# It Is Hard To Concentrate For 5-6 Hours On Feldman's SQ No.2?



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Feldman's monumental String Quartet No. 2 is in one unbroken movement.

I know of people who listen to parts of it for meditation and they are quite convinced of its meditation qualities.

It is also technically demanding for a SQ to play it owing to its length.

It is a most unusual SQ in the entire repertoire of chamber music.

Have you or do you think you would find to difficult to concentrate for over five hours? If not, then it would be good to read your thoughts on why/how.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

I won't waste 5 minutes listening to Feldman's work, let alone 5 hours.


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

I much prefer his other works, namely For Philip Guston and I have no problem giving it a full listen (I still have to swap the CDs of course).


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Just because something _can _be done doesn't mean it _should _be done.

There are beautiful passages here and there (which the YT comments helpfully point out), but arranging them in a piece of this length seems like deliberate obscurantism and churlishness. Is there a point to making it this long? If it's some sort of commentary on the passage of time or the need for meditation, it failed to draw me in sufficiently to deliver that point effectively.

As someone who went to grad school for philosophy, this reminds me of Derrida. It was the only course I ever required caffeine to get through, and I wish I hadn't taken it.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Haydn70 said:


> I won't waste 5 minutes listening to Feldman's work, let alone 5 hours.


I struggled beyond the first fifteen minutes. So I thought I would write a thread here to see if anyone else could master listening it and what they do to handle the entire duration, to share their experience.


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## Dorsetmike (Sep 26, 2018)

I didn't even get to one minute, I'm sorry but that to me is not music; my father would have described it as an unkid row, I would definitely agree
(unkid being a dialect word for alien or strange)


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

MatthewWeflen said:


> arranging them in a piece of this length seems like deliberate obscurantism and churlishness. Is there a point to making it this long?


There's a famous anecdote about a writer who turned in a 400-page manuscript to his publisher. "Sorry," he explained, "I didn't have time to make it shorter."


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I kinda like this work, but I don't feel I need to really concentrate on it fully or listen to 5 hours of it to get a very good idea of what it's about.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I kinda like this work, but I don't feel I need to really concentrate on it fully or listen to 5 hours of it to get a very good idea of what it's about.


How long do you recommend to listen to it to get what it's about? I agree, there is no need to listen to all 5-6 hours of it.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I felt the need to hear this! It's on spotify in 13 "movements" of about 20-25 minutes each. I can't listen to it all now, because I need to sleep, but don't think I'd have a problem listening to it all in one go. I couldn't do it on headphones so my wife would kick me out. I have only one cd of Feldman, "For Bunita Marcus", and I think I liked that better than this quartet. I seem to stay away from US composers...There, stopped it after 19.42. Now I'll hear some Dua Lipa


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I felt the need to hear this! It's on spotify in 13 "movements" of about 20-25 minutes each. I can't listen to it all now, because I need to sleep, but don't think I'd have a problem listening to it all in one go. I couldn't do it on headphones so my wife would kick me out. I have only one cd of Feldman, "For Bunita Marcus", and I think I liked that better than this quartet. I seem to stay away from US composers...There, stopped it after 19.42. Now I'll hear some Dua Lipa


Does it feel interrupted broken up like that? I have not tried it formally.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Feldman's long works are meant to be experienced in a live setting. Doing so you will have a sensory experience unlike any you've had before. It is precisely because leaving a live setting is less likely to occur than simply turning off a CD or streaming source, that the work can better be experienced as intended.


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

Feldman's done some great stuff. Have no idea what he was doing here. Only the musicians tasked with playing this piece can concentrate on it for 5 hours.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

I'm generally against using music for purposes of physical relaxation ... er, sleeping. But I might make an exception for this one work.

Meanwhile, I'm awaiting the release on vinyl. (I hope they can fit it onto one side of an LP. At a half an hour per side for a traditional LP, the 5 hour work will consume 10 discs, and that is a lot of getting up and flipping discs on the turntable, an action which defeats my very purpose for getting this work. But I insist on vinyl!)


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

ArtMusic said:


> I struggled beyond the first fifteen minutes. So I thought I would write a thread here to see if anyone else could master listening it ...


I went to the premiere and lasted about two hours. So, no, I couldn't. But some who were there could.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I must confess I've used it to fall asleep multiple times, but one day will be the day I listen to the full thing in all awareness. It has many wonderfull moments of sensuosness and some little intricate crevises.

For some, there is a before Feldman and an after Feldman era, like it happens with Monteverdi, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Webern and other landmarks in the past and future.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> I went to the premiere and lasted about two hours. So, no, I couldn't. But some who were there could.


Wow! You were at the premiere! It would have been interesting to observe other audiences to see how the reacted.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I have no interest in this work, pure and simple


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Like all of Feldman’s late work, I think it’s great. But I’d have to be in a live setting to listen to it all at once and to get the most out of it. I don’t see music live much and I rarely just sit and stare at a walk while listening to music. But I’d like more opportunities to hear works like these live. I think Feldman’s a genius. He’s much more accessible than his peers for the most part.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

ArtMusic said:


> How long do you recommend to listen to it to get what it's about? I agree, there is no need to listen to all 5-6 hours of it.


Probably different for different people. I left it on for a good 1/2 hour more than once, after which I started skipping and sampling randomly and it's more of the same. I'm can imagine him and Cage saying "No, it's different throughout, and different every time you hear it". But I'm more interested in the concept than specifics in this case.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Does it feel interrupted broken up like that? I have not tried it formally.


I think it ended with a small motiv being repeated into the next track. Didn't feel interrupted, but I'm used to interruptions in music when listening in my car.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I do not think this is a successful piece of music. 

I think it is supposed to be immersive. That’s to say, the listener is supposed to focus on barely perceptible changes as the music progresses, and in so doing lose a sense of time passing. However there are frequent major changes of melody, harmony, texture etc. It is very much a structured piece of music, with an articulation, a huge collage of distinct and contrasting moments. So I find that I am all too aware of time passing. 


There are quite a few examples of long form immersive music from the same period :

Dennis Johnson, November 
La Mont Young, Well Tuned Piano
Jean Claude Eloy, Gaku no Michi


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

I love all late (and perhaps all) Feldman and will happily seat for 5 1/2 hours listening to this piece. In my opinion, his most wonderful work from that period (probably his best too overall) is the almost five hour long, for Philip Guston. That surely was for me a very transformative and immersive work, the first time I listened to it I was in a very crappy mood and it changed my entire perspective.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I do not think this is a successful piece of music.
> 
> I think it is supposed to be immersive. That's to say, the listener is supposed to focus on barely perceptible changes as the music progresses, and in so doing lose a sense of time passing. However there are frequent major changes of melody, harmony, texture etc. It is very much a structured piece of music, with an articulation, a huge collage of distinct and contrasting moments. So I find that I am all too aware of time passing.
> 
> ...


I love Well Tuned Piano but I've always had a hard time with November. Can you give me any hint about that piece that might help me? Do you have a strongly positive reaction to it? If so, why do you think? 
How does someone like La Mont Young support himself all these years? It doesn't seem like he does much and he's against recording. He really sticks to his principles though. I found a podcast with the whole WTP.
As for Feldman, I guess I also like Philip Guston the best.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

milk said:


> I love Well Tuned Piano but I've always had a hard time with November. Can you give me any hint about that piece that might help me? Do you have a strongly positive reaction to it? If so, why do you think?
> How does someone like La Mont Young support himself all these years? It doesn't seem like he does much and he's against recording. He really sticks to his principles though. I found a podcast with the whole WTP.
> As for Feldman, I guess I also like Philip Guston the best.


November is more even, less eventful than WTP, and that's one reason I like it maybe more. Have you heard this?









La Mont Young may indeed have financial problems

https://www.artforum.com/news/mela-...e-la-monte-young-s-new-york-dream-house-83568

That being said I know someone here in London who wanted to put on concerts of WTP, so wrote to him to enquire about fees -- the fees he wanted were so outrageous, my friend said he thought that he was doing it deliberately in order to stop performances.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I voted "who cares". I mean, yes, it _s_ hard to concentrate for 5-6 hours on Feldman's string quartet no.2, but that's a comment on human nature rather than a problem with the music itself (I presume the point of this poll is to denigrate the music). If the slow movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony lasted 5-6 hours nobody could concentrate on that either.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev lasts 3.5 hours. Lanzmann's shoah lasts nearly 10 hours. Bergman's Fanny and Alexander lasts about 5 hours.

I conclude that if there is a problem with the quartet, it doesn't derive from human nature.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev lasts 3.5 hours. Lanzmann's shoah lasts nearly 10 hours. Bergman's Fanny and Alexander lasts about 5 hours.
> 
> I conclude that if there is a problem with the quartet, it doesn't derive from human nature.


Do you know many people that can sit through the entirety of those films without losing focus? I also don't think your comparison is apt, film has many more things to latch on to compared to music. Maybe for a music lover there isn't much difference, but for a normal human being it's much more easier to concentrate during an average length film than listen to an average length piece of music without wandering off.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Nereffid said:


> I voted "who cares". I mean, yes, it _s_ hard to concentrate for 5-6 hours on Feldman's string quartet no.2, but that's a comment on human nature rather than a problem with the music itself (I presume the point of this poll is to denigrate the music). If the slow movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony lasted 5-6 hours nobody could concentrate on that either.


 I like that it's something to aspire to. I mean, it's always there - if you're a fan, which I am. I come back to it and always find something new. That's a mark of a great work. Feldman is a lifelong friend and there's much solace in his music. His music seems like an existing stream anybody should have been able to discover but, somehow, only he found it.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Another meaningless poll.

So what if most people do not get it. Does this mean that string quartets should never program it?

Or is your agenda that people who are not familiar with the work should not try to listen to it because of the results of your poll?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

The last 10 minutes are a real slog to get through


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

İmagine demanding 5 hours of your audiences time for a repetitive string quartet on the promises of transcendence..... i swear americans are something else


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

julide said:


> İmagine demanding 5 hours of your audiences time for a repetitive string quintet on the promises of transcendence..... i swear americans are something else


String quartet, at least try to appear as if you knew about the work. Also, I'm not american, but Feldman surely isn't the only composer to write really long works. Last I checked, Wagner's The Ring lasted more than 16 hours, plenty of operas are longer than 4 and also another german, Stockhausen, wrote another opera cycle which lasts 30 hours.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> String quartet, at least try to appear as if you knew about the work. Also, I'm not american, but Feldman surely isn't the only composer to write really long works. Last I checked, Wagner's The Ring lasted more than 16 hours, plenty of operas are longer than 4 and also another german, Stockhausen, wrote another opera cycle which lasts 30 hours.


Wagner's is an exciting music drama and a masterpiece that proved to be enduring. This string quintet is for people who want sophisticated background music.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

julide said:


> Wagner's is an exciting music drama and a masterpiece that proved to be enduring. This string quintet is for people who want sophisticated background music.


I find Wagner's music dramas monumental bores, and I am not alone. Again - it is a string quartet, not quintet. You obviously have no idea what or who this work is for, and your contributions amount ignorant put-downs of a work that you are not interested in. You can't even get the title right.


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## Bluecrab (Jun 24, 2014)

If you're wary of the length of this work, you could try Feldman's _Piano and String Quartet_ instead. The recording I have (Aki Takahashi and the Kronos Quartet) is just under 80 minutes long. It almost seems like it's intended to induce a trancelike state in the listener.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> and I am not alone.


You know, It's kind of hilarious you say this, after all your claims that "Wagner is overrated, whereas Cage is underrated".


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> You know, It's kind of hilarious you say this, after all your claims that "Wagner is overrated, whereas Cage is underrated".


Why is it hilarious that I acknowledged that a number of people cannot tolerate Wagner's operas? It is actually a cliche, comments like "Wagner's music is better than it sounds" or "there are some really qood quarter hours in Wagner's 16 hour Ring" abound.

I was alluding to the fact that merely because someone doesn't like a composer's work does not discount the fact that it is still consider a worthwhile, and in some case a great achievement.

I do think Wagner is overrated - but this is my personal opinion and does not mean anything more than that. I made that comment in a thread devoted precisely to soliciting our opinions.

What is hilarious is how much effort you and others expend to bring up John Cage in any discussion, no matter how unrelated, in order to make negative comments about him, his music, and his audience.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

I'm so into minimalism right now.............


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

At least Philip Glass gives the audience a leave/return proviso at any stage during _Einstein on the Beach_. Feldman's second string quartet seems like the kind of music which challenges more than just the will - his first quartet is plenty long enough, I find.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Feldman's string quartet 2 is one of my favorite works ever. The sound is, for me, immediately beautiful and captivating from beginning to end. There was a time in my last year of college where I regularly listened to different hour-chunks of the work. It was one of the few things that kept me sane during what was one of the most stressful periods of my life.

There are many different cells throughout the work that get quasi-repeated with different rhythmic layering/pauses. This quasi-repetition is Feldman's late style of development: while Beethoven keeps the rhythm and varies the pitch of his motif or cell, Feldman keeps the pitch and varies the rhythm and the rhythmic layering. There's something so compelling about the way he controls the rhythm and subtly varies it with each cell repetition.

Some of the cells have a pastoral radiance, others a cheeky humor, others an alien mystery, others a deep contemplation, others are like a swarm of bees, others have a solo singing quality. Some of the cells are short and repeat quickly, some are longer and repeat slowly. I'm sure an analyst could point out the relationships between the different cells and how they provide a sense of completeness. Over time, the listener starts to get accustomed to the cell palette of the work. To put it poetically, these different cells are like different aspects of human consciousness that Feldman explores one at a time.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Why are people comparing Feldman’s 5 hour avant-garde string quartet to Wagner’s circa 16 hour operatic Ring Cycle? It’s a bizarre comparison. Not to mention that people don’t typically listen to the 4-part Ring Cycle all at once even though it makes for a phoney dramatic comparison by comparing 5 hours to 16 hours.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Feldman's string quartet 2 is one of my favorite works ever. The sound is, for me, immediately beautiful and captivating from beginning to end. There was a time in my last year of college where I regularly listened to different hour-chunks of the work. It was one of the few things that kept me sane during what was one of the most stressful periods of my life.
> 
> There are many different cells throughout the work that get quasi-repeated with different rhythmic layering/pauses. This quasi-repetition is Feldman's late style of development: while Beethoven keeps the rhythm and varies the pitch of his motif or cell, Feldman keeps the pitch and varies the rhythm and the rhythmic layering. There's something so compelling about the way he controls the rhythm and subtly varies it with each cell repetition.
> 
> Some of the cells have a pastoral radiance, others a cheeky humor, others an alien mystery, others a deep contemplation, others are like a swarm of bees, others have a solo singing quality. Some of the cells are short and repeat quickly, some are longer and repeat slowly. I'm sure an analyst could point out the relationships between the different cells and how they provide a sense of completeness. Over time, the listener starts to get accustomed to the cell palette of the work. To put it poetically, these different cells are like different aspects of human consciousness that Feldman explores one at a time.


I can see what you say is true, about the amount of variety in the music. It's just that I think that the length is a problem _given_ that amount of variety. If it had been more even then the work would have been more timeless, as it is it's just full of changing moments. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's absolutely no reason to think of it as something to hear all in one session, an hour at a time I'm sure is fine. I have no issues with the piano trio for example.

He always denied he was a minimalist like other Americans - Reich for example. And he was right to deny that. This isn't process music, and it isn't repetitive.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

DaveM said:


> Why are people comparing Feldman's 5 hour avant-garde string quartet to Wagner's circa 16 hour operatic Ring Cycle? It's a bizarre comparison. Not to mention that people don't typically listen to the 4-part Ring Cycle all at once even though it makes for a phoney dramatic comparison by comparing 5 hours to 16 hours.


I only brought it up because julide said that americans have some sort of delusion and like to write long works. That is patently false.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> I can see what you say is true, about the amount of variety in the music. It's just that I think that the length is a problem _given_ that amount of variety. If it had been more even then the work would have been more timeless, as it is it's just full of changing moments. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's absolutely no reason to think of it as something to hear all in one session, an hour at a time I'm sure is fine. I have no issues with the piano trio for example.
> 
> He always denied he was a minimalist like other Americans - Reich for example. And he was right to deny that. This isn't process music, and it isn't repetitive.


I am pretty sure that Feldman intended the string quartet to be heard in one sitting.



> Lasting more than six continuous hours, it is "a disorienting, transfixing experience that repeatedly approached and touched the sublime." - Alex Ross, in his review of the FLUX Quartet's New York City performance in The New Yorker.





> Feldman's mostly ruminative, subdued and intense quartet can be heard as an endless series of Webernesque gestures: broken chords sounded one note at a time by the four players, then sustained; mini passages in which three players articulate a pungently quiet harmony as the fourth, often the cellist, plays a plucked counter rhythm; quizzical bits of melody; squiggling figurations; and more.But the gestures are repeated. And repeated. And repeated. In the score, a musical idea lasting a measure or so is typically bracketed under a printed instruction to "repeat 9 X's," "repeat 11X's" and so on. *But Feldman understood that some performers, with his blessing, would opt to perform with fewer repetitions. Indeed, the Kronos Quartet gave the premiere in 1983 in a version that lasted about four hours, which was all those players felt they had the endurance for.*
> 
> *Feldman sought to induce a sense of meditative stillness *in which, over time, listeners would perceive that variations and even starkly different events were occurring. If the whole idea of this work seems indulgent and silly, just lie down on your living room couch and listen.


