I like the ‘in media res’ reference – so Feldman’s work can be conceptualised as a non-narrative sort of ‘in media res’; however, one that remains ‘in media’!
Great!
Thanks,
R.A.B.

Feldman was apparently against the dialectical approach / form of the classic masters — thesis, antitthesis.. –and in favor of something not unlike Stockhausen’s Momentform, which I was going to bring up in my piece. Feldman’s stubborn insistence on his pieces not going anywhere, or at least not going anywhere we expect or want them to, can validate Virgil Thomson’s remark that some of Cage’s pieces were ” all middle. ”

Shakespeare’s plays always start in the middle of things ( in media res ), but they’re always intent on telling you something — and — going somewhere, Not a criticiism, but a description of two disparate ways of making art.

And by ahistorical I meant that Feldman apparently meant his pieces to be experienced as if nothing came before them — other composers, and the history attached to them — and nothing came after.

And yes Feldman doesn’t really work any way but live. I re-played the vinyl Rothko Chapel, which didn’t sound anything like whatI heard when I heard the SF Contemporary Music Players do it live in the big white rotunda of SF MOMA, in its old Van Ness digs. And met the charming composer after.

Having heard Graeme Jennings performing solo at Hertz Hall fairly recently, I’m sure that I too would very much have enjoyed this live duo concert.

As to Mr Baker’s postscript, while not what he is exactly looking for, violinist and conductor Paul Zukofsky’s letter to Morty at about the time of Feldman’s passing is — I believe — highly intriguing (for those who haven’t seen it before –Perhaps it can be read at the same time as one (re) reads Stockhausen’s Momentform essay):

http://www.musicalobservations.com/recordings/cp2_101.html

*

[Mr Zukofsky has paired, on CP2, a recent chamber recording of Feldman and Babbitt; if not Feldman and Stockhausen.]

I think one big reason is because of the nights simplicity- it was just one piece, and the audience had an idea of what they were going to get- and yet it became clear quite quickly that hearing this music live is the only true experience of it.

It’s the sort of multiplicity that is the foundation of Kramer’s book, The Time of Music; the idea that the music-temporal experience is always multiple, a beautiful paradoxical combination of continuity and discontinuity, directedness and non-directedness.

I must stop, but lastly, the use of the word ‘ahistorical’ is lovely! This of course is extremely rich in temporal implication! Can a present moment be without history? Is Feldman in fact (as the above comment says) “extremely historically aware and he is making an ironic statement on the futility of a prescribed form …”
I don’t know that I’m convinced of this … although he is certainly employing a ‘non-prescribed form.’

Nice post!

p.s. Does anyone know of any articles/writings that relate Feldman and Stockhausen?

I would contend that, viewing his work in this light, Feldman is actually extremely historically aware and he is making an ironic statement on the futility of a prescribed form that perhaps Mahler or Beethoven would have used.