours in length, he transformed the concert into a ritual. "Is music an art form?" he liked to ask. In other words, is music more than just entertainment? His answer was clearly: "Yes".<p>Feldman's works are not just listened to, they are experienced. They are a mixture of music, performance art, and philosophy. Unlike John Cage, his close friend and mentor, Feldman was not interested in Zen philosophy. But listening to Feldman’s music leads to a heightened state of mind, a kind of musical enlightenment.<p>I just recorded two of Feldman's greatest works for solo piano: "Palais de Mari" (1986, 23') and "For Bunita Marcus" (1985, 67'). 15 minutes ago, I would've put the probability of seeing an article about Feldman on Hacker News at zero. Bravo.<p>Feldman's "Rothko Chapel" is a great way to get into his music (written following the suicide of painter Mark Rothko).<p>Here is part one:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxSt_w2ODaQ" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxSt_w2ODaQ</a><p>The story of the Rothko Chapel is well worth reading if you like abstract expressionist artwork (de Kooning, Rothko, Kline, Pollock, etc).<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothko_Chapel" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothko_Chapel</a><p>Also, I recommend listening to the conversations between John Cage and Morton Feldman:<p><a href="http://archive.org/details/CageFeldmanConversation1" rel="nofollow">http://archive.org/details/CageFeldmanConversation1</a><p>They talk, drink, smoke in the radio studio. It's all very 1960's but the insight into the lives of great composers is priceless.

This is nicely worded, near the end of the review:<p><i>But by that final two hours I was, however, not exactly caught up in the music, but surrounded by it, subdued by it, quelled.</i><p>There are bound to be things that a piece of music can do to you, with you, if it has 6 hours to become part of your mental landscape... to wait out your normal attempts to "listen" consciously and make sense of it.<p>I've never been to a similar concert, but it makes me think about long car voyages I've taken with (accidentally) only one CD in the car. Some albums turn to crap after a few hours. Others keep getting better, or more interesting, or a presence you are comfortable with even if it's not moving you anymore.<p>Interesting stuff to play with, though of course who has the time, normally...

"Intermittent silences grew longer, and finally one arrived that seemed endless, until we broke it with a fortissimo of applause."<p>I had a similar experience as a performer of Terry Riley's "In C" in 1978. As I finished the piece (everyone finishes at their own pace), I walked off stage and went around to the back of the auditorium, with the audience.<p>As the last performers left the stage, the only sound left was the repetitive octave C eighth notes on the piano that had started the piece 45 minutes earlier.<p>Then that too stopped, leaving us in total silence. It took a good 10-15 seconds for it to sink in that the piece was over, then the audience erupted in great applause.

Kyle Gann (the author of this essay) has written some of the best English language essays on Morton Feldman.<p>There's another good essay by Alex Ross, music critic at the New Yorker:<p><a href="http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/06/morton_feldman_.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.therestisnoise.com/2006/06/morton_feldman_.html</a>

I never quite understood why music went this way. My take is that, as always, musicians had to have some kind of sponsorship, and it slowly shifted from musician being sponsored by noble family (for example Liszt and Esterhazy) to getting a stipend from some institutions board (for example Arnold Schoenberg who worked as a bank clerk and got his first stipend through intervention of friends). That is why nowadays you get much more quality from say jazz than you get from classically trained composers.

Here's a link to a clip of the music<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8e3qaF1ocU" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8e3qaF1ocU</a><p>Doesn't do much for me, but I'm no music afficianado.

I am impressed contemporary classical music has such a warm welcome here in a technological community.

Here's a thoroughly thought-provoking hour of Feldman in conversation with John Cage on radio, from 1966:<p><a href="http://archive.org/details/CageFeldman3" rel="nofollow">http://archive.org/details/CageFeldman3</a><p>I highly recommend listening to the entire series, of which this is part three.

Contemporary art tries to describe some kind of distorted reality. We live in really fucked up times, more fragmented and complex, better documented and infomercialed but at the same time less understood in it's entirety than ever before. Modern art tends to describe this condition rather then to appease or to gloss over it. But that is nothing where people in 300 years will look back as something beautiful ( try to listen to ancient greek music, you will know what i mean ), point.

Are you serious? This isn't a joke?

Link to the full piece:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amiNYqJQzQA" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amiNYqJQzQA</a>

Interesting analysis of another amazing Feldman work, "Piano and String Quartet", including a visualization of the "Turkish Rug" formalism: <a href="http://www.cnvill.net/mfsani2.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.cnvill.net/mfsani2.htm</a><p>Looks a bit like cellular automata. :)

There's a saying to describe such a performance and the people who do appreciate that kind of 'stuff': artsy fartsy.<p>I'm sure half of the pleasure is to then talk about how incredible, magnificent and transcendental it was to assist to such a performance. Must make one feel special in NYC.<p>I also do appreciate the humility in that title: <i>"Almost too beautiful"</i>. Sure, we mere mortals can't understand this, because it's too beautiful for us.<p>Several people have asked if this was a joke... By now I'm honestly beginning to think that HN has been trolled by a ring with sufficient accounts to upvote anything they want on the HN front page :-/