I remember reading an interview with Feldman when this question of long duration works came up. He stated that he was after this sensory experience that can only be achieved with the long duration.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Just listening to the piano trio. What incredibly complicated music this is. There are passages as subjectively as complicated as anything in Cage. The quote above from San Antone mentions “meditative stillness” - nothing could be further from what I’m experiencing with the trio. This trio has nothing to to with perceiving small quasi imperceptible changes. It could be a question of performance of course, I’m listening to one with Tilbury as pianist and I’ve noticed before that Tilbury’s Feldman is not at all tranquil and often quite assertive - but he know Feldman, worked closely with him, he knew what he wanted. 

Anyway, good music and a pleasure to return to it. Over the past few weeks I’ve become really aware of how much outstanding American music there is.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

To be fair, the quote about "meditative stillness" was in reference, specifically, to the _String Quartet_ No. 2


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Nevermind. sdjsgsgjsgsfnl


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## calvinpv (Apr 20, 2015)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Feldman's string quartet 2 is one of my favorite works ever. The sound is, for me, immediately beautiful and captivating from beginning to end. There was a time in my last year of college where I regularly listened to different hour-chunks of the work. It was one of the few things that kept me sane during what was one of the most stressful periods of my life.
> 
> There are many different cells throughout the work that get quasi-repeated with different rhythmic layering/pauses. This quasi-repetition is Feldman's late style of development: while Beethoven keeps the rhythm and varies the pitch of his motif or cell, Feldman keeps the pitch and varies the rhythm and the rhythmic layering. There's something so compelling about the way he controls the rhythm and subtly varies it with each cell repetition.
> 
> Some of the cells have a pastoral radiance, others a cheeky humor, others an alien mystery, others a deep contemplation, others are like a swarm of bees, others have a solo singing quality. Some of the cells are short and repeat quickly, some are longer and repeat slowly. *I'm sure an analyst could point out the relationships between the different cells and how they provide a sense of completeness. *Over time, the listener starts to get accustomed to the cell palette of the work. To put it poetically, these different cells are like different aspects of human consciousness that Feldman explores one at a time.


Some time ago, I found this website devoted to anything and everything on Feldman. I haven't gone through it that much myself, but there are tons of links to explore, especially in the "texts" section. Looks like there's some stuff on the 2nd SQ.

https://www.cnvill.net/mfhome.htm


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Feldman's long works are meant to be experienced in a live setting. Doing so you will have a sensory experience unlike any you've had before. It is precisely because leaving a live setting is less likely to occur than simply turning off a CD or streaming source, that the work can better be experienced as intended.


One poster here has shared his/her experience of a live performance. It was a struggle for more than two hours, he/she wrote.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

If the quartet is meant to be listened to from top to tail in one go, why? Is it because there is thematic development? Or because it is teleological? Or is it the exhaustive exploration of some idea? Or what?

What I’m saying is, if the whole matters, that must be because of some logic of development. But what is that logic? It’s a bit elusive to say the least!


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> One poster here has shared his/her experience of a live performance. It was a struggle for more than two hours, he/she wrote.


They did not have the sensory experience feldman had in mind i guess


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> If the quartet is meant to be listened to from top to tail in one go, why? Is it because there is thematic development? Or because it is teleological? Or is it the exhaustive exploration of some idea? Or what?
> 
> What I'm saying is, if the whole matters, that must be because of some logic of development. But what is that logic? It's a bit elusive to say the least!


This link might provide you with some insight.

But as I posted previously, Feldman created long works in his later period specifically for the purpose of pushing the audience to experience something that can only be achieved with attentive listening over several hours.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Here's aquote from Feldman about his long pieces:

The reason I like a long piece, though no one asked me it. It's become very, very important is .... I like the long pieces for the same reason you like Proust - is that you don't drink it, you sip it. And you get into it - just saturated, more and more and more ....

Let me tell you another composer who has influenced me tremendously, and of course, he's not a composer, Samuel Beckett. And in recent years, in certain pieces, the way he works, I borrowed, and that's another reason the pieces are long. Now, in some things that he does-I'm not talking about the short things, I'm just talking about his method, not how long or short his work is-is that he, living in Paris, being so involved with French for the past fifty years, he'd write something in English then translate it into French, and then he'd translate it back into English, and of course it's not the same. Then he'd translate that English back into French, and he's just continually retranslating.

In music perhaps we might call it variation, but I don't think of it that way. Jasper Johns also had a very similar explanation for the way he works, he says, "I do it one way, and then I do it another." As simple as that. Jasper has helped me also, of doing it one way and doing it another, do it with four notes, do it with three notes, do it slower, put it here, put it there, this can go on for a long time.

CA: It's kind of a modular approach, isn't it?

MF: Very modular. And then when you're really saturated, and then I can take Z and I put it against A and it sounds like a million dollars. But you can't do it in ten minutes! You can't put Z against A in ten minutes. It takes the saturation, and time is the liberator. Time creates that saturation of the experience. Of course I'm no different than anybody else. I'm only interested in communication. That's the only thing I'm interested in.

From the article "Morton Feldman String Quartet No. 2 (1983)" by Ryan Dohoney

Late in Feldman's career, his extremism pushed toward another musical parameter, one of time. He had since the 1960s encouraged listeners to think of his music "as an environment," though his pieces in that decade never extended beyond twenty minutes. He fulfilled this desire for temporal saturation only in his music of the 1980s when his pieces begin stretching from ninety minutes, to three hours, and, ultimately, to six hours with String Quartet No. 2.

Feldman's expansion of his music's duration was bound up with a fundamental ontological question: Was music an art form? He first formulated this question in 1973 as an odd opposition. Was his music to be an "illusion of feeling" or an "illusion of art"? The question of whether music could produce an "illusion of art" occupied him for the rest of his life. In the year prior to the completion of String Quartet No. 2, he framed the question in relation to the writings of Marcel Proust and James Joyce:

So I'm at the end of my life, let's say I'm at the end of my life; working since I'm thirteen; I wake up one day and I say to myself, 'What the hell am I involved with? Memory forms? Musical forms? . . . I mean what the hell is it all about, all the set poses, the set emotions? Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away, from some aspect of illusion and reality?

Do we have anything like Proust? Do we have anything comparable to Finnegans Wake? I wonder. So that's something I think about. And that's where I am now: Is music, could it be, an art form? That it could exist on its own terms, whatever those terms are.

Over the course of six hours we are gradually attuned to the soundscape of the quartet, which is bountiful in its variety, subtlety, and pathos. For example, after the initial anxious music of the beginning moments, the music unwinds and dilates. About forty minutes into the piece, a gorgeous and achingly sad chorale emerges and keeps us company for about four or five minutes. It then vanishes as other fragments we've heard before return. The sense of loss is, at least for me, profound. This music, unlike other blocks of music, never returns in the identical form in which we first hear it. Instead, every hour or so we're offered a shadowy version of the music, a grayed-out reprise of the beauty we experienced earlier. As in Proust, we are offered sensations that recall our earlier delight but never offer us the same experience again. We come only to an awareness of the impossibility of recapturing lost time. It is a simple lesson, both edifying and melancholic.

At the risk of over-determining the listening experience you might have of String Quartet No. 2, I've hoped to offer a sense of how you might chart a path through the piece. I encourage you to come to know it as you might another person. As with a new friend, you'll be drawn to some sounds more than others, take more interest in one aspect than another, recognize something that you love or hate. It is a wonder that music can do this at all and that Feldman's "memory forms" gathered in String Quartet No. 2 seem to achieve this drastic human presence in a way unique to late modernity.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Very interesting post SanAntone, really gave me a lot to think about. I voted 'Yes'. I do like this piece very much and I've set aside Saturday afternoons, early hours of Sunday mornings, listening through to sunrise ...... and I can never get all the way through without major concentration lapses and complete disengagement. I used to be able to manage a Ring in a day with less disengagement (these days, my focus is less strong in general terms). I'd like to say it's no reflection on Feldman's music, but I think it might be. Anyway, I'm off to read some Proust now, in the original French, of course!


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

julide said:


> They did not have the sensory experience feldman had in mind i guess


Maybe for a shorter duration than 5-6 hours, which is completely understandable for a work with repetitive structures.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

A 5 hour instrumental work is extremely rare in traditional classical music. Actually I can’t think of one. Of course, I’m not a fan of even 5 minutes of a work like this, but even assuming that one is, isn’t creating a work that expects someone to listen to all 5 hours in one sitting something in the realm of some major navel gazing?

In all fairness, it comes to mind that I would likely think the same of a 5 hour ‘traditional’ classical music instrumental work.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

DaveM said:


> A 5 hour instrumental work is extremely rare in traditional classical music. Actually I can't think of one. ...


I can't either. If I sat through 5 hours of this I'd expect to be paid by the Feldman estate.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

ArtMusic said:


> Wow! You were at the premiere! It would have been interesting to observe other audiences to see how the reacted.


It was in Toronto, in the New Music Concerts series. Some people left before I did; the friends I went with stayed till the end. I like to meditate, for around 20 minutes, with unobtrusive music if any. The Feldman premiere was a concert. It didn't feel like a meditative experience to me but may have to others.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Bluecrab said:


> If you're wary of the length of this work, you could try Feldman's _Piano and String Quartet_ instead. The recording I have (Aki Takahashi and the Kronos Quartet) is just under 80 minutes long. It almost seems like it's intended to induce a trancelike state in the listener.


Long time no see, Mr. Bluecrab.  I remember commenting on the work once:



hammeredklavier said:


> This Feldman piano and string quartet piece instills in me a feeling of "having an endless series of questions" and it is suitable as soundtrack for documentaries or films dealing with mysteries. I'm reminded of those eerie, silent scenes of the horror films I've watched where a zombie or a ghost might be hiding somewhere, waiting to ambush the protagonist:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I am listening to the Ives Ensemble recording of the SQ2 - it is too late for me to complete the work tonight, but I plan on trying to hear it completely tomorrow. The first thing I noticed was the variety of the gestures (which repeat individually).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> I am listening to the Ives Ensemble recording of the SQ2 - it is too late for me to complete the work tonight, but I plan on trying to hear it completely tomorrow. The first thing I noticed was the variety of the gestures (which repeat individually).


If it's anything like the piano trio that I was hearing last night, it may change. The trio has passages with a complex structure and passages where simple ideas repeat. My feeling is that in the trio the greatest variety of textures was in the first half, the variety diminished as the music moved to its end. It's as if he sets himself up with material and then, when he feels like he has enough, he works with it, examines it, reduces it . . . But not having seen the score to either the trio or the second quartet I can't be sure.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> It was in Toronto, in the New Music Concerts series. Some people left before I did; the friends I went with stayed till the end. I like to meditate, for around 20 minutes, with unobtrusive music if any. The Feldman premiere was a concert. It didn't feel like a meditative experience to me but may have to others.


It may be the sort of thing which is better at home, in a concert hall there are inevitably distractions.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Here's aquote from Feldman about his long pieces:
> 
> The reason I like a long piece, though no one asked me it. It's become very, very important is .... I like the long pieces for the same reason you like Proust - is that you don't drink it, you sip it. And you get into it - just saturated, more and more and more ....
> 
> ...


Ah, so it's Proust!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

If anyone wants a Feldman SQ2 listening group, take it half a CD at a time maybe, just post any response you have, please say and I'll set it up.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Here's aquote from Feldman about his long pieces:
> 
> The reason I like a long piece, though no one asked me it. It's become very, very important is .... I like the long pieces for the same reason you like Proust - is that you don't drink it, you sip it. And you get into it - just saturated, more and more and more ....
> 
> ...


You always pull such interesting info, quotes and interviews. Could you divulge your source?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> You always pull such interesting info, quotes and interviews. Could you divulge your source?


*calvinpv* had posted this site: https://www.cnvill.net/mfhome.htm which is where I found the two interviews. I included the link to the second, but the first I found by searching the site.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Relevant to this thread: a short clip of *Morton Feldman* and *Elliott Carter* discussing new works and their length.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> If anyone wants a Feldman SQ2 listening group, take it half a CD at a time maybe, just post any response you have, please say and I'll set it up.


I am in the process of downloading a set of FLAC files of the Ives recording from Qobuz . Cost - $5.99.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> I do not think this is a successful piece of music.
> 
> I think it is supposed to be immersive. That's to say, the listener is supposed to focus on barely perceptible changes as the music progresses, and in so doing lose a sense of time passing. However there are frequent major changes of melody, harmony, texture etc. It is very much a structured piece of music, with an articulation, a huge collage of distinct and contrasting moments. So I find that I am all too aware of time passing.
> 
> ...


I forgot Philip Glass's Music in Twelve parts -- between 3 and 4 hours.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> It was in Toronto, in the New Music Concerts series. Some people left before I did; the friends I went with stayed till the end. I like to meditate, for around 20 minutes, with unobtrusive music if any. The Feldman premiere was a concert. It didn't feel like a meditative experience to me but may have to others.


That's not surprising for a premiere. Nobody would expect a SQ to last so long with little harmonic development. I think the work could say what it wanted to in 1/2hr or less.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> That's not surprising for a premiere. Nobody would expect a SQ to last so long with little harmonic development. I think the work could say what it wanted to in 1/2hr or less.


No, it couldn't for that would go against the composer's intention.

Of course, Barthes, semiotics and I don't think it matters ultimately what the author of a work wanted to say or their intentions, but in your terms, you're wrong.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> I think the work could say what it wanted to in 1/2hr or less.


What did it want to say?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> That's not surprising for a premiere. Nobody would expect a SQ to last so long with little harmonic development. I think the work could say what it wanted to in 1/2hr or less.


Yeah. Proust could have said all he needed to say in _In Search of Lost Time_ in one part instead of seven.

The idea! These self-indulgent composers and writers. Who do they think they are?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Yeah. Proust could have said all he needed to say in _In Search of Lost Time_ in one part instead of seven.
> 
> The idea! These self-indulgent composers and writers. Who do they think they are?


Which of course doesn't mean Feldman = Proust. Just because a piece is 5 hours long it's then Proust? Or maybe Joyce's _Ulysses_. Yeah, I'd say the comparison is self-indulgent. And after all Proust and Joyce could probably have both benefited from some editing.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> No, it couldn't for that would go against the composer's intention.
> 
> Of course, Barthes, semiotics and I don't think it matters ultimately what the author of a work wanted to say or their intentions, but in your terms, you're wrong.


I'm not wrong. The work is currently not a success in terms of expressing its message to most listeners. It's overwrought in its length. The statistical results of the poll indicate that amongst classical music listeners about 45% have no interest in this work, while 17% find it hard to concentrate throughout. These are statistical facts.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> That's not surprising for a premiere. Nobody would expect a SQ to last so long with little harmonic development. I think the work could say what it wanted to in 1/2hr or less.


I listened to a little over 38 minutes of the quartet yesterday (tracks 3 and 4 of the Ives Ensemble's recording) and I reckon that particular segment of the work needed approximately 2,300 seconds to say what it wanted.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> I'm not wrong. The work is currently not a success in terms of expressing its message to most listeners. It's overwrought in its length. The statistical results of the poll indicate that amongst classical music listeners about 45% have no interest in this work, while 17% find it hard to concentrate throughout. These are statistical facts.


This post confirms what many of us suspected. The purpose of this poll, like most of your polls, is not to enlighten, but to trash music that you do not personally care for.

So what if only one of us finds this music interesting. In spite of our personal feelings most of us still respect that one person and the music.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> I listened to a little over 38 minutes of the quartet yesterday (tracks 3 and 4 of the Ives Ensemble's recording) and I reckon that particular segment of the work needed approximately 2,300 seconds to say what it wanted.


So does that mean 5-6 hours is not long enough?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

arpeggio said:


> This post confirms what many of us suspected. The purpose of this poll, like most of your polls, is not to enlighten, but to trash music that you do not personally care for.
> 
> So what if only one of us finds this music interesting. In spite of our personal feelings most of us still respect that one person and the music.


No, my thread here is to help generate discussion on how to appreciate the work. I have stated I struggled to concentrate. I have read one or two posts that have suggestions on how to approach this SQ. This is most welcoming. The statistical results are a separate discussion.

What do you think of the SQ and have you listened to it before?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Nereffid said:


> I listened to a little over 38 minutes of the quartet yesterday (tracks 3 and 4 of the Ives Ensemble's recording) and I reckon that particular segment of the work needed approximately 2,300 seconds to say what it wanted.


It didn't grab you enough to listen to the entire thing? You could say then it should be less than 38 minutes to keep you interested at one sitting


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

consuono said:


> It didn't grab you enough to listen to the entire thing? You could say then it should be less than 38 minutes to keep you interested at one sitting


I deliberately decided to listen to a couple of tracks based on how much time I had available to listen. I liked it and it kept me interested, but no, I guess it didn't grab me enough for me to listen to the remaining three-and-a-half hours and ignore the fact that I was supposed to cook the family dinner, go for a walk, and watch TV with the kids. Silly old Feldman for not taking the latest episode of _Wandavision_ into account when writing his music!


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

Feldman has no business comparing his string quartet to the modernist extravaganza and a literal page turner........


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

You can write an uncompromising modernist string quartet doesn't mean it should be repetitive or austere....


