Morton Feldman: Patterns in a chromatic field
90-minute-piece for cello & piano, 1982
with Ji-Youn Song (piano)
“I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free, (…) that they should breathe, (…) that you shouldn’t know how it’s made, that you shouldn’t know if there’s a system, that you shouldn’t know anything about it.
I am interested in getting Time into its unstructured existence. I am interested in how Time exists before we put our paws on it – our minds, our imaginations, into it. (…) This was not how to make an object, not how this object exists by way of Time, in Time or about Time, but how this object exists as Time. Time regained. Time as an Image.
I prefer to think my work as: between categories: between Time and Space. Between painting and music. Between the music’s construction, and its surface.
Take an object.
Do something to it.
Do something else to it
Do something else to it.
The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others. The compositional concentration is solely on which pattern should be reiterated and for how long, and on the character of its inevitable change into something else. Repetitive chordal patterns might not progress from one to another, but might occur at irregular time intervals in order to diminish the close-knit aspect of patterning; while the more evident rhythmic pat- terns might be mottled at certain junctures to obscure their periodicity. For me patterns are really self-contained sound-groupings that enable me to break off without preparation into something else.” (Morton Feldman)
Concert program #2:
Seiichi Inagaki (1928-2017) Dialog for Cello and Piano (1978)
Yannis Xenakis (1922-2001) Paille in the wind for Cello ans Piano (1992)
Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) Grand Duet for Cello and Piano (1959)
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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) Sarabande for cello solo from Suite Nr.3
Jan van de Putte (*1959) Aanraken (2021)
Henry Cowell (1897–1965) Aeolian Harp (1923)