The Marvelous Illusion: Morton Feldman'sThe Viola in My Life (1)

Abstract

Throughout his career Morton Feldman tried to locate sound at the moment we become conscious of its presence to us. His work vivifies our experience of sound as it is in the process of being transformed into ‘music’. Feldman constantly strove to identify his compositions with this process, both as a perceptual act and as a potential conceptualization in which order never seems to exist a priori. As I have shown in detail in my previous essays on Feldman, to understand his music requires careful attention to the way that he treats every aspect of his sonic material. Only detailed examination of pitch, interval, tone color, register, duration, and articulation—giving equal weight to each—can lead to an understanding of this unique body of work. In this essay I examine his compositional process as exhibited in The Viola in My Life (1), for chamber ensemble and solo viola.

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