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> This post confirms what many of us suspected. The purpose of this poll, like most of your polls, is not to enlighten, but to trash music that you do not personally care for.
> 
> So what if only one of us finds this music interesting. In spite of our personal feelings most of us still respect that one person and the music.


So what? I've seen threads that do the same with music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and others. I don't understand this hypersensitivity from modern music fans that really is fundamentally intolerant of criticism.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I wonder if anyone here has been listening to the music. What struck me is how destabilizing it is, music which generates anxiety and doubt, sometimes even frantic.

Here's a random example, the thing's full of them!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

za,cmbs,lcnscn sc vszv szv zsv sz


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

consuono said:


> So what? I've seen threads that do the same with music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and others. I don't understand this hypersensitivity from modern music fans that really is fundamentally intolerant of criticism.


I think (speaking as someone who doesn't consider himself a "modern music fan") it's not so much _intolerant_ of criticism as _tired_ of criticism.

Yes, modern music isn't as well-liked as the mainstream music from Bach to Shostakovich, but it has a solid niche and is liked/loved by a significant minority. And yet there is a constant drip-drip-drip of negativity, ranging all the way from weak jokes to accusations about the end of civilisation. People who like the music just want to get on with liking it, and they get tired of others pointing and complaining.

Modern music is more popular on TC than medieval or renaissance music, but fans of Machaut and Palestrina aren't made feel they need to constantly defend their tastes.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Nereffid said:


> I think (speaking as someone who doesn't consider himself a "modern music fan") it's not so much _intolerant_ of criticism as _tired_ of criticism.


Yeah, but I thought that was the reaction they wanted, really.


> Yes, modern music isn't as well-liked as the mainstream music from Bach to Shostakovich, but it has a solid niche and is liked/loved by a significant minority. And yet there is a constant drip-drip-drip of negativity, ranging all the way from weak jokes to accusations about the end of civilisation. People who like the music just want to get on with liking it, and they get tired of others pointing and complaining.
> 
> Modern music is more popular on TC than medieval or renaissance music, but fans of Machaut and Palestrina aren't made feel they need to constantly defend their tastes.


No, probably because they feel the music can speak for itself. I'm not gonna to run around defending the honor of the Big Three, either.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> I'm not wrong. The work is currently not a success in terms of expressing its message to most listeners. It's overwrought in its length. The statistical results of the poll indicate that amongst classical music listeners about 45% have no interest in this work, while 17% find it hard to concentrate throughout. These are statistical facts.


Ok, hold up. Going to go and throw away all of my cd's, stop listening to the music I like and just go the rest of my life listening to Britney Spears and Justin Bieber. Don't bring up statistics when discussing art.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

julide said:


> You can write an uncompromising modernist string quartet doesn't mean it should be repetitive or austere....


It's really obvious that you haven't listened to this work ever


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

jegreenwood said:


> I am in the process of downloading a set of FLAC files of the Ives recording from Qobuz . Cost - $5.99.


I'm sorry to say this, but it's better to have the Flux Quartet recording on Mode. The reason is simple: it is broken up into short tracks by the page number in the score. It really is invaluable for finding your way around.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> It's really obvious that you haven't listened to this work ever


Do i really need to listen to this to know that a 5 hour string quartet won't do for me ever.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> I'm not wrong. The work is currently not a success in terms of expressing its message to most listeners. It's overwrought in its length. The statistical results of the poll indicate that amongst classical music listeners about 45% have no interest in this work, while 17% find it hard to concentrate throughout. These are statistical facts.


Are your statistics based on this poll? 37 voters: A self-selected sample size where the avant-garde haters leap to express their negative opinions?

Yeah, a meaningful poll.

But you miss the point (not unusual) with this work, and Feldman's late music in general. It is a difficult work, no doubt, but classical music is full of difficult works. One could argue that they all are unsuccessful because they do not enjoy the same kind of popularity as _Eine kleine Nachtmusik_.

The Feldman SQ2 is a singularity, but the work did offer to other composers the possibility to break free from the 20 minute limit. To play with the idea of duration, to see what is possible, and what vistas open up for new work.

I don't know why you and others are so opposed to experimentation in classical music. Why is music which is written outside of the norms so distasteful to you? For me, it is an exciting and a wonderful exploration into areas which have not been examined by classical composers prior to the 20th century. My enjoyment comes as a result of my innate curiosity about what composers are doing now and in the future, more so than what they've done in the past.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

julide said:


> Do i really need to listen to this to know that a 5 hour string quartet won't do for me ever.


Of course you don't! You mustn't! However the problem is that you're making comments about music which reveal that you don't know what you're talking about. So, for example, if you listened you'd see that it's not repetitive except at the level of pitch and motion, and you'd know that it's not at all austere even though it is often rather quiet. While I wouldn't want anyone to think bad thoughts about you, this unnuanced view of the music that you're promoting is utterly worthless if the aim of the discussion is to find out the truth about the quartet.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> Modern music is more popular on TC than medieval or renaissance music, but fans of Machaut and Palestrina aren't made feel they need to constantly defend their tastes.





consuono said:


> No, probably because they feel the music can speak for itself. I'm not gonna to run around defending the honor of the Big Three, either.


I'm pretty sure any modern-music fan will say that modern music can speak for itself too, to anyone who's interested in the language. The point I was making was that the people who don't enjoy medieval/renaissance music don't constantly tell everyone how much they dislike it, or talk nonsense about it, or lie about it. They just let the medieval/renaissance fans get on with enjoying it for themselves.

I tried a few years ago to start a discussion on why people don't enjoy medieval/renaissance music, and it was all very pleasant, and everyone who said they didn't like it indicated that it was all down to personal preference and there was nothing "wrong" with the music itself. Nobody was dismissive, nobody felt the need to get defensive.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course, but there's a marked difference in _how _some people express their attitudes to modern music, compared with how they and others express their attitudes to any other music.


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## julide (Jul 24, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Of course you don't! You mustn't! However the problem is that you're making comments about music which reveal that you don't know what you're talking about. So, for example, if you listened you'd see that it's not repetitive except at the level of pitch and motion, and you'd know that it's not at all austere even though it is often rather quiet. While I wouldn't want anyone to think bad thoughts about you, this unnuanced view of the music that you're promoting is utterly worthless if the aim of the discussion is to find out the truth about the quartet.


Did i say i have a nuanced opinion about this work? I hate its very conception....


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I think that 5-6 hours of listening experience is too much for static music and thus I marked that _I have no interest in this work_, but I may actually want to revisit it's highlights in the future (on youtube there are some tips about these). Feldman has many other works for me to explore and I think that I can understand his style without spending so much time in a single piece.

Also, I always have Hildegard for static ecstatic music when I need it - this kind of conception for music is not new.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

consuono said:


> So what? I've seen threads that do the same with music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner and others. I don't understand this hypersensitivity from modern music fans that really is fundamentally intolerant of criticism.


Frankly I am tired of responding to accusations that members who follow modern music are hypersensitive and intolerant.

These accusations are unfair and untrue.

We really are not modernists. For the vast majority of us our favorite composers are still the traditional ones.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> Frankly I am tired of responding to accusations that members who follow modern music are hypersensitive and intolerant.
> 
> These accusations are unfair and untrue. ....


And the best way to show your tiredness is by being hypersensitive and intolerant. Give me a break. Any such discussion turns into a "it's all subjective anyway" justification festival.


Nereffid said:


> The point I was making was that the people who don't enjoy medieval/renaissance music don't constantly tell everyone how much they dislike it, or talk nonsense about it, or lie about it.


"Lie about it"? Anyway if someone's dismissive of Bach or Mozart or Chopin, and some are, I couldn't care less.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Allerius said:


> I think that 5-6 hours of listening experience is too much for static music


It is not static.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Okay, I’ve given this work a bit of a listen. I am wondering why there are comments above regarding criticism of ‘modern music’. Is this work really a good example of modern music in general and one to be holding up as an example of modern music to be defended against any criticism? Isn’t 5 hours of this kind of music even on the fringe of modern music that a lot of people here like?

Repeating myself a bit: Any unbroken 5 hour traditional classical string quartet would have to be pretty extraordinary for anyone to tolerate. Maybe that’s why there isn’t one.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Okay, I've given this work a bit of a listen. I am wondering why there are comments above regarding criticism of 'modern music'. Is this work really a good example of modern music in general and one to be holding up as an example of modern music to be defended against any criticism? Isn't 5 hours of this kind of music even on the fringe of modern music that a lot of people here like?
> 
> Repeating myself a bit: Any unbroken 5 hour traditional classical string quartet would have to be pretty extraordinary for anyone to tolerate. Maybe that's why there isn't one.


I don't think anyone is saying that it is to be "defended", and I don't think that anyone is saying that its length doesn't make it challenging.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Allerius said:


> I think that 5-6 hours of listening experience is too much for static music and thus I marked that _I have no interest in this work_, but I may actually want to revisit it's highlights in the future (on youtube there are some tips about these). Feldman has many other works for me to explore and I think that I can understand his style without spending so much time in a single piece.
> 
> Also, I always have Hildegard for static ecstatic music when I need it - this kind of conception for music is not new.


The SQ2 is probably Feldman's most demanding work. The Kronos Quartet had planned the premier performance but cancelled it due to the physical demands on the musicians. A few years later the Flux Quartet did manage the work, and as far as I know has performed it more than once, and recorded it. So the work is not impossible to do.

But it does make serious demands on both the performers and the audience.

But that is the point of the work.

Other composers have created works for the purpose of stretching the limits of the musicians' capability to play the music, Ferneyhough (string quartets), Cage (Freeman Etudes) - because only that kind of work will extract from the musicians the precise quality the composers wish to investigate.

Composers are free to pursue their artistic goals with their work. And while anyone can criticize the work or their methods, at the end of the day it is wholly within the composers grasp to write the music he wishes to write despite the inability of some members of the classical music community to understand what they are doing, or why.

If anyone wishes to avoid the works, both performers and audiences, that choice is open to them. This is, of course, the case with any work by any composer.

But to _repeatedly_ question the work's length and question Feldman's intention to compose the kind of music he chooses - is to _repeatedly_ complain about things out of your control, the point of which is unclear to me.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> I'm pretty sure any modern-music fan will say that modern music can speak for itself too, to anyone who's interested in the language. The point I was making was that the people who don't enjoy medieval/renaissance music don't constantly tell everyone how much they dislike it, or talk nonsense about it, or lie about it. They just let the medieval/renaissance fans get on with enjoying it for themselves.
> 
> I tried a few years ago to start a discussion on why people don't enjoy medieval/renaissance music, and it was all very pleasant, and everyone who said they didn't like it indicated that it was all down to personal preference and there was nothing "wrong" with the music itself. Nobody was dismissive, nobody felt the need to get defensive.
> 
> Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course, but there's a marked difference in _how _some people express their attitudes to modern music, compared with how they and others express their attitudes to any other music.


Part of the problem is that they likely feel threatened that modernist music will take over.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

consuono said:


> And the best way to show your tiredness is by being hypersensitive and intolerant. Give me a break. Any such discussion turns into a "it's all subjective anyway" justification festival.
> "Lie about it"? Anyway if someone's dismissive of Bach or Mozart or Chopin, and some are, I couldn't care less.


You're on every thread on modern music thrashing it and always make the same arguments. So I think you do care, a lot.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Bulldog said:


> Part of the problem is that they likely feel threatened that modernist music will take over.


It is taking over!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Bulldog said:


> Part of the problem is that they likely feel threatened that modernist music will take over.


I respect the preferences of avant-garde music enthusiasts. But I would be worried if people judged "classical music" by "avant-garde standards" (I see that it happened many times in the past, as I go through the old threads.) 
I personally categorize "classical music" and "avant-garde music" separately; I wish to be in a community where only "classical music" is discussed.

Mozart vs. Modernism
Always Praising the Same Music/The Dinosaurs are Among Us


Casebearer said:


> The reason I posted this question is that I think it's healthy to treat composers as human beings with strenghs and weaknesses. In my opinion this is necessary to evaluate the worth of what they composed. Some people were turned off because they perceive this as negative posting. Well, that might be justified if you think your idol is above criticism or if you're one of those people with an ideology of uncompromising optimism or positivism. I don't like both at al. You're the people that help industry in marketing icons/brands. We should be critical of branding and industry. For every ****** Mozart cd you buy because it has his name on it (apart from the wonderful stuff he made also) you could also buy interesting music by a lesser known composer that is probably underrated and - if he's still living - might deserve your support and keep music alive. We should not accept tradition that easily. Tradition is mainly what successful marketeers in the past told our forefathers to like. Or are we left with a canon of classical music and composers that accurately reflects absolute musical values?





mikeh375 said:


> I too think Mozart is overrated. Imv, he is too easy to listen to with 21stC hindsight and I feel that music these days has more traits worth exploring than immediacy of appeal.





SanAntone said:


> Most overrated: Wagner
> Most underrated: John Cage


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> I personally categorize "classical music" and "avant-garde music" separately; I wish to be in a community where only "classical music" is discussed.


How on earth could anyone _not _think that Feldman's second quartet is not classical music? I don't see how you could defend that point of view at all.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Bulldog said:


> Part of the problem is that they likely feel threatened that modernist music will take over.





hammeredklavier said:


> I personally categorize "classical music" and "avant-garde music" separately; I wish to be in a community where only "classical music" is discussed.


We need to be sure how we're defining these terms. Does anyone else remember that time a few years ago when Poulenc's clarinet sonata was given as an example of the kind of modern music that audiences just don't want to listen to?


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> Feldman's monumental String Quartet No. 2 is in one unbroken movement.
> 
> I know of people who listen to parts of it for meditation and they are quite convinced of its meditation qualities.
> 
> ...


This is not music, but monstrosity against every cultural ethos.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Nereffid said:


> We need to be sure how we're defining these terms. Does anyone else remember that time a few years ago when Poulenc's clarinet sonata was given as an example of the kind of modern music that audiences just don't want to listen to?


I talked some time ago about some of my criteria for determining whether a composer is "classical" or "avant-garde" - In order for a composer to be considered "classical", he must have connection to past masters of "classical music" (ones both distant and close in terms of timeline), and prove by words and actions that they do. And he must not have "avant-garde" philosophies like "everything we do is music", "who cares if you listen", etc.

Schoenberg: https://www.talkclassical.com/69140-expressivity-modern-music-3.html#post1981211
Ligeti: 



Glass: https://www.talkclassical.com/23618-happy-birthday-franz-schubert.html#post2000522


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> I talked some time ago about some of my criteria for determining whether a composer is "classical" or "avant-garde" - In order for a composer to be considered "classical", he must have connection to past masters of "classical music" (ones both distant and close in terms of timeline), and prove by words and actions that they do. And he must not have "avant-garde" philosophies like "everything we do is music", "who cares if you listen", etc.
> 
> Schoenberg: https://www.talkclassical.com/69140-expressivity-modern-music-3.html#post1981211
> Ligeti:
> ...


Well Feldman's OK in this quartet then. He's using a string quartet, asking them to play fully notated music using standard conservatory techniques, music given in a concert hall by professionals. What more could you possibly want?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> I personally categorize "classical music" and "avant-garde music" separately; I wish to be in a community where only "classical music" is discussed.


There are plenty of threads on TC where your limited brand of classical music is discussed, in fact, most threads fit that description. The question is why do you stray into threads where avant-garde is the topic?

Are those of us who do enjoy discussing avant-grade classical music to be punished because of your lack of discipline?

The solution is simple - stay out of a thread devoted to Morton Feldman's string quartet, or a thread about John Cage, or any other composer you don't approve of.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> It is not static.


This is how I and some others perceive the work I think.

_In Feldman's second string quartet, it is the duration of the work that challenges. The extreme parameter is in this case time. This is not to say that Feldman with this work primarily intended a direct polemic about time as a phenomenon in score music, but when you are confronted with this work, it is this 'time phenomenon' that evokes astonishment. This 'time phenomenon' appears partly as extreme duration, but also as an interesting psychological phenomenon. *In Feldman's second quartet the listener experiences that different sound-passages - which pass in time - become more like static spaces outside of time!* This phenomenon - sounds in time transformed into space - is a phenomenon that, in the light of concrete notated sound, comes into existence in the consciousness of the listener_. - from Analysis of Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2 (1983) by By Magnus Olsen Majmon.

_But the real form and point of the piece is time, *and how time can be static*, and how musical structure and expression can do something important that is different than moving the piece along to an anticipated harmonic and/or dramatic resolution. "There's no narrative, it doesn't tell you anything," Armbrust points out, believing the listener "can mold it as you want."_ - from Chicago Classical Review.



SanAntone said:


> But to _repeatedly_ question the work's length and question Feldman's intention to compose the kind of music he chooses - is to _repeatedly_ complain about things out of your control, the point of which is unclear to me.


I suppose that this is not for me, as I don't recall having said anything about this work previously in this thread, and as I have not questioned Feldman's intentions to compose anything.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Allerius said:


> This is how I and some others perceive the work I think.
> 
> _In Feldman's second string quartet, it is the duration of the work that challenges. The extreme parameter is in this case time. This is not to say that Feldman with this work primarily intended a direct polemic about time as a phenomenon in score music, but when you are confronted with this work, it is this 'time phenomenon' that evokes astonishment. This 'time phenomenon' appears partly as extreme duration, but also as an interesting psychological phenomenon. *In Feldman's second quartet the listener experiences that different sound-passages - which pass in time - become more like static spaces outside of time!* This phenomenon - sounds in time transformed into space - is a phenomenon that, in the light of concrete notated sound, comes into existence in the consciousness of the listener_. - from Analysis of Morton Feldman's String Quartet No. 2 (1983) by By Magnus Olsen Majmon.
> 
> ...


