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For Bunita Marcus
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| Morton Feldman (1926-1987) remains a legendary and key figure in modern American composition. A pioneer of aleatoric and indeterminate music, he was a master of minimal improvisation. Despite many thematic fluctuations in Feldman's compositional style throughout his career, a significant turning point took place in 1949, when he met John Cage, commencing an artistic association of crucial importance to music in America in the 1950s. Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence in his instincts, which resulted in totally intuitive compositions. He never worked with any systems that anyone has been able to identify, working from moment to moment, from one sound to the next. His friends during the 1950s in New York included the composers Earle Brown and Christian Wolff; painters Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg; and pianist David Tudor. As Feldman himself stated, "My past experience was not to 'meddle' with the material, but use my concentration as a guide to what might transpire. I mentioned this to Stockhausen once when he had asked me what my secret was. 'I don't push the sounds around.' Stockhausen mulled this over, and asked: 'Not even a little bit?'" The piano music on For Bunita Marcus slowly draws you towards silence by a process of atomization or repetition -- as do some of Beethoven's or Schubert's late compositions. You realize therefore how useless it is to try to act, to push his music against its own will. Playing or listening to Morton Feldman leads you to very unique moments, like those you feel when you look at a starry summer sky, unable to measure its dimensions because it is beyond your understanding. A sense of infinity within a finite space. This particular piece was written in 1985 and named after a composer and student of Feldman's. Performed by Stephane Ginsburgh on a Bösendorfer 225, and recorded in 2006. |
ARTISTS
Stephane Ginsburgh (Bosendorfer 225 Piano) |
TRACKS
For Bunita Marcus (1985) 71:12 |
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