UB’s Feldman: One of a Musical Kind
Buffalo News Sunday,
October 4, 1987
By
YVAR MIKHASHOFF.
News
Contributing Writer
The recent death of distinguished composer Morton Feldman of the State University of Buffalo music faculty evoked this reminiscence from Yvar Mikhashoff, a fellow UB professor of music, prodigious pianist, and champion of new, and underappreciated old music.
I remember vividly my first meeting with Morton Feldman in the fall of 1973. It was in the offices of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts in Baird (now Allen) Hall on the Main Street campus of UB. My impression, which never changed through many years, was one of a man completely filled with a zest for life - a tall, bulky man who, so to speak, filled the space he occupied. That space was filled with an overwhelming devotion to music and the music world, a staggering knowledge and overview of that world, honed by an outspoken enthusiasm and a wild standup-comic type of humor.
Many years later, in London in 1985, I was reminded again of this first impression during a live interview, in which he answered probing musical questions with brilliant acuity, only to parry his own comments with an outrageously funny remark, in the style of Groucho Marx, bitingly funny but totally to the point.
Though an intense, thoughtful and very profound man in every way, his sense of the outrageous was in equal proportion. I recall a dinner party in Hartford, Conn., which had evolved into a probing discussion of the music of Mahler.
Finally, a very serious young Yale student asked "...but Mr. Feldman, what do you think of when you simply listen to Mahler?" He replied, "I never listen to Mahler, I just talk about him." Hilarious laughter, of course, led by Feldman himself. Even better than the jokes was watching him enjoy his own jokes – leaning back and laughing uproariously like some dark Santa Claus.
Equally wonderful was his sense of analogy and metaphor. Once he was teaching me how to play his work entitled PIANO (1977), approaching the task like a film or drama director teaching an actor. There was a passage that consisted of five quiet notes in succession, very slow, ranging upward from the bottom to the top of the piano, followed by a longish pause. When I told him that I was puzzled by this musical gesture, he said, "In those five notes is the entire 19th-century piano repertoire, then you wait for the 2Oth."
At another point he said of the music, very quiet and barely moving, that it was like a bug under a microscope -unmoving to the naked eye, it is in fact quivering with activity.
The seriousness of his approach to music was often combined with his irreverent wit even at his own expense.
Many years ago, in New York at Lincoln Center, while a piece of his was being done by the New York Philharmonic, he was sitting with the world-famous German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. At the conclusion of the Feldman performance, the conductor motioned for the composer to stand and acknowledge the applause.
Morty nudged Stockhausen to rise, which he did. Morty sat by, his uproarious laughter adding to the annoyance of the conductor, who was making subtle yet frantic gestures for the right man to stand up. Morty only laughed harder.
Leonard Bernstein was not amused.
Another time in New York, we listened to a colleague of ours play a work by a dear composer friend. When the performance, which was superb, concluded, everyone applauded enthusiastically, but Morty booed. We around him were stunned but he just laughed and said to me, “... of course I like the piece, but I wanted to make this a real event.”
Don't let the tone of these reminiscences mislead you. Any serious discussion of music with Morton Feldman, music of any style, any period, gave you an insight into one of the 2Oth century's most thoughtful and penetrating minds.
Those of us that knew him remember well those long pauses before he answered your question. Just when you thought he had no answer, or was distracted, he would give you a response that not only exactly replied to what you had asked, but also summed up the entire content of your discussion to that point and put your question in a new perspective. All this in a very few words, and often very funny as well, leaving you in a state of revelation and delight.
His music has a unique atmosphere, filled with those same long pauses, sometimes silent, sometimes filled with beautiful sounds - drifting, provocative, almost always quiet, and almost inquisitive, if that adjective can be used to describe music.
Morton Feldman was undoubtedly one of the most original composers of our century. He likened his compositions to paintings of a single color, in which the value is found in variation and texture. His friendship with the great American painters of the two New York Schools,(Pollock, Guston, de Kooning, Kline, Mitchell, Goldberg, Hartigan, and others) gave his music another dimension.
In my recent travels around the world there was never any question that Morton Feldman would be one of two or three names mentioned when I inquired of my musical hosts who were, in their opinion, the greatest living American composers.
One more story. A friend and I went to pick up Morty for the drive out to UB. As he stepped into the car, his first words were, "Gentlemen, have you ever had a legend in your car?" Before we could even react fully to this cryptic question, he burst into laughter and then revealed that the London press had recently publicized him as "the legendary Morton Feldman." This amused him, and very much pleased him.
Now that he is gone, we are all happy that during his lifetime he was able to revel in his success, and in his roles as a great musical innovator, as a man of phenomenal knowledge and talent, as a man of unforgettable wit and, altogether, a genuine original.
Goodbye, Morty. You are, and always were, a legend.
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September 2002
Music Library Staff musique@acsu.buffalo.edu http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/music/spcoll/feldman/aid/yvaronfeldman.html |
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