When I say it's not static, I mean that it isn't trance music, it's full of changes, you're constantly aware of important changes in terms of texture, dynamics, rhythm etc. . In that sense it's unlike, for example, Fred Rezewski's _Moutons de Panurge_ -- I'll put a youtube at the end of the post.

But it is true that the music is made up of modules, moments, each with a distinct character, and it can feel that there is no narrative for large stretches of the music. In that sense, I think it's like Messiaen's _Chronochromie_, again I'll put a link at the end.

However I should say that I think that the Feldman quartet is more complicated than "has no narrative" suggests, because in fact there are moments, very significant ones, which return, transformed but recognisable.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> How on earth could anyone _not _think that Feldman's second quartet is not classical music? I don't see how you could defend that point of view at all.


Well, for this particular work, while I'm not interested in getting into it, just stating a de facto 'you can't defend that point of view' doesn't make it so.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

consuono said:


> And the best way to show your tiredness is by being hypersensitive and intolerant. Give me a break. Any such discussion turns into a "it's all subjective anyway" justification festival.


My response was a poor one.

Hypersensitivity and intolerance is not the issue.

The real issue is whether or not this _String Quartet_ should be programed by string quartets.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Well, for this particular work, while I'm not interested in getting into it, just stating a de facto 'you can't defend that point of view' doesn't make it so.


Yes and I gave him a clear reply when he gave me his response.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> There are plenty of threads on TC where your limited brand of classical music is discussed, in fact, most threads fit that description. The question is why do you stray into threads where avant-garde is the topic?
> 
> Are those of us who do enjoy discussing avant-grade classical music to be punished because of your lack of discipline?
> 
> The solution is simple - stay out of a thread devoted to Morton Feldman's string quartet, or a thread about John Cage, or any other composer you don't approve of.


Is someone supposed to assume from the title of the OP that this is a thread for only those who enjoy avant-garde music? And who makes the decision that others can't comment on this particular work; one that apparently very few here have even listened all the way through? You?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Bulldog said:


> Part of the problem is that they likely feel threatened that modernist music will take over.


That's ridiculous. Modern music "took over" well over a century ago. There isn't really an "avant garde" anymore. Part of the problem is that some -- maybe even most that pay any attention to it -- feel that art overall, at least in the "west", has been in decline for quite a while. It's not a question of "taking over". It's a feeling of regression and being condemned for noticing it and giving voice to it.

Now do I think that the answer is composing again in the style of Wagner or Mozart? Of course not, but don't try to convince me that much of the noise that we hear is some profound continuation within that same tradition. What it really seems to be is the sound of creative wells going empty. You can't speak in the musical language of Mozart and Wagner anymore without sounding derivative, but yet the would-be replacements have come up empty. A 5-hour string quartet seems to be trying to hide that barrenness with sheer mind-boggling and mind-numbing length.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

consuono said:


> That's ridiculous. Modern music "took over" well over a century ago. There isn't really an "avant garde" anymore. Part of the problem is that some -- maybe even most that pay any attention to it -- feel that art overall, at least in the "west", has been in decline for quite a while. It's not a question of "taking over". It's a feeling of regression and being condemned for noticing it and giving voice to it.
> 
> Now do I think that the answer is composing again in the style of Wagner or Mozart? Of course not, but don't try to convince me that much of the noise that we hear is some profound continuation within that same tradition. What it really seems to be is the sound of creative wells going empty. You can't speak in the musical language of Mozart and Wagner anymore without sounding derivative, but yet the would-be replacements have come up empty. A 5-hour string quartet seems to be trying to hide that barrenness with sheer mind-boggling and mind-numbing length.


What's stopping you from writing the kind of music you think is a proper continuation of Mozart and Wagner?

The fact is, unless you are ready to take on the role of composer, then you have no choice but to allow those with the ambition, talent, education, skill, and resources to fulfill that role. New classical music is being written.

Whether you like what they produce is irrelevant except to the extent that you need not purchase their CDs, or attend their concerts.

Other than that, all your complaining on this forum amounts to hot-air. Maybe one day your little balloon will fill up enough to carry you away.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> What's stopping you from writing the kind of music you think is a proper continuation of Mozart and Wagner?


For one thing I don't have talent as a composer. For another, as I said, writing music that's a continuation of Mozart and Wagner would be derivative. That's why we have atonality and putting screws through piano strings and playing basses with mallets and whatnot. It's _ different _.



> The fact is, unless you are ready to take on the role of composer, then you have no choice but to allow those with the ambition, talent, education, skill, and resources to fulfill that role. New classical music is being written.


Who's measuring talent and skill?


> Other than that, all your complaining on this forum amounts to hot-air. Maybe one day your little balloon will fill up enough to carry you away.


And maybe all your advocacy for "new music" amounts to the same. I have a little more generosity of spirit though than to wish that you disappear. Really open-minded of ya there. And tolerant.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

consuono said:


> For one thing I don't have talent as a composer.


Ah, I see. Pity, since you seem to have specific ideas about what kind of music ought to be being written today.



> Who's measuring talent and skill?


Everyone - we all weigh in by either supporting their music or not. Most of these composers were accepted into a music school of some kind, many from prestigious conservatories. In order to gain entry they had to demonstrate requisite skill and talent.

So who are you to question what they compose?

Oh, sure, here in this little corner of the Internet you can say whatever you wish - and even gather a few "Likes" for you posts. But TC is a small pond. Maybe you see yourself as a big frog. In any event, you can rail all you want about the dismal music being written by today's composers. You can't stop them from writing it, nor can you stop me or anyone from listening to it.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> Ah, I see. Pity, since you seem to have specific ideas about what kind of music ought to be being written today.


I have a clear idea of what I like and don't like.



> Everyone - we all weigh in by either supporting their music or not. Most of these composers were accepted into a music school of some kind, many from prestigious conservatories. In order to gain entry they had to demonstrate requisite skill and talent.
> 
> So who are you to question what they compose?
> 
> Oh, sure, here in this little corner of the Internet you can say whatever you wish - and even gather a few "Likes" for you posts. But TC is a small pond. Maybe you see yourself as a big frog. In any event, you can rail all you want about the dismal music being written by today's composers. You can't stop them from writing it, nor can you stop me or anyone from listening to it.


Well then looking at the minuscule audience for the music you advocate, the verdict would seem to be...unfavorable. Rail away as you wish.


> Oh, sure, here in this little corner of the Internet you can say whatever you wish


That must really burn you up. :lol: And no, I'm more a tadpole than a big frog.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Here we go again.

It always happens with threads like this one.

Discussions degenerate into personal attacks and the threads get closed down.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> Here we go again.
> 
> It always happens with threads like this one.
> 
> Discussions degenerate into personal attacks and the threads get closed down.


Tell me, arpeggio, who started with the personal attacks?


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

consuono said:


> Tell me, arpeggio, who started with the personal attacks?


If you feel that my behavior is inappropriate then file a complaint with the moderators, have my posts deleted and have me banned.

But you still have not answered my question.

Do you feel that string quartets should never program the Feldman _2nd String Quartet_?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> If you feel that my behavior is inappropriate then file a complaint with the moderators, have my posts deleted and have me banned.
> 
> But you still have not answered my question.
> 
> Do you feel that string quartets should never program the Feldman _2nd String Quartet_?


I didn't accuse you of anything. I've never reported any comment. String quartets should program whatever works they want.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I wonder if anyone here has been listening to the music. What struck me is how destabilizing it is, music which generates anxiety and doubt, sometimes even frantic.
> 
> Here's a random example, the thing's full of them!


 I find this is the case with this particular piece more than many others of his. It seems more fraught.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

A reminder to all participants in this thread about TC policies:

"Be polite to your fellow members. If you disagree with them, please state your opinion in a »civil« and respectful manner."

"Do not post comments about other members person or »posting style« on the forum (unless said comments are unmistakably positive). Argue opinions all you like but do not get personal and never resort to »ad homs«."


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> That's ridiculous. Modern music "took over" well over a century ago. There isn't really an "avant garde" anymore. Part of the problem is that some -- maybe even most that pay any attention to it -- feel that art overall, at least in the "west", has been in decline...A 5-hour string quartet seems to be trying to hide that barrenness with sheer mind-boggling and mind-numbing length.


 I can't understand how you can make such a blanket statement disregarding works based on something so arbitrary. I think Feldman is one of the most accessible composers of the last fifty years, despite the fact that he works in large scales. If he were only testing limits, I'd agree with you. I also find a lot of "modern" music hard to enjoy but I keep trying. There's isn't any true art without openness to transcendence. What is music for? Here in Japan where I live, you can hear Beethoven and Chopin every night of the week. To me, that's a worse kind of decline - when youth and creativity disappear and even young musicians here have a knee-jerk rejection of change and what is new. That's just as boring as an avant garde pianist I know who lives in a bubble of "academic" performance and doesn't seem open to audiences at all. 
again: I find Feldman to be quite accessible. I do have a hard time listening to the music in one go but I always come back to Feldman. Anyway, even if I fall asleep, I'm still hearing it in some way.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

consuono said:


> I didn't accuse you of anything. I've never reported any comment. String quartets should program whatever works they want.


Thank you. Since you acknowledge that string quartets can program what they want you can criticize this work to your hearts content.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

milk said:


> I can't understand how you can make such a blanket statement disregarding works based on something so arbitrary. I think Feldman is one of the most accessible composers of the last fifty years, despite the fact that he works in large scales. If he were only testing limits, I'd agree with you. I also find a lot of "modern" music hard to enjoy but I keep trying. There's isn't any true art without openness to transcendence. What is music for? *Here in Japan where I live, you can hear Beethoven and Chopin every night of the week. To me, that's a worse kind of decline - when youth and creativity disappear* and even young musicians here have a knee-jerk rejection of change and what is new. That's just as boring as an avant garde pianist I know who lives in a bubble of "academic" performance and doesn't seem open to audiences at all.
> again: I find Feldman to be quite accessible. I do have a hard time listening to the music in one go but I always come back to Feldman. Anyway, even if I fall asleep, I'm still hearing it in some way.


Japan is a beautiful country. Japan also has many noise music artists including Merzbow, which many consider to be avant-garde classical music. So I don't think having Beethoven and Chopin "every night" make creativity disappear. There is balance.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

milk said:


> Here in Japan where I live, you can hear Beethoven and Chopin every night of the week.


Isn't stuff like Hisaishi or Kuramoto also popular there?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> Thank you. Since you acknowledge that string quartets can program what they want you can criticize this work to your hearts content.


Uhhh...has anyone ever suggested that music like this should be banned? I don't recall seeing it since I've been reading this forum.


milk said:


> I can't understand how you can make such a blanket statement disregarding works based on something so arbitrary. I think Feldman is one of the most accessible composers of the last fifty years, despite the fact that he works in large scales.


If you don't like it, it's *dum de dum dum* _arbitrary._ I listened to quite a chunk of the thing, enough to know that it's not worth spending 5 hours of my life to hear.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

A lot of the discussion has emphasized the length of this string quartet 2 and there's been a lot of criticism of and skepticism regarding the length, but I think that this is misplaced.

Most of the works in the late Feldman style of the late 1970s and 1980s are around 30 to 90 minutes. They are all based on irregular repetition of cells or gestures, and slowly varying and exploring the palette of cells. All of them are quiet and meditative and invite you to their unique sound world. And the music, believe it or not, progresses over the course of time - there's a sense of emotional journey, albeit not a common practice or early 20th century emotional journey.

Some works include Piano and String Quartet, Why Patterns?, For John Cage, Bass Clarinet and Percussion, etc. The Piano and String Quartet is a particularly good one to start with 



. Shimmering and sensuous, and picks up an oh-so-delicate sense of quiet vigor in the last third of the work. It's like a silent joy.

If you listen to these works and enjoy them (granted, not everyone does), then it starts to practically become obvious that the late Feldman style could and should explore time scales longer than 90 minutes. You would want it and need it! And there are only a few late Feldman works that have a length longer than 90 minutes.

So I wouldn't focus on the reasonability or unreasonability of Feldman making a piece with the length of his string quartet 2, and rather focus on experiencing and understanding the musicality of his late works.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I for one would never listen to it. It can't be that good to justify the length of 5 hours. I could listen to Norma and two Bruckner symphonies in that time and still have a half hour to spare. You don't have to make everything like this:






But brevity has play a part eventually, in my opinion. Maybe this marking I'm drawing is arbitrary, but I feel like this discussion would be a lot different if it were 3 hours. But 5? Thats excessive


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> Japan is a beautiful country. Japan also has many noise music artists including Merzbow, which many consider to be avant-garde classical music. So I don't think having Beethoven and Chopin "every night" make creativity disappear. There is balance.


Maybe up in Tokyo there is more of that. I'm in Osaka. The person I know who performs contemporary music has a hard time of it. But one might find the same challenge anywhere, I don't know. I've a good friend whose spouse plays avant-garde music and doesn't easily find venues or make a living at it. This person seems really closed-minded in an odd way though. But I think Japan has become more insular over the last few decades. Most of my university students don't read books, for example, and the ones that like classical almost 100% like Chopin, maybe Mozart, never Bach and never heard of Feldman or Cage. I've not met more than one or two students in several decades here who's seen a Kurosawa movie or heard of, say, Bob Marley. My friend taught at an art college in Kyoto and the students couldn't mention any international contemporary artists. A contrasting insight might be to say that South Koreans travel and have more global mindset. When you walk in district one in Ho Chi Minh City, students will approach you and ask to chat so as to practice their English. They'll even ask you for book recommendations once in a while (and they're also learning Japanese). If I ask my Japanese students, "is Japan a powerful country? Is it influential?" Many/most will say "no." Recently I have Vietnamese, Nepalese and Indonesian students in Japan studying English (a huge positive change). Of course they'll roll their eyes at such naïveté, knowing that Japan is one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. Anyway, sorry for the non-sequitur/rant.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

consuono said:


> Uhhh...has anyone ever suggested that music like this should be banned? I don't recall seeing it since I've been reading this forum.


I have been a member of this forum for ten years,

In the past when members have asked me this question and I had taken the trouble of going through thousands of post in this forum to find examples or I have noted my personal experiences as a musician, the member then started to pick fights with me over the posts. Frequently the members who wrote the post are offended.

I am no longer interested in playing these games.

I will give you a book which makes this case: _The Agony of Modern Music_ by Henry Pleasants.

I really do not know what else I can say about this issue.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

milk said:


> Maybe up in Tokyo there is more of that. I'm in Osaka. The person I know who performs contemporary music has a hard time of it. But one might find the same challenge anywhere, I don't know. I've a good friend whose spouse plays avant-garde music and doesn't easily find venues or make a living at it. This person seems really closed-minded in an odd way though. But I think Japan has become more insular over the last few decades. Most of my university students don't read books, for example, and the ones that like classical almost 100% like Chopin, maybe Mozart, never Bach and never heard of Feldman or Cage. I've not met more than one or two students in several decades here who's seen a Kurosawa movie or heard of, say, Bob Marley. My friend taught at an art college in Kyoto and the students couldn't mention any international contemporary artists. A contrasting insight might be to say that South Koreans travel and have more global mindset. When you walk in district one in Ho Chi Minh City, students will approach you and ask to chat so as to practice their English. They'll even ask you for book recommendations once in a while (and they're also learning Japanese). If I ask my Japanese students, "is Japan a powerful country? Is it influential?" Many/most will say "no." Recently I have Vietnamese, Nepalese and Indonesian students in Japan studying English (a huge positive change). Of course they'll roll their eyes at such naïveté, knowing that Japan is one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. Anyway, sorry for the non-sequitur/rant.


Interesting about "only Chopin". I would have thought Bach be featured highly given there is The Bach Collegium, Japan. And only "maybe Mozart", well I find this all surprising, perhaps my opinion is Tokyo-centric. I'm not surprised about Feldman or Cage or any of those type of avant-garde composers.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

ArtMusic said:


> Interesting about "only Chopin". I would have thought Bach be featured highly given there is The Bach Collegium, Japan. And only "maybe Mozart", well I find this all surprising, perhaps my opinion is Tokyo-centric. I'm not surprised about Feldman or Cage or any of those type of avant-garde composers.


Nobody in Japan knows who Masaaki Suzuki is. None of my colleagues even. Although I did see him perform here on a copy of a HIP organ. Sweelinck! It was transporting and highly memorable. I'm not knocking Chopin, but there's a certain very mainstream idea of classical music that Chopin fits. And they probably all learn the same pieces. Bach, on the other hand, hmm...I think Bach is seen as severe or something. A lot of people I come across can conjure up Chopin or Mozart in their minds. I mean the music. For some reason, Bach seems to require a bit more from a person. Not all of Chopin or all of Mozart. I guess I mean what people are trained to like. Japan is high on training.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

milk said:


> Nobody in Japan knows who Masaaki Suzuki is. None of my colleagues even. Although I did see him perform here on a copy of a HIP organ. Sweelinck! It was transporting and highly memorable. I'm not knocking Chopin, but there's a certain very mainstream idea of classical music that Chopin fits. And they probably all learn the same pieces. Bach, on the other hand, hmm...I think Bach is seen as severe or something. A lot of people I come across can conjure up Chopin or Mozart in their minds. I mean the music. For some reason, Bach seems to require a bit more from a person. Not all of Chopin or all of Mozart. I guess I mean what people are trained to like. Japan is high on training.


