Morton Feldman’s writings reveal his ambivalent conception of musical sound, which led him to mixed opinions of the meaning of composition. To Feldman, sounds are at once human bodily actions, the objects of those actions, and the ultimate results of action upon material. He therefore insists that the efforts of composers, performers, instruments, and listeners should not be discounted from any consideration of music. However, he frequently refers to musical components as though they were autonomous, tangible objects. Feldman believed that a sound should be appreciated for its own sake as an individual – like a completed painting from which the painter’s hand has retreated, having done all that it can. His conflicting notions of musical sound and time reflect the double-sided definition of “physicality,” which refers at once to human bodily action and to tangible material in general. Through almost literal representation of slips of ancient paper in his chamber work The Turfan Fragments, Feldman attempts to create music that exemplifies tangibility, while simultaneously illustrating that in music “tangibility” cannot be more than illusion. The Turfan Fragments also represents a somewhat extreme underscoring of the physical effort required in musical performance. The piece thereby brings to the forefront both aspects of physicality – materiality and action – which inform Feldman’s understanding of composition and sound.
A version of this paper was presented at the 2009 meeting of the College Music Society's Pacific Chapter.
Link to the paper here.
And to the musical examples and figures here.
