Straightening the Record: Morton Feldman's Return to Graph Music

Abstract

Abstract Morton Feldman composed his first works on graph paper in 1950–53, but he subsequently abandoned graph music, before taking it up again in 1958 at a time of rapidly increasing interest in musical indeterminacy and graphic notations in the United States and Europe. Feldman's return to graph music was a turning point in his career that would affect his subsequent output for almost a decade, but his principal surviving account of this change in his musical direction, which appeared in liner notes for an LP record, is misleading. This article presents a revised account that highlights a previously undocumented and atypical graph work that was used by John Cage to derive the graph now known as Ixion. In addition, it reveals links between Feldman's compositional ideas and those of Henry Cowell, explains how Robert Rauschenberg inadvertently affected the sound of Feldman's graph music for several years, and clarifies Feldman's response to problems he encountered in performances of his graph music.

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