I understand what you are saying. I think your opinion is more on the general population. I disagree nobody knows who Masaki Suzuki is. He and The Bach Collegium, Japan do have concerts in Tokyo. But I can see why Chopin and Mozart practice might fit the bill for the typical student learning how to play the piano. But that's wonderful, how much do I know as a typical westerner (or my fellow typical friends) of Japanese classical/traditional music? Nothing, I am sorry to say, I know nothing about Japanese classical/traditional music. So practicing "only" Chopin and Mozart are streets ahead.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> I have been a member of this forum for ten years,
> 
> In the past when members have asked me this question and I had taken the trouble of going through thousands of post in this forum to find examples or I have noted my personal experiences as a musician, the member then started to pick fights with me over the posts. Frequently the members who wrote the post are offended.
> 
> ...


I looked him up online and I can't find where he recommended banning of music, and I still haven't seen examples of anyone in these recent debates suggesting that either...although yeah I can imagine someone in 2011 or 2014 might have. Anyway this Pleasants quote from the Wikipedia article sounds spot on to me:

"Serious music is a dead art. The vein which for 300 years offered a seemingly inexhaustible yield of beautiful music has run out. What we know as modern music is the noise made by deluded speculators picking through its slag pile."


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

consuono said:


> Anyway this Pleasants quote from the Wikipedia article sounds spot on to me:
> 
> "Serious music is a dead art. The vein which for 300 years offered a seemingly inexhaustible yield of beautiful music has run out. What we know as modern music is the noise made by deluded speculators picking through its slag pile."


Thanks for that preview. Won't have to waste anytime reading Mr. Pleasant's book.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

gregorx said:


> Thanks for that preview. Won't have to waste anytime reading Mr. Pleasant's book.


I don't know if it's even in print anymore, which shows you which way the wind blows.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Some posts have been deleted.

*Argue opinions all you like but do not get personal.*


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

I've been listening to String Quartet (1979) which clocks in at a modest 78 minutes (or about as long as a Mahler symphony). As with SQ2 it's a one movement piece. Never a dull moment. I've been through about half of SQ2 and I'm sure my concentration waned at times, but I don't know what I could concentrate on for over five hours without taking a break. Besides, who says I have to "concentrate" when I listen to music. Concentration is a mental discipline that I employ when it suits me. It's not necessary to enjoy Feldman's SQ2.

That's why, to me, this issue of a work being too long - and therefore not "concentratable" (if I may make up a word) - is a false premise. Nobody seems to have this problem with other long works. _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg _ comes in at over 5 hours. I'm not a Wagner fan, but I believe that that's not only a badge of honor for those who do like Wagner, but it's part of what makes his opera's what they are. If it's not long, it's not Wagner.

So Feldman composes a piece for four musicians that's as long as an opera but without the costumes, the orchestra, the elaborate stage sets, and the breaks between acts so the well heeled can step outside for a cigarette. Kind of refreshing.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

gregorx said:


> I've been listening to String Quartet (1979) which clocks in at a modest 78 minutes (or about as long as a Mahler symphony). As with SQ2 it's a one movement piece. Never a dull moment. I've been through about half of SQ2 and I'm sure my concentration waned at times, but I don't know what I could concentrate on for over five hours without taking a break. Besides, who says I have to "concentrate" when I listen to music. Concentration is a mental discipline that I employ when it suits me. It's not necessary to enjoy Feldman's SQ2.
> 
> That's why, to me, this issue of a work being too long - and therefore not "concentratable" (if I may make up a word) - is a false premise. Nobody seems to have this problem with other long works. _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg _ comes in at over 5 hours. I'm not a Wagner fan, but I believe that that's not only a badge of honor for those who do like Wagner, but it's part of what makes his opera's what they are. If it's not long, it's not Wagner.
> 
> So Feldman composes a piece for four musicians that's as long as an opera but without the costumes, the orchestra, the elaborate stage sets, and the breaks between acts so the well heeled can step outside for a cigarette. Kind of refreshing.


I don't follow the reasoning. If Wagner is overlong, how does that make Feldman's excesses acceptable?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

gregorx said:


> I've been listening to String Quartet (1979) which clocks in at a modest 78 minutes (or about as long as a Mahler symphony). As with SQ2 it's a one movement piece. Never a dull moment. I've been through about half of SQ2 and I'm sure my concentration waned at times, but I don't know what I could concentrate on for over five hours without taking a break. Besides, who says I have to "concentrate" when I listen to music. Concentration is a mental discipline that I employ when it suits me. It's not necessary to enjoy Feldman's SQ2.
> 
> That's why, to me, this issue of a work being too long - and therefore not "concentratable" (if I may make up a word) - is a false premise. Nobody seems to have this problem with other long works. _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg _ comes in at over 5 hours. I'm not a Wagner fan, but I believe that that's not only a badge of honor for those who do like Wagner, but it's part of what makes his opera's what they are. If it's not long, it's not Wagner.
> 
> So Feldman composes a piece for four musicians that's as long as an opera but without the costumes, the orchestra, the elaborate stage sets, and the breaks between acts so the well heeled can step outside for a cigarette. Kind of refreshing.


I agree with you. The work can be experienced in any manner a listener wishes, of course for the performers it poses a unique challenge.

I applaud Feldman for this work, for having the courage to put it out there knowing that it would come under attack. However, the 20th century, and now the 21st century, has been about expanding the idea of what is possible for composers. This is, IMO, the most exciting thing about contemporary music.

The last thing I wish for composers to do is to attempt to repeat what has been done before.

It is refreshing.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> The last thing I wish for composers to do is to attempt to repeat what has been done before.


Which of course is why Feldman wrote a *string quartet*, which form goes back to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. I would agree though that the link is in name and form only, to maintain the illusion of continuity with tradition.


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## gregorx (Jan 25, 2020)

consuono said:


> I don't follow the reasoning. If Wagner is overlong, how does that make Feldman's excesses acceptable?


Well, first of all, if it's excessive on Feldman's part, then it's excessive on Wagner's part. What I'm saying is that it's not the criteria for evaluating a work, which is the premise of this thread. "Have you or do you think you would find to difficult to concentrate for over five hours? If not, then it would be good to read your thoughts on why/how." The OP could have asked the same thing about a Wagner opera. Then it would have been a completely different discussion and that discussion wouldn't be going after Wagner and 19th century opera.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

gregorx said:


> Well, first of all, if it's excessive on Feldman's part, then it's excessive on Wagner's part. What I'm saying is that it's not the criteria for evaluating a work, which is the premise of this thread. "Have you or do you think you would find to difficult to concentrate for over five hours? If not, then it would be good to read your thoughts on why/how." The OP could have asked the same thing about a Wagner opera. Then it would have been a completely different discussion and that discussion wouldn't be going after Wagner and 19th century opera.


OK....so where does the refreshment come in?

If I write a set of five piano preludes and each prelude is one hour long, I don't see how that's "refreshing" in itself just because Meistersinger goes on for hours.

By the way, Wagner has been criticized/discussed from many angles here from what I can tell.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Well the difference between Maestersinger and the quartet is that in the former there's a story to be told. There's a way of making sense of the length of the opera by arguing that it needs to be more or less that long to tell the story well. I'm not saying this argument would be convincing, I don't know, I've not thought about it. I am saying that it's a way into the problem.

But the quartet doesn't tell a story as far as I know, and its length makes it challenging. Here we are, interested enough in music to engage in this discussion, scattered across all four corners of the globe, and yet, as far as I can see, only one person here has heard the whole quartet and no one has heard it in one session from start to end. So it does invite the question, why so long? Why have this barrier to admission, as it were?

The criticism people have made here is that it's self indulgent, _prima facie_ that's a reasonably thing to say unless we can argue that the length is justified by something other than the composer's ego.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Well the difference between Maestersinger and the quartet is that in the former there's a story to be told. There's a way of making sense of the length of the opera by arguing that it needs to be more or less that long to tell the story well. I'm not saying this argument would be convincing, I don't know, I've not thought about it. I am saying that it's a way into the problem.
> 
> But the quartet doesn't tell a story as far as I know, and its length makes it challenging, so it does invite the question, why so long?
> 
> The criticism people have made here is that it's self indulgent, _prima facie_ that's a reasonably thing to say unless we can argue that the length is justified by something other than the composer's ego.


Well I'd have to agree that taking in an entire Wagner opera er music drama can be a tough slog.


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## OperaChic (Aug 26, 2015)

consuono said:


> Well I'd have to agree that taking in an entire Wagner opera er music drama can be a tough slog.


That's not at all what he was saying.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

gregorx said:


> Well, first of all, if it's excessive on Feldman's part, then it's excessive on Wagner's part. What I'm saying is that it's not the criteria for evaluating a work, which is the premise of this thread. "Have you or do you think you would find to difficult to concentrate for over five hours? If not, then it would be good to read your thoughts on why/how." The OP could have asked the same thing about a Wagner opera. Then it would have been a completely different discussion and that discussion wouldn't be going after Wagner and 19th century opera.


I think it comes down to a listener's interest in the composer's music in general. I am more likely to listen to 6 hours of Feldman than Wagner because I am more of a fan of Feldman than Wagner. Also, Feldman's style is conducive to extended listening since it sets up a meditative ambiance, whereas Wagner's dramatic works demand a more direct attentive posture.

But for me Wagner's style is a problem, I just don't enjoy that large Romantic orchestral style. But Feldman's spare, transparent textures with endlessly variation of motivic gestures is more to my liking.

There are other long works often programmed, the Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Parititas are performed completely (Gidon Kremer does this from time to time), lasting about two and a half hours, one book of the entire Well-Tempered Clavier is often listened to in one sitting.

I don't think judging a work because of its length is a legitimate issue other than on a personal level.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

OperaChic said:


> That's not at all what he was saying.


No, there are people who say that, and I would agree with them. And therefore it's what I was saying.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> I don't think judging a work because of its length is a legitimate issue other than on a personal level.


You've composed music, I think. How do you know when to stop, when the composition is done?

The claim is that Feldman made a bad call about that, he wasn't very good at deciding when to stop. And in the light of not knowing whether there are structural properties of the music which lead to its length, or not knowing what other objectives the composer may have had, it seems to me like a pretty obvious point.

It does seem interesting that there was a fashion for very long instrumental works in America in the last half of the 20th century - Feldman, La Mont Young, Johnson, Glass, probably others. All these are minimalist in some sense too, they have completely broken the link between the scale of the work and the gestures used to construct it.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

> There are other long works often programmed, the Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Parititas are performed completely (Gidon Kremer does this from time to time), lasting about two and a half hours, one book of the entire Well-Tempered Clavier is often listened to in one sitting.


The thing is, all the above roughly equal one string quartet. Which is more worthwhile? Also there's not much evidence that Bach intended these entire cycles to be taken in at one sitting, although there's nothing wrong in doing so.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Well the difference between Maestersinger and the quartet is that in the former there's a story to be told. There's a way of making sense of the length of the opera by arguing that it needs to be more or less that long to tell the story well. I'm not saying this argument would be convincing, I don't know, I've not thought about it. I am saying that it's a way into the problem.
> 
> But the quartet doesn't tell a story as far as I know, and its length makes it challenging. Here we are, interested enough in music to engage in this discussion, scattered across all four corners of the globe, and yet, as far as I can see, only one person here has heard the whole quartet and no one has heard it in one session from start to end. So it does invite the question, why so long? Why have this barrier to admission, as it were?
> 
> The criticism people have made here is that it's self indulgent, _prima facie_ that's a reasonably thing to say unless we can argue that the length is justified by something other than the composer's ego.


We've discussed Feldman's possible rationale, and I do not think it was ego. He does allow fewer repeats in order to shorten the work - but I think he was after a new kind of concert experience which could only be achieved with this length.

I also think the work is more accessible in a live setting as opposed to a recording: you have the visual experience of seeing the performers, the audience adds a dimension, and you are more likely to stay put and hear it entirely. It is so easy to turn off a recording and easier for your mind to wander listening in your living room.


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## OperaChic (Aug 26, 2015)

consuono said:


> No, there are people who say that, and I would agree with them. And therefore it's what I was saying.


And I would say Wagner takes just as long as he needs to to accomplish his dramatic and thematic goals.

The thing is, whether or you or anyone else finds Wagner overlong (and there are people who find operas by other composers that are half as long overlong), Wagner's operas are regularly experienced in their entirety by concert goers and listeners. especially by fans of his. A string quartet is not an opera however, and just like it's a different matter watching a 5 hour movie or staring at a painting for 5 hours, it seems very few people have the desire or ability to experience Feldman's quartet in its entirety, even otherwise fans of his music. If people will not or cannot experience a work as intended, it does perhaps call into question the effectiveness of the piece.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

OperaChic said:


> And I would say Wagner takes just as long as he needs to to accomplish his dramatic and thematic goals.
> 
> The thing is, whether or you or anyone else finds Wagner overlong (and there are people who find operas by other composers that are half as long overlong), Wagner's operas are regularly experienced in their entirety by concert goers and listeners. especially by fans of his. A string quartet is not an opera however, and just like it's a different matter watching a 5 hour movie or staring at a painting for 5 hours, it seems very few people have the desire or ability to experience Feldman's quartet in its entirety, even otherwise fans of his music. If people will not or cannot experience a work as intended, it does perhaps call into question the effectiveness of the piece.


Well it depends on the content. I can take in 5 hours of Bach or a 5 hour Wagner opera a lot more easily than I can 5 hours of ambient sounds from 4 string players.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

OperaChic said:


> And I would say Wagner takes just as long as he needs to to accomplish his dramatic and thematic goals.
> 
> The thing is, whether or you or anyone else finds Wagner overlong (and there are people who find operas by other composers that are half as long overlong), Wagner's operas are regularly experienced in their entirety by concert goers and listeners. especially by fans of his. A string quartet is not an opera however, and just like it's a different matter watching a 5 hour movie or staring at a painting for 5 hours, it seems very few people have the desire or ability to experience Feldman's quartet in its entirety, even otherwise fans of his music. If people will not or cannot experience a work as intended, it does perhaps call into question the effectiveness of the piece.


Be careful about this. Just like Wagner operas sell out, so do Feldman quartets. At least, that was my experience in London when this one was last performed. I'm pretty quick in buying tickets but this one sold out too quick for me.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Be careful about this. Just like Wagner operas sell out, so do Feldman quartets. At least, that was my experience in London when this one was last performed. I'm pretty quick in buying tickets but this one sold out too quick for me.


Well what was the venue? From what I understand there's a Bayreuth waiting list that goes on for years.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> We've discussed Feldman's possible rationale, and I do not think it was ego. He does allow fewer repeats in order to shorten the work - but I think he was after a new kind of concert experience which could only be achieved with this length.
> 
> I also think the work is more accessible in a live setting as opposed to a recording: you have the visual experience of seeing the performers, the audience adds a dimension, and you are more likely to stay put and hear it entirely. It is so easy to turn off a recording and easier for your mind to wander listening in your living room.


Well I'd like to hear more about this new kind of experience, and see whether it makes sense or not. By the way, not everyone agrees with you about live being better, just because in the live context, there are inevitable distractions. That was my experience with Feldman's piano music, for example.

The experience thing is interesting though, because it makes you think about what composers take themselves to be, what they think they are doing.


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## OperaChic (Aug 26, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Be careful about this. Just like Wagner operas sell out, so do Feldman quartets. At least, that was my experience in London when this one was last performed. I'm pretty quick in buying tickets but this one sold out too quick for me.


Do you think that those who buy tickets stay for the entire 5 hour performance? I'm genuinely curious.

I'm actually a fan of some of Feldman's music myself, but it seems that there are only 2 people who have listened to this work in its entirety without having their mind wander that have taken this poll, and I would imagine those statistics would hold up even when polling a larger audience.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> Well what was the venue? From what I understand there's a Bayreuth waiting list that goes on for years.


Tate Modern. But yes, Wagner's main operas always sell out, and Bayreuth is, of course, a venue with cachet.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

OperaChic said:


> Do you think that those who buy tickets stay for the entire 5 hour performance? I'm genuinely curious.
> 
> I'm actually a fan of some of Feldman's music myself, but it seems that there are only 2 people who have listened to this work in its entirety without having their mind wander that have taken this poll, and I would imagine those statistics would hold up even when polling a larger audience.


I think it's hard to leave once you're in there.

The ideal thing would be to have a bar, and arrange the seating so that people could get up, stretch their legs, have a drink etc. And maybe a special tee shirt free gift for people who stay for the duration. I've been to very long concerts like that, three hours plus without a break. How consistent this is with what Feldman wanted, and how much that matters anyway, is a moot point.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

consuono said:


> Well it depends on the content. I can take in 5 hours of Bach or a 5 hour Wagner opera a lot more easily than I can 5 hours of ambient sounds from 4 string players.


Let's get this settled please. Feldman's quartet is not ambient, it's not Eno, it's not music for airports. A lot of things happen during its length and they come at you and surprise you sometimes in very direct ways.

