A quote from Morton Feldman, reprinted in Alex Ross’s excellent piece on the modernist composer:
My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, “What about the man on the street?” At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street. The crazy artist of my generation was crossing the street at that moment.
I came to Feldman’s music through his association with John Cage; several Cage concert series over the last few years have included Feldman’s work as well. But Ross’s write up of “Rothko Chapel” makes me wish I lived near a 24-hour classical music CD store so I could listen to it right now.
AMERICAN SUBLIME Morton Feldman’s mysterious musical landscapes. [newyorker.com]
Morton Feldman: “Rothko Chapel; Why Patterns?” on New Albion [amazon.com]