CDOTD 1/26/2023

 Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories (Mode) performed by Marilyn Noneken

Purchased through mail order?

Back to Feldman so soon?

I wanted something meditative, and Feldman is often a good choice in that respect. This work dates to 1981; the composer only lived until 1986, dying at age 61 from pancreatic cancer. I must assume his many years of heavy drinking and especially smoking didn't help; there's rarely a photo of him without a cigarette.

This is at a time when the works were getting longer and longer. At just over ninety minutes, this is short compared to some of works that followed. It also does not fit comfortably on the length of a single CD. There is a DVD-audio release of this performance too. There's a single date listed for recording. While unlikely, it's possible this is one long continuous take. 

I'm attracted to the clarity of what happens in the opening of this work in particular. It's a four note phrase, broken up between both hands, which irregularly repeats itself and shifts octaves. It eventually drifts off into other ideas and areas, but the opening is memorable if not predictable. 

When Feldman came into money (first from teaching, later by selling an all-black Rauschenberg painting for six figures, that he had bought from the artist for whatever money was in his pocket at the time), he collected Oriental rugs.

I think referring to rugs is one of the only places one currently still uses the word Oriental. My uncle was a dealer, and wrote several books on the topic. It's a bit like Sri Lanka still using the name Ceylon with respect to its tea, due to the respect that's given to that product. 

Feldman became interested in the irregular repetitions he saw in those rugs; patterns repeated, but not precisely. This work derives from that aesthetic. I made the comparison to a Calder mobile in a previous post, with shapes reorienting themselves to our eye as the components of the mobile slowly spin. 

I especially enjoy this work, but I'll admit that you could come in and out of listening to it and still have more or less the same effect. That's something my father said about listening to Satie's complete  Le Fils des Étoiles (at seventy minutes), that it was like "watching clouds" and you didn't lose the effect of the piece if you left the room and came back into it at any point. That would be an exaggeration with respect to Feldman's piece, but generally true.

Many of Feldman's titles are simple descriptions of the ensemble: Violin and Orchestra, Bass Clarinet and Percussion, String Quartet, Piano, Voices and Instruments.  Some are dedications: For John Cage, For Christian Wolff, For Frank O'Hara, de Kooning. In a few cases, the titles are more poetic: Patterns in a Chromatic Field, In Search of an Orchestration, Elemental Procedures, Why Patterns?, Crippled Symmetry. This title is my favorite among those. 

And what of the title? There's hardly anything that could be described as triadic in this piece. There's sometimes hints of tonality, but they are erased as soon as they occur. The majority of Feldman's music is to be played very quietly. This piece has a particularly reflective quality. Maybe it's as though triadic harmonies have been fractured through the imprecise lens of memory. 

Or, maybe I'm overanalyzing the title. That's a problem with academia sometimes. Not that this is in any way academic writing. 

I'll just drift off until next time...