Also another thing about something being "overlong" or not. It depends entirely on the quality of the music or the piece of art in question, what it is setting itself up to do (both extrinsically and intrinsically, but more of the latter) and of course the individual's enjoyment.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Well I'd like to hear more about this new kind of experience, and see whether it makes sense or not. By the way, not everyone agrees with you about live being better, just because in the live context, there are inevitable distractions. That was my experience with Feldman's piano music, for example.
> 
> The experience thing is interesting though, because it makes you think about what composers take themselves to be, what they think they are doing.


I wish I could find the quote, but I do remember reading something to the effect that Feldman discovered that after a certain amount of time and exposure to the music a person's sensory experience becomes transcendent of his normal awake state. I think it is akin to meditation, i.e. quieting the mind, emptying your mind of thought as much as possible and realizing a state different from the normal sensory status.



Mandryka said:


> I think it's hard to leave once you're in there.
> 
> The ideal thing would be to have a bar, and arrange the seating so that people could get up, stretch their legs, have a drink etc. And maybe a special tee shirt free gift for people who stay for the duration. I've been to very long concerts like that, three hours plus without a break. How consistent this is with what Feldman wanted, and how much that matters anyway, is a moot point.


I get where you are going with this, and there is no reason people could not get up and walk around the venue in any event. But, I think the bar would present extraneous sounds and talking that would be distracting.

I am not sure if you were being 100% serious with your post ... tee shirts? ... "I survived Feldman's 2nd String Quartet and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt"?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> Let's get this settled please. Feldman's quartet is not ambient, it's not Eno, it's not music for airports. A lot of things happen during its length and they come at you and surprise you sometimes in very direct ways.
> ...


That also happens in Brian Eno's _Another Green World,_ but it clocks in at around 40 minutes.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

gregorx said:


> I've been listening to String Quartet (1979) which clocks in at a modest 78 minutes (or about as long as a Mahler symphony). As with SQ2 it's a one movement piece. Never a dull moment. I've been through about half of SQ2 and I'm sure my concentration waned at times, but I don't know what I could concentrate on for over five hours without taking a break. Besides, who says I have to "concentrate" when I listen to music. Concentration is a mental discipline that I employ when it suits me. It's not necessary to enjoy Feldman's SQ2.
> 
> That's why, to me, this issue of a work being too long - and therefore not "concentratable" (if I may make up a word) - is a false premise. Nobody seems to have this problem with other long works. _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg _ comes in at over 5 hours. I'm not a Wagner fan, but I believe that that's not only a badge of honor for those who do like Wagner, but it's part of what makes his opera's what they are. If it's not long, it's not Wagner.
> 
> So Feldman composes a piece for four musicians that's as long as an opera but without the costumes, the orchestra, the elaborate stage sets, and the breaks between acts so the well heeled can step outside for a cigarette. Kind of refreshing.


A comparison of a 'traditional' opera with an avant-garde string quartet hardly makes sense, but nice try in that last paragraph. Die Meistersinger is usually less than 5 hours and the breaks between Acts actually serve a purpose more than stepping outside for a cigarette. Btw, how many people are stepping outside for a cigarette these days?


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

consuono said:


> That also happens in Brian Eno's _Another Green World,_ but it clocks in at around 40 minutes.


Another Green World is not fully ambient, it has more song-like qualities. I think that William Basinski's _The Disintegration Loops_ is what you imagine Feldman's quartet is.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I Feldman worth it being concentrated upon? I always thought about his music as background music to play while working and concentrating on something else


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> Another Green World is not fully ambient, it has more song-like qualities. I think that William Basinski's _The Disintegration Loops_ is what you imagine Feldman's quartet is.


What's so bad about "ambient music"? Most modern music concentrates more on "sound worlds" and "soundscapes" anyway which to me is the essence of "ambient music".


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Jacck said:


> I Feldman worth it being concentrated upon? I always thought about his music as background music to play while working and concentrating on something else


Yes, I think so. The _Piano & String Quartet_ posted earlier does that well. I have not listened to it entirely but it reminded me of wondering through an avant-garde art museum somehow when I listened to the first five minutes of it.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Performing Contemporary Music*

I want to apologize to the members because I have been off in this thread.

I forgot that I used to bookmark interesting posts. I reviewed my bookmarks and found a poll which asked whether or not orchestras or ensembles should perform contemporary music. One of the choices was, "never (unless it's composed in an "old style")".

Only a small number of members selected "never". Some of them are still active.

I hesitate to provide a link to the poll because I think the overall results would aggravate the situation.

If a person is really curious they can easily do a search and find the poll.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> That also happens in Brian Eno's _Another Green World,_ but it clocks in at around 40 minutes.


Another Green World is a pop album - and a very good one at that.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Jacck said:


> I Feldman worth it being concentrated upon? I always thought about his music as background music to play while working and concentrating on something else


That's how I think of Mozart.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> I want to apologize to the members because I have been off in this thread.
> 
> I forgot that I used to bookmark interesting posts. I reviewed my bookmarks and found a poll which asked whether or not orchestras or ensembles should perform contemporary music. One of the choices was, "never (unless it's composed in an "old style")".
> 
> ...


And it hurts your feelings that a small number of respondents say contemporary music should never be performed? They're just expressing their preference. Some would probably say that Wagner should never be performed. Or Bruckner, or Haydn or just about anybody. And given the way that contemporary music has to lead off for warhorses or be sandwiched between them on programs, the sentiment is probably not rare. Ensembles should play whatever they want, but then nobody's required to listen or like it.


> Another Green World is a pop album - and a very good one at that.


What exactly is the difference?


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> And it hurts your feelings that a small number of respondents say contemporary music should never be performed? They're just expressing their preference. Some would probably say that Wagner should never be performed. Or Bruckner, or Haydn or just about anybody. And given the way that contemporary music has to lead off for warhorses or be sandwiched between them on programs, the sentiment is probably not rare. Ensembles should play whatever they want, but then nobody's required to listen or like it.
> What exactly is the difference?


Another Green World has songs with lyrics like, "I'll Come Running," and, "St Elmo's Fire." They're like 3 minutes or thereabouts. It also has some instrumentals which maybe you could describe as miniature soundscapes. Eno's ambient music like, "Music For Airports" are much longer pieces designed for environments. They're fairly static and I don't think the listener is expected to experience any changes or surprises. My favorite Eno are the one's he did with Harold Budd. I'd also describe those more as short soundscapes.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

milk said:


> Another Green World has songs with lyrics like, "I'll Come Running," and, "St Elmo's Fire." They're like 3 minutes or thereabouts. It also has some instrumentals which maybe you could describe as miniature soundscapes. Eno's ambient music like, "Music For Airports" are much longer pieces designed for environments. They're fairly static and I don't think the listener is expected to experience any changes or surprises. My favorite Eno are the one's he did with Harold Budd. I'd also describe those more as short soundscapes.


Thursday Afternoon is a fully ambient Eno work that lasts about an hour. You could put that on all day and never notice it. Feldman's music isn't comparable to Eno IMO because Feldman's music is so highly complex, though I know Eno was influenced by Cage and Feldman. I can make music like Eno. It's not that hard. I can't make music like Feldman. No one can.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Earlier in this thread I related real life experiences I had of people trying to ban contemporary music including an incident where a friend of mine was fired from being the director on an orchestra because he programmed modern music. Consuono claimed that he never found examples of people wanting to ban contemporary music among the forums members. Now I found an example of members of this forum who are intolerant of contemporary music. I have a suspicion that if I found a hundred examples:

I am the one who is intolerant.
I am the one who is overly sensitive.

Consuono, you win


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

arpeggio said:


> ^^^
> Earlier in this thread I related real life experiences I had of people trying to ban contemporary music including an incident where a friend of mine was fired from being the director on an orchestra because he programmed modern music. You practically called me a liar because you claimed that you never found examples of people wanting to ban contemporary music among the forums members. Now I found an example of members of this forum who are intolerant of contemporary music. ...


Read my comment again. i said that in these little debates on the subject in which we took part, I never saw one comment calling for banning modern music. Now if you saw something back in 2015 or 2012 that traumatized you, I'm sorry for that. But I haven't seen it. As for your friend being fired, I'd have to have the whole story.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

milk said:


> I can make music like Eno. It's not that hard.


Are you doing it? If not, why not?


> I can't make music like Feldman. No one can.


All fans say that.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> Are you doing it? If not, why not?
> 
> All fans say that.


Yeah, I did tons of it. I could link you to my YouTube page but I think most of my music is not very good.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

consuono said:


> Read my comment again. i said that in these little debates on the subject in which we took part, I never saw one comment calling for banning modern music. Now if you saw something back in 2015 or 2012 that traumatized you, I'm sorry for that. But I haven't seen it. As for your friend being fired, I'd have to have the whole story.


Now I am traumatized


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

milk said:


> Yeah, I did tons of it. I could link you to my YouTube page but I think most of my music is not very good.


Well you be honest I don't think Eno is all that good either. Link to your page. I won't ridicule or insult your work. Your work's probably a lot better than you think.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

There sure are a lot of lengthy pro- and anti-modernist threads at TC. For me, there is no avoiding that western society, and then nearly the entire global community, underwent a massive and permanent transformation in the 20th century, imo due largely to what is sometimes called the "technological revolution" and the companion phenomenon of globalization. However one might admire or even yearn for a return to the aesthetic values and conventions of earlier centuries, I see no point in attempting to campaign for some general consensus on the rejection of the values and conventions of our current society, which is what many endlessly repetitive modern music critics here seem to be trying to do. We are all here typing on the internet, and doing Zoom meetings if not driving and flying all over the world. Our world is the modern world.

Morton Feldman's string quartet, as well as several of the other works mentioned here, reflect the modern society that created them in various ways, as art always does. They also reflect the artistic traditions of earlier centuries in many ways. Again, as art always does. The question I ask with such works is, do they achieve or convey what the artist sought to achieve or convey, in an effective, convincing way? For me, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are awesome achievements, and the answer is very much yes. While I don't generally have as keen an interest in the music of Morton Feldman, his too is a significant achievement. All of these works have had long term ripple effects on our culture that eventually may be more significant and lasting than the works themselves.

Despite all that, it remains likely that none of these works will be aesthetically pleasing to one who prefers his or her art strictly to adhere to the aesthetics of earlier centuries. That is a legitimate point of view or taste that was common in previous centuries as well. But these endless polls, campaigns or arguments intended to establish the validity or correctness of that point of view will get no one anywhere. In fact, those who summarily reject the aesthetics of earlier centuries, something I certainly don't do as a lifelong fan of the Bach through Brahms boys, will always have the upper hand in such debates over those who reject the modern aesthetic, in at least one sense (though I think these debates generally are pointless), as there is no avoiding that the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and now even the 20th century, are over, and we live in another world.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Do people think this quartet is deep or shallow? Does Feldman just present sounds for us to relish their surfaces, like Warhol presents Campbell’s soup cans for us to look at? Or is the value of the music somewhere else?


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

fluteman said:


> There sure are a lot of lengthy pro- and anti-modernist threads at TC. For me, there is no avoiding that western society, and then nearly the entire global community, underwent a massive and permanent transformation in the 20th century, imo due largely to what is sometimes called the "technological revolution" and the companion phenomenon of globalization. However one might admire or even yearn for a return to the aesthetic values and conventions of earlier centuries, I see no point in attempting to campaign for some general consensus on the rejection of the values and conventions of our current society, which is what many endlessly repetitive modern music critics here seem to be trying to do. We are all here typing on the internet, and doing Zoom meetings if not driving and flying all over the world. Our world is the modern world. ...


I think you have put the case for engaging musically with the world 'of today very well. The thing is, some aspects of "contemporary" music have puzzled listeners for over 100 years now, including me. On the other hand I'm also a composer. A couple of years ago one of my more challenging pieces was given an excellent performance at a chamber music series. At the intermission and after the concert a number of people came up to me and showed a real interest in the piece. I credit the performers in this case. Then I received a copy of the presenting organization's newsletter. The report on my piece was dismissive and rather nasty -- it wasn't a very long composition and I don't know why this person was so negative. But over the years I've learned to accept the existence of "them" -- that is, rigid people who let fly at any music that is somewhat contemporary and different. I've had enough successes not to be perturbed by this report, but it just shows how wide the gap still is between composers and audiences.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Do people think this quartet is deep or shallow? Does Feldman just present sounds for us to relish their surfaces, like Warhol presents Campbell's soup cans for us to look at? Or is the value of the music somewhere else?


The value of the SQ is supposed to appear to you eventually after you immerse yourself to its length and repetition. It's not about taking it from a start and seeing the development before reaching the end like "conventional" classical music.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Do people think this quartet is deep or shallow? Does Feldman just present sounds for us to relish their surfaces, like Warhol presents Campbell's soup cans for us to look at? Or is the value of the music somewhere else?


I don't know. Recently I read that one of Ligeti's "gradually evolving" sound pieces -- it is either _Atmospheres_ or _Lontano_, is actually made up of canons written at very close distances. That changes my reaction, just as knowing even a little of the structure in Feldman's 2nd quartet would. When I attended the premiere there were a number of aspects of the event that were really off-putting.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I guess what I’m getting at is this. It’s obvious that Feldman is showing us a sequence of modules, units with different characters. That sounds very much like what Warhol did. Is the second quartet pop art music?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Roger Knox said:


> I don't know. Recently I read that one of Ligeti's "gradually evolving" sound pieces -- it is either _Atmospheres_ or _Lontano_, is actually made up of canons written at very close distances. That changes my reaction, just as knowing even a little of the structure in Feldman's 2nd quartet would. When I attended the premiere there were a number of aspects of the event that were really off-putting.


It was Atmospheres (actually both!). Personally I don't feel Feldman is even half the composer Ligeti was. I feel he puts together some nice sounds, but it doesn't go anywhere. Same with this work (almost 5 hours).


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I guess what I'm getting at is this. It's obvious that Feldman is showing us a sequence of modules, units with different characters. That sounds very much like what Warhol did. Is the second quartet pop art music?


I don't think it is pop art music. I think the work is intended to engage the listener at a deep level. Feldman was heavily engaged in the visual arts, with people like Mark Rothko, and theorized extensively about the relation of his music to certain artists' work. I don't know if he had any connection with Warhol.

And now I have a question. Do you know if Feldman had any connection to Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening? Her work engages more with sound in the world, I believe, than with musical tone.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I guess what I'm getting at is this. It's obvious that Feldman is showing us a sequence of modules, units with different characters. That sounds very much like what Warhol did. Is the second quartet pop art music?


I don't think it is pop art. I think the work is intended to engage the listener at a deep level. Feldman was heavily engaged in the visual arts, with people like Mark Rothko, and theorized about the relation of his music to certain artists' work. I don't know if he had any connection with Warhol.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> I voted "who cares". I mean, yes, it _s_ *hard to concentrate for 5-6 hours on Feldman's string quartet no.2, but that's a comment on human nature rather than a problem with the music itself* (I presume the point of this poll is to denigrate the music). If the slow movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony lasted 5-6 hours nobody could concentrate on that either.


It's not either/or. It's tough to concentrate on anything for 5-6 hours. Feldman's music certainly doesn't help. True, Trying to listen to a 5-6 hour version of the Adagio in LvB's 9th would be a challenge, but it would be much easier for most people than this piece.

This is just more of the Emperor's New Clothes as far as I can tell. If you genuinely enjoy this, then all I have to say is rock-on. Keep on enjoying!

V


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> Well you be honest I don't think Eno is all that good either. Link to your page. I won't ridicule or insult your work. Your work's probably a lot better than you think.


I've done a lot of wacky experiments over the years. I even went through a period where I sampled Harry Partch's instruments and tried to make something new out of them. None of it is genius. https://youtube.com/user/begshallots


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Roger Knox said:


> I don't think it is pop art music. I think the work is intended to engage the listener at a deep level. Feldman was heavily engaged in the visual arts, with people like Mark Rothko, and theorized extensively about the relation of his music to certain artists' work. I don't know if he had any connection with Warhol.
> 
> And now I have a question. Do you know if Feldman had any connection to Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening? Her work engages more with sound in the world, I believe, than with musical tone.


I've never read any comments relating Oliveiros or Feldman. I see, maybe mistakenly, Oliveiros as a much more experimental composer than Feldman, at least at the time he was writing these long form pieces.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

fluteman said:


> For me, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are awesome achievements, and the answer is very much yes. While I don't generally have as keen an interest in the music of Morton Feldman, his too is a significant achievement. All of these works have had long term ripple effects on our culture that eventually may be more significant and lasting than the works themselves.


Please be specific. Literature appears that be as much at a dead end as music, serious or otherwise. So does filmmaking. Feldman isn't even a blip on the screen.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

SanAntone said:


> I remember reading an interview with Feldman when this question of long duration works came up. He stated that he was after this sensory experience that can only be achieved with the long duration.


That doesn't sound too far removed from hallucinating due to sleep deprivation.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

Consuono, there isn't anything wrong with ambient music, I like ambient music. The thing is that you said that Feldman's quartet is ambient, which is definitely not. That proves that you haven't listened to that work, so I don't understand how you can talk about it and criticize it so freely.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> Consuono, there isn't anything wrong with ambient music, I like ambient music. The thing is that you said that Feldman's quartet is ambient, which is definitely not. That proves that you haven't listened to that work, so I don't understand how you can talk about it and criticize it so freely.


I feel the ambient music angle kind of works to some degree for this Feldman quartet, personally. Satie's music is considered the first ambient. Cage drew links to that music. But I do think it's more than just ambient music.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

Phil loves classical said:


> I feel the ambient music angle kind of works to some degree for this Feldman quartet, personally. Satie's music is considered the first ambient. Cage drew links to that music. But I do think it's more than just ambient music.


I think Satie's brand of ambient music is really different from Eno's or any other popular ambient musician. It is more akin, if we are speaking of the Musique d'ameublement, to Glass's or Reich's repetitions, albeit without any sort of change, just a melody that goes on and on and on.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> I feel the ambient music angle kind of works to some degree for this Feldman quartet, personally. Satie's music is considered the first ambient. Cage drew links to that music. But I do think it's more than just ambient music.


I find Satie's weirder piano stuff way more challenging than Feldman. Some of it really confounds me. Satie has got to be the first in a lot of things. Repetition definitely seems to be an insight Satie had about future avenues. I'm sure I'm missing something but he seems like one of the first truly avant-garde composers. I feel that Satie often aims to keep the listener off balance and in doubt and tension.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

"Ambient Music" is a form of Environmental Music i.e. sounds recorded from an environment and later edited, arranged, or manipulated, by a composer, it can be said to be a form of _musique concrete_. Brian Eno is credited with the term, but he says he got it from John Cage.

Feldman's SQ2 is a fully notated work, composed for the traditional string quartet. There are no environmental sounds, no recorded or electronic aspects. To refer to it as "ambient music" is incorrect. The same is true for Erik Satie.

There is another usage of the term Environmental Music, which has nothing to do with Cage, Satie, or Feldman - and that is Muzak: music used as aural wallpaper in a public setting. This is closer to what Eno was doing.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

By this definition, most of Eno’s music labeled or thought of as ambient is not ambient. I called them soundscapes but that’s just my own idea.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

milk said:


> I find Satie's weirder piano stuff way more challenging than Feldman. Some of it really confounds me. Satie has got to be the first in a lot of things. Repetition definitely seems to be an insight Satie had about future avenues. I'm sure I'm missing something but he seems like one of the first truly avant-garde composers. I feel that Satie often aims to keep the listener off balance and in doubt and tension.


Aside from _Vexations_, a one-off, Satie's music does not employ repetition in any unusual manner. Satie was one of the first composers to question the iron-clad method of teaching composition in the French conservatory environment (Debussy also had this kind of orientation), and wrote some of his music to confound the mainstream classical music community - but his music is not radical in terms of how it sounds, IMO.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

milk said:


> By this definition, most of Eno's music labeled or thought of as ambient is not ambient. I called them soundscapes but that's just my own idea.


_Music for Airports_, does not use recorded sounds of an airport, but was Eno's idea of an alternative to Muzak. There is another understanding of the term Ambient Music, which is as I described. Field recordings, environmental music, ambient music can all be describing the same kind of idea.

Eno was doing something different, although he used the term ambient music.

It can be confusing.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Roger Knox said:


> I think you have put the case for engaging musically with the world 'of today very well. The thing is, some aspects of "contemporary" music have puzzled listeners for over 100 years now, including me. On the other hand I'm also a composer. A couple of years ago one of my more challenging pieces was given an excellent performance at a chamber music series. At the intermission and after the concert a number of people came up to me and showed a real interest in the piece. I credit the performers in this case. Then I received a copy of the presenting organization's newsletter. The report on my piece was dismissive and rather nasty -- it wasn't a very long composition and I don't know why this person was so negative. But over the years I've learned to accept the existence of "them" -- that is, rigid people who let fly at any music that is somewhat contemporary and different. I've had enough successes not to be perturbed by this report, but it just shows how wide the gap still is between composers and audiences.


I've heard something like this from other composers, and it's difficult to know how to respond, even though I myself served on the boards of two organizations that commissioned and performed contemporary music. Of course, not all new music is going to be successful, and that has always been the case. On the other hand, it's entirely normal even for a successful new work to provoke at least a partly negative reaction. The creative artist needs to upset expectations, whether subtly or dramatically, and not cater to them obsessively. If you can find an audience, any audience, for your music, even the young progressive jazz types I've seen at concerts of music by Carter and Boulez, (their Mozart and Beethoven?), I think you have succeeded.



SanAntone said:


> Feldman's SQ2 is a fully notated work, composed for the traditional string quartet.


One of many insightful comments by you in this thread, thank you. This is actually one of the things I meant when I said that Feldman looks back to the traditions of previous centuries as well as at his own era.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Aside from _Vexations_, a one-off, Satie's music does not employ repetition in any unusual manner. Satie was one of the first composers to question the iron-clad method of teaching composition in the French conservatory environment (Debussy also had this kind of orientation), and wrote some of his music to confound the mainstream classical music community - but his music is not radical in terms of how it sounds, IMO.


 right. Just vexations. I see what you mean. Was there something more radical then, or what WAS radical for that time? Listening to Le Fils Des Etoiles tonight, specifically De Leeuw's version, it sounds utterly unique, strange, and captivating. Maybe it isn't so radical. I'm not up on this obviously. So, what WAS the context for 1895? I'm wondering how it struck people. I love Debussy, but his music seems so much more approachable and tame compared to Satie.

ETA: re: Satie's conflict with a critic (Wikipedia) 
In his March 26, 1892 column for _L'Écho de Paris_, Willy dismissively identified Satie as the "ex-pianist of the ground floor at the Chat Noir" and described his _Preludes_ as "nervous" because "one doesn't know which end to grab them by." He concluded with a pun on the composer's name, writing that this "faucet salesman's music" had only given him "indifferent Satiesfaction."[SUP][36][/SUP][SUP][37][/SUP] The quarrelsome Satie had never been attacked in print before, and Willy's review instigated a sporadic war of words between composer and critic that lasted more than a decade. Over the years Satie would denounce Willy as a "dull-witted pen-pusher" and "dreary piece of literary garbage" in open letters to the press, private correspondence, and in his publications as leader of his own mock-religious sect, the Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor. Willy countered by ridiculing Satie in his widely-read columns as a "mystical sausage-brain,"[SUP][38][/SUP] an "esoteric ****," a "penniless street musician," and "a Debussy who passed through Charenton".[SUP][39][/SUP] The hostilities climaxed in April 1904 when the two had a physical altercation during a Camille Chevillard concert. Pianist Ricardo Viñes-later one of Satie's most important champions-witnessed the incident and wrote in his diary, "Willy struck Erik Satie with his cane after Satie had intentionally thrown Willy's hat on the floor. The city police took Satie away."[SUP][40][/SUP]


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I was thinking why the SQ format for this work. Does anyone here think it could have been any combination of four instruments? So for example when Mozart wrote a SQ, he really thought about each instrument and how each interacts harmonically. No, I am not criticizing the Feldman work but I am asking a serious question as to whether it was a necessity to have a SQ perform this, why not say, oboe, violin, bassoon and bass or something?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

ArtMusic said:


> I was thinking why the SQ format for this work. Does anyone here think it could have been any combination of four instruments? So for example when Mozart wrote a SQ, he really thought about each instrument and how each interacts harmonically. No, I am not criticizing the Feldman work but I am asking a serious question as to whether it was a necessity to have a SQ perform this, why not say, oboe, violin, bassoon and bass or something?


As I said in some post in this thread some time back, I think it's to maintain some kind of a veneer of continuity with the Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven tradition.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

consuono said:


> As I said in some post in this thread some time back, I think it's to maintain some kind of a veneer of continuity with the Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven tradition.


I suppose so but I really don't see the point of that tradition. Any combination of instruments that brings the music out will do the work best, whether SQ or not. I think a wind instrument or two might help. I don't think SQ works best for the work.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Okay, because some posters above have inferred that Feldman’s work has some sort of connection with traditional classical music in the past and that it is obvious because it is annotated and uses a traditional quartet, I decided to dedicate a fair amount of time to listening to long portions from the full 5 hours. 

No matter where you listen in the work, you are likely to hear short phrases of 2 or 3 notes, the phrases repeated 2 or 3 times with some changing of the notes each time with 2 maybe 3 instruments playing together -very hard to tell at times- and another or maybe 2 with pizzicato. There are often some long rests in between.

I will not make any value judgment about the work, but having listened to ‘common practice era’ string quartets for many years, this, in no way, shape or form, bears any relationship to string quartets of the traditional past. And it is not like anything from the original atonal period such as Schoenberg’s later SQs. There is no melody. There is no interchange or back and forth interchange between the strings as in original tonal or even atonal string quartets. There is nothing in the way of a musical line.

Honestly, I don’t know what to call this music other than avant-garde. Is this classical music simply because it is annotated and uses string instruments? It’s obvious to me that the atonal music of Schoenberg and the 2nd Viennese School is. But this? I don’t know.

I don’t begrudge people liking this and I’m not suggesting they take it elsewhere. But I wish those who like it would be honest about how different it is, even from original atonal music. And that means not acting with some kind of outrage that some people are dismayed by it and trying to figure out what its place is, if any, in classical music.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

ArtMusic said:


> Any combination of instruments that brings the music out will do the work best, whether SQ or not. I think a wind instrument or two might help.


On purely practical grounds, the string quartet is the most stable, balanced chamber ensemble of them all. The best of these groups play together for many years, adding to their skill and expertise, developing a world wide reputation and staggering list of accomplishments -- and are in a position to rehearse the hell out of a difficult composition. Feldman working with the Kronos matches elite with elite, whose experience with contemporary music is one of the factors that makes it possible to even consider doing such a piece.

Also, adding an instrument from a different family would upset the homogeneity of sound that makes it possible for the piece to hang together and have a sense of unity. I don't know if that was what Feldman was thinking, but it's like having some consistent factors in the design and materials of a large building that give the sense of a whole entity.

I don't care for the piece but it's not like Feldman was not a very accomplished and respected composer. He was. I've heard both him and his wife Barbara Monk Feldman speak about his music and the problem is, I really don't understand what they are talking about. Maybe I should know a lot more about mid-20th century painting. Sometimes, with music that seems closed off to me, I experience an "epiphany" and the door swings open. That happened with medieval music. Don't know if it will here.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

DaveM said:


> ...
> I don't begrudge people liking this and I'm not suggesting they take it elsewhere. But I wish those who like it would be honest about how different it is, even from original atonal music. And that means not acting with some kind of outrage that some people are dismayed by it and trying to figure out what its place is, if any, in classical music.


Yeah, the "we poor little martyrs" and "anyone who criticizes this music that I like is Satan incarnate" stuff gets realllllly old. Just don't call it "ambient music". I honestly don't care what it is. It's not something I want to spend 15 minutes or 5 hours with. If people like it, great.
But life is short and there's worthier music.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> Yeah, the "we poor little martyrs" and "anyone who criticizes this music that I like is Satan incarnate" stuff gets realllllly old. Just don't call it "ambient music". I honestly don't care what it is. It's not something I want to spend 15 minutes or 5 hours with. If people like it, great.
> But life is short and there's worthier music.


 but isn't there a difference between critiquing or criticizing a specific piece of music and making or using a thread on specific music to complain about "modern" music or because you dislike all or most contemporary classical? Maybe there is a justification in saying that this Feldman piece shows the deficiency in a trend of music but I'm not quite seeing that. BTW, I do share your skepticism of some trends that are out there. I think some of the major artists out there, like Damien Hirst, are cons but I don't know enough about the topic to make a very strong case.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Even people who think Wagner should never be performed are wrong.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Roger Knox said:


> On purely practical grounds, the string quartet is the most stable, balanced chamber ensemble of them all.











"It's not, after all, a particularly balanced group. Two violins, one viola (which is tuned a fifth lower), and one cello (which is an octave below that). We hear all sorts of quasi mystical stuff about the famed 'balance' and 'equality' of the group, but in fact the differences between the instruments make the ensemble in some ways extremely problematic. A viola is bigger than a violin, which makes it louder, but also harder to play in tune, particularly when the playing is fast. And the cello is so much larger still that the distances the left hand has to traverse necessitate a radically different fingering system. All this means that music played on one instrument will not always transfer easily to another. To take only the most obvious example: a rapid melody that may be a walk in the park for the violins can become a steep mountain path for the viola; for the cello, an oxygen mask and advanced climbing gear may be needed."
< Roger Parker / Mozart Quartet in C major, K465 (Dissonance) /
View attachment 151298
>


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Roger Parker's work has centred on opera, in particular Italian opera of the nineteenth century. For ten years he was founding co-editor (with Arthur Groos) of the Cambridge Opera Journal, and he continues as General Editor (with Gabriele Dotto) of the Donizetti Critical Edition. He was a Guggenhiem Fellow in 1986-7, received the Premio Giuseppe Verdi in 1986, and in 1991 was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association. He has produced numerous publications but his latest book is Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio.

- More -

This imbalance in the ensemble derives from its origins, which were in early eighteenth-century orchestral groups. The two violins there tended to function in what's called a 'trio-sonata' texture, weaving in and out of each other's line, frequently overlapping; and the viola and cello tended to supply little more than the functional bass part. No equality here (apart from in the two upper instruments). But if the string quartet started life as a kind of minimal orchestra, for performances in smaller venues, many of them domestic, it soon took on a life of its own, becoming the most common chamber music ensemble of the later eighteenth century, first in Germany and Austria, then spreading, with the spread of its repertoire, to other European countries.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the string quartet's prestige had become considerable, in large part because two of the most famous composers of the period, first Haydn and then Mozart, had dedicated some of their most complex music to the genre. Beethoven simply added to this prestige, and after him there was no looking back. Although the comparatively restricted and uniform sound of four solo strings might have seemed thin indeed for musicians of the nineteenth century, let along for those of the twentieth, composers kept measuring themselves against the accumulation of masterpieces of the past. And so the string quartet has become a major repository for a certain kind of classical music; we might even say that it represents a particular attitude to what is central to our musical past. This is important, and not to be underestimated.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Yes, I know the SQ is important as a genre crafted by Haydn and followed and flowered by others. I don't think the medium here is well presented by the Feldman work just because it is annotated on music sheets scored for SQ. I think a different ensemble might do the notes better because there isn't anything in the work that relates specifically to the SQ. I would have chosen a woodwind with a violin and maybe a second woodwind to substitute the cello etc.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> Yes, I know the SQ is important as a genre crafted by Haydn and followed and flowered by others. I don't think the medium here is well presented by the Feldman work just because it is annotated on music sheets scored for SQ. I think a different ensemble might do the notes better because there isn't anything in the work that relates specifically to the SQ. I would have chosen a woodwind with a violin and maybe a second woodwind to substitute the cello etc.


I think you may find it helpful to listen to the quartet again, and look out for the specific string effects he uses, and how he uses the similar timbres of the four instruments to disorientate the listener.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> I will not make any value judgment about the work, but having listened to 'common practice era' string quartets for many years, this, in no way, shape or form, bears any relationship to string quartets of the traditional past. And it is not like anything from the original atonal period such as Schoenberg's later SQs. There is no melody. There is no interchange or back and forth interchange between the strings as in original tonal or even atonal string quartets. There is nothing in the way of a musical line.


It is false to say that there is no melody.

Another commonality is that it's completely composed, it isn't process music like Reich was writing, what appears to be repetition if you don't pay attention is often full of variation at the level of rhythm and counterpoint, if not at the level of pitch and motion.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> It is false to say that there is no melody.


Okay, I can play that game: It's false to say there is a melody or maybe it's better that I say: As someone who has spent decades picking melodies out from classical and popular/rock music, I couldn't find one. Perhaps you're redefining 'melody' or you can make your point by directing me to a melody.

My definition of a melody:


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

Mandryka said:


> I think you may find it helpful to listen to the quartet again, and look out for the specific string effects he uses, and how he uses the similar timbres of the four instruments to disorientate the listener.


 Yeah, I feel Feldman is super attentive to the timber's he's writing for. I don't think it's abstract music that can be easily transposed. My feeling is that he's very specifically thinking of the sounds those instruments make.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Okay, I can play that game: It's false to say there is a melody or maybe it's better that I say: As someone who has spent decades picking melodies out from classical and popular/rock music, I couldn't find one. Perhaps you're redefining 'melody' or you can make your point by directing me to a melody.


Yes, this is a good example, page 22 of the score






The gorgeous achingly sad melody recurs later, modified.

(Be careful, you will find yourself whistling it.)


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Yes, this is a good example, page 22 of the score
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Come on. Tchaikovsky it ain't. I wouldn't even call it "achingly sad" and certainly not "gorgeous".


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

consuono said:


> Come on. Tchaikovsky it ain't. I wouldn't even call it "achingly sad" and certainly not "gorgeous".


So you say. Some of us love it. You hate it. What's your point?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

milk said:


> So you say. Some of us love it. You hate it. What's your point?


That's pretty much the point. I wouldn't say I hate it so much as it just doesn't do anything for me. A melody doesn't have to be elaborate or "aching" -- see Bach or Beethoven -- but I'm more impressed by what those two could do with little "cells". If you will. And in much less time than 5 hours. I'm just not going to call things what I don't think they are.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

consuono said:


> Yeah, the "we poor little martyrs" and "anyone who criticizes this music that I like is Satan incarnate" stuff gets realllllly old. Just don't call it "ambient music". I honestly don't care what it is. It's not something I want to spend 15 minutes or 5 hours with. If people like it, great.
> But life is short and there's worthier music.


Life is short and yet here you are, bickering and complaining and thinking that people who like this sort of music are martyrs while at the same time bringing about the decay of western civilization. If there is worthier music, go on, don't be bothered by us. We are not victims, and contrary to what you believe, you aren't either.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

allaroundmusicenthusiast said:


> Life is short and yet here you are, bickering and complaining and thinking that people who like this sort of music are martyrs while at the same time bringing about the decay of western civilization.


I never said they're bringing about the decay of anything. I said I feel that "classical music" has been in decline for quite a while. My "bickering and complaining" takes up maybe 15 minutes of my day. Those who love this particular work should be spending 5+ hours in listening to it rather than telling me what a poo poo head I am.


> If there is worthier music, go on, don't be bothered by us. We are not victims, and contrary to what you believe, you aren't either.


I do. Did I claim to be a victim? Trust me, I don't feel "victimized" by online new-music zealots.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

*To all: please focus on the subject in hand (Feldman's SQ2), and do not engage in tit for tat personal discussions. *


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Art Rock said:


> *To all: please focus on the subject in hand (Riley's SQ2), and do not engage in tit for tat personal discussions. *


How long is Riley's SQ2?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

:tiphat:

I had first typed Reich, then remembered that was wrong, and changed it to Riley before posting.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

consuono said:


> online new-music zealots.


It's 40 years old!


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Yes, this is a good example, page 22 of the score
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That section is remarkable.

The fragility of the string writing, the gentle ebb and flow of the melodic counterpoint are very evocative and beautiful. It goes on just long enough before changing to the next section and does not seem to have gone on too long. Feldman possessed a fine tuned instinct for writing music in this manner. His mature style is made up of using repeating gestures and alternating them with other gestures in an almost endless series of variations and shifting textures.

Which is why he is among my favorite 20th century composers.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Yes, this is a good example, page 22 of the score
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well, I see/hear what you're saying. To me, that sequence is an example of what I heard throughout the work: repeating of various 3-note phrases, in different ways, with a change of a note here and there. Of course, I'll take your word for it that you find it to be a 'gorgeous achingly sad melody'. I find it to be a snippet of 3 notes that might have developed into a melody, but never went there.

Honestly, I'm trying to understand what people mean when they say that a work like this has melody. I don't find that example to fall into a category of what I have known to be melody, but it's helpful to understand what you and others are referring to. And that example was instructive.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

SanAntone said:


> That section is remarkable.
> 
> The fragility of the string writing, the gentle ebb and flow of the melodic counterpoint are very evocative and beautiful. It goes on just long enough before changing to the next section and does not seem to have gone on too long. Feldman possessed a fine tuned instinct for writing music in this manner. His mature style is made up of using repeating gestures and alternating them with other gestures in an almost endless series of variations and shifting textures.
> 
> Which is why he is among my favorite 20th century composers.


Despite my very positive reaction to the section I heard in the above post, there are sections which are not nearly as effective, IMO.

Some of it could be the manner in which the Flux Quartet is playing the music: lack of vibrato, some raw/scratchy bowing at times and unsure intonation and sound production, sometimes approaching how an inexperienced string player might sound.

I know this is not the case, and these are highly capable musicians, so there must have been an intentional plan guiding their approach to playing the music. But, I wish they would have played the music in a more conventional, even Romantic, manner since I think they manner in which they do play the music makes it even harder (at least for me) to sustain my tolerance for long periods of time.

To be honest, there are other sections in which the music sounds much more pleasing. It is odd, I can't help but wonder what they were thinking.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Well, after my mix-up of Feldman and Riley, I thought I'd make amends and finally started listening to this work. I have 7 Feldman CD's in my collection, so his sound world is reasonably familiar to me. I first made it to the 30 minutes mark, which unfortunately is all the time I have tonight. I found it interesting and would have loved to continue listening. My main gripe is that at my age 5-6 hours is not practical for uninterrupted listening. When I listen to a Wagner opera, I also take a short break after each act for obvious natural reasons.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> Despite my very positive reaction to the section I heard in the above post, there are sections which are not nearly as effective, IMO.
> 
> Some of it could be the manner in which the Flux Quartet is playing the music: lack of vibrato, some raw/scratchy bowing at times and unsure intonation and sound production, sometimes approaching how an inexperienced string player might sound.
> 
> ...


Have you got the score? I think Ives Ensemble play without vibrato, and I wonder whether he asked for it. They talk somewhere about how they have to hold the bow in a special way so that it only brushes the string very lightly, very hard and involves unlearning.

Here, found it

http://www.fluxquartet.com/feldman2.html


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Have you got the score? I think Ives Ensemble play without vibrato, and I wonder whether he asked for it. They talk somewhere about how they have to hold the bow in a special way so that it only brushes the string very lightly, very hard and involves unlearning.
> 
> Here, found it
> 
> http://www.fluxquartet.com/feldman2.html


Okay, that makes sense and explains why they played in the manner that they did.

Considering all aspects of the work, I have to say that I think Feldman grossly miscalculated with this work. The physical demands placed on the performers makes it impossible for the work to be conveyed in a proper musical manner. The only way I think this work can be done is to reduce the number of repeats and cut down the total time, at least by half - or to a duration which would not over tax the string players. Otherwise, the music will always suffer because of the difficulty the musicians have with performing the most basic gestures.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

In a way the difficulty of performing is academic because in the studio it's doable.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

When I listen to various sections, I find them enjoyable, and I like some of Feldman's other works. 

But 5 hours is just too much.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> In a way the difficulty of performing is academic because in the studio it's doable.


The Flux appears to have been a taped live concert, but the Ives Ensemble is a studio performance, and is better, IMO.

The music ideas are not the problem. However, if the work cannot be performed live except in a seriously compromised manner, then it is arguably a failure, IMO.

Cage was careful to not create music which could not be performed by musicians, which is why Cage abandoned the Freeman Etude cycle, when Paul Zukofsky attested that the pieces were unplayable. It was only after Irving Arditti worked up the music and said it could be done that Cage finished it.

This kind of evidence would indicate that Cage would not have approved of the Halberstadt performance of Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible).

As I said earlier, I think Feldman grossly miscalculated with SQ2.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Yes, the only other thing I’d mention is that there’s another composer who writes very challenging music, Brian Ferneyhough, and he does so because he thinks that when the performer tries, the struggle will produce a magical, meaningful, intense musical moment. I do not know why Feldman decided to make the quartet so long, he was aware of the challenges and he was inclined to be reflective, philosophical. This is the core mystery of the music, IMO, and until I understand it, I won’t say whether it’s a success or a failure.

You probably know more about this than I do, but didn’t Beethoven knowingly write extremely challenging music, I mean for the performers of his time?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Yes, the only other thing I'd mention is that there's another composer who writes very challenging music, Brian Ferneyhough, and he does so because he thinks that when the performer tries, the struggle will produce a magical, meaningful, intense musical moment. I do not know why Feldman decided to make the quartet so long, he was aware of the challenges and he was inclined to be reflective, philosophical. This is the core mystery of the music, IMO, and until I understand it, I won't say whether it's a success or a failure.
> 
> You probably know more about this than I do, but didn't Beethoven knowingly write extremely challenging music, I mean for the performers of his time?


It is one thing to write, as Ferneyhough and Beethoven did, _technically challenging_ music. It is quite another matter to write a work with music that is not technically challenging but puts the musicians in danger of injuring themselves and potentially putting their careers at risk because of the _physical demands_ of the length and specifics of the work.

Raising and lowering a bow on the strings of their instruments, or attempting to play quietly which requires exerting more control over the bow (since string instruments (especially the viola and cello) more naturally produce a louder dynamic than _pp_ or _ppp_), for between 5-6 hours (without break) - could cause injury. This is why the Kronos Quartet decided against performing the work.

At the very least, the sound produced under these circumstances is severely compromised, IMO.

Feldman can be as philosophical as he wants but he did not undergo any unusual physical demands from writing the work. In fact, he did not even write out the repeats, he wrote the phrases once and then marked them to be repeated 9 times, or 11 times, etc.

At worse he was cavalier about the damage that could be caused to musicians because of his work, or at best he was ignorant.

Neither is defensible, IMO.

One of the first things I was taught as a composition student was to aim to write music which was idiomatic to the instrument(s). Music which fell under the hands naturally, and suited the instrument well. Under no circumstances were I to write something that is so demanding as to be, for all intents and purposes, unplayable - for any reason.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

SanAntone said:


> It is one thing to write, as Ferneyhough and Beethoven did, _technically challenging_ music. It is quite another matter to write a work with music that is not technically challenging but puts the musicians in danger of injuring themselves and potentially putting their careers at risk because of the _physical demands_ of the length and specifics of the work.
> 
> Raising and lowering a bow on the strings of their instruments, or attempting to play quietly which requires exerting more control over the bow (since string instruments (especially the viola and cello) more naturally produce a louder dynamic than _pp_ or _ppp_), for between 5-6 hours (without break) - could cause injury. This is why the Kronos Quartet decided against performing the work.
> 
> ...


Too late now here in London to think about this, but reading it made me think of a French author called Michel Leiris, an essay called _Literature as a type of bullfighting_- he thought that to produce exceptional art, the artist, the writer, had to really put himself at personal risk.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> Too late now here in London to think about this, but reading it made me think of a French author called Michel Leiris, an essay called _Literature as a type of bullfighting_- he thought that to produce exceptional art, the artist, the writer, had to really put himself at personal risk.


That sounds profound and Hemingwayish and all, but getting into my car and going to the supermarket I put myself at personal risk. So...I don't know what that actually means.


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## milk (Apr 25, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Despite my very positive reaction to the section I heard in the above post, there are sections which are not nearly as effective, IMO.
> 
> Some of it could be the manner in which the Flux Quartet is playing the music: lack of vibrato, some raw/scratchy bowing at times and unsure intonation and sound production, sometimes approaching how an inexperienced string player might sound.
> 
> ...


This would drive me away kicking and screaming. I had a version of something played that way, maybe it was For John Cage. For a long time I hated that piece until I heard it done properly. Please warn me if any Feldman is played like this so I can protect my ears.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

SanAntone said:


> This is why the Kronos Quartet decided against performing the work.


I agree with your comments. Because I have piano-induced arm trouble I am very opposed to any music that is indifferent to the possibility of injury.

At the premiere the Kronos Quartet did perform Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, but for fatigue reasons they made an agreement with the composer to cut it to 4 hours by eliminating or reducing some repeats. If I remember correctly the CBC Radio production team and the hall management were not adequately informed about the piece's length -- not to mention the audience. Leaving at the 2-hour mark I had to do the walk of shame because I was in one of the extra seats on the stage behind the musicians.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Roger Knox said:


> I agree with your comments. Because I have piano-induced arm trouble I am very opposed to any music that is indifferent to the possibility of injury.
> 
> At the premiere the Kronos Quartet did perform Feldman's String Quartet No. 2, but for fatigue reasons they made an agreement with the composer to cut it to 4 hours by eliminating or reducing some repeats. If I remember correctly the CBC Radio production team and the hall management were not adequately informed about the piece's length -- not to mention the audience. Leaving at the 2-hour mark I had to do the walk of shame because I was in one of the extra seats on the stage behind the musicians.


You are right about the Kronos first "premier" (since it was not as written, some do not consider this a true premier performance) in 1984, which was abridged. I was thinking of the 1996 scheduled complete performance as described here by the organizer:



> Back in 1995, when I was planning the first Lincoln Center Festival for the summer of 1996, I determined to do a Feldman minifestival. As the centerpiece, the Kronos Quartet was to play the Quartet No. 2 absolutely complete for the first time.
> 
> All seemed well until about two weeks before the scheduled performance, when David Harrington of the Kronos reported that the players couldn't do it. The pain of holding the bow arm and fingering the strings, not to mention playing softly and intensely, was just too much. I could hardly rustle up another, younger, perhaps more ambitious quartet on such short notice.


Feldman was somewhat misleading concerning this work, "on the first page of the score, Feldman specifies the duration of performance as *between three and a half and five and a half hours*. The composer Christian Wolff, who also contributed notes to the Flux recording, calls that estimate ''casual and subjective.'' The Flux ''premiere'' lasted 6 hours 15 minutes; its recording, 6 hours 7 minutes 7 seconds." (from the same article)

I still appreciate the work since it contains some of Feldman's best music, and can be done in the studio with breaks - but making a live performance so grueling, and actually dangerous, I think is a real defect.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I did find another complete live performance, this one lasting about 4:22 hours by the *Vogler Quartett*.






This performance is much better than the Flux Quartet's, IMO, and does demonstrate that the work can be done complete. I think they took it at the quickest tempo marking and probably took some liberties with the dynamic marking of "very quietly".

In any event, this performance is the best I've heard so far.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

The Vogler Quartet are outstanding in Brahms and Schumann, so I will explore this one. Thanks.


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## GucciManeIsTheNewWebern (Jul 29, 2020)

I listened for about 15 minutes starting from the excerpt Mandyrka mentioned earlier. I actually really love this music, and wished the fact it's five %&@&% hours didn't make it so unapproachable. I really do think that if this piece were only 3 hours, this whole discussion and the premise of this thread would be much different. I'm willing to admit it's an arbitrary line in sand I'm drawing, but 3 hours seems like a lengthy but still reasonable amount of time that exercises moderation. 

However, I actually can entertain the idea of pushing the limits of duration like this as a means of aesthetic and artistic exploration. If one actually does listen to this and gives it their undivided attention, they're guaranteed to be fully immersed in the experience whether that experience is enjoyable or not. It's probably something better enjoyed in the comfort of your own home than in a concert hall. I probably won't, but it's an interesting thought to just put headphones on and listen to this in a dark room and fully focus on all 5 hours of it in a meditative experience and see what happens. Who knows? Maybe nothing will happen. But in general, I can imagine that extending the duration opens up a lot of possibilities for those who are willing to perform and hear it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

GucciManeIsTheNewWebern said:


> I listened for about 15 minutes starting from the excerpt Mandyrka mentioned earlier. I actually really love this music, and wished the fact it's five %&@&% hours didn't make it so unapproachable. I really do think that if this piece were only 3 hours, this whole discussion and the premise of this thread would be much different. I'm willing to admit it's an arbitrary line in sand I'm drawing, but 3 hours seems like a lengthy but still reasonable amount of time that exercises moderation.


Well, at the risk of repeating myself, after 18 pages of discussion here nobody has come up with a good reason for listening to the whole thing, unless I missed it, other than saying that that's what the composer intended.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

The only reason for me is the same as with any other music that I think is good: I want to listen to it because I really like it. If it takes 5 hours, so be it, maybe I won't listen to it a ton of times (generally I never listen to anything a ton of times), but I'll listen to it. I don't think there's any other reason other than liking it, nor should there be, imo.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Well, at the risk of repeating myself, after 18 pages of discussion here nobody has come up with a good reason for listening to the whole thing, unless I missed it, other than saying that that's what the composer intended.


I think it could only have been since the late 20th century that a piece (I still see it as a piece rather than a work) like that can be 5 hours long. I think global media and marketting is a part of it, more than artistic reasons. Just like how people go to extremes to be somebody on social media. If people come out of that performance transformed, I liken it to the satisfaction from grinding through a long TV series, where the more interesting points become amplified, after a lot slower parts. It's an emotional journey just to get through something like that.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I think it could only have been since the late 20th century that a piece (I still see it as a piece rather than a work) like that can be 5 hours long.


I blame Dennis Johnson in the late 1950s / early 1960s. But seriously, there is no characteristic of postmodern thinking, of the culture which flows from late capitalism, which leads to this sort if length, is there? I don't really see Feldman or Glass as postmodernists at all in fact, but maybe I'm wrong.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Having listened to a fair amount of it to come to the conclusion that considering the amount of repetition and the fact that what you hear in the middle of the work or in the last 30 minutes is not only not any kind of development or resolution, but rather is much the same as in the first 30 minutes, the work could have been shortened to 1 to 1 1/2 hours and the listener wouldn’t have missed anything.

But then that’s assuming that one listens to this kind of work the same way as one listens to ‘traditional’ classical music. I’m beginning to think that one doesn’t and the experience may be more some kind of zoning out or ZENing in, in which case, it doesn’t matter if it’s 1, 3 or 5 hours.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

DaveM said:


> Having listened to a fair amount of it to come to the conclusion that considering the amount of repetition and the fact that what you hear in the middle of the work or in the last 30 minutes is not only not any kind of development or resolution, but rather is much the same as in the first 30 minutes, the work could have been shortened to 1 to 1 1/2 hours and the listener wouldn't have missed anything.
> 
> But then that's assuming that one listens to this kind of work the same way as one listens to 'traditional' classical music. I'm beginning to think that one doesn't and the experience may be more some kind of zoning out or ZENing in, in which case, it doesn't matter if it's 1, 3 or 5 hours.


There probably is no resolution, but there may be other formal characteristics which make the whole thing "matter" in some sense. For example, it strikes me that the variety of ideas is greater at the start, it's as if he gives himself a lot of material to explore at first, and then circles round it, examines it in different lights, gradually reducing it all to something more pure, sparse.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

DaveM said:


> Having listened to a fair amount of it to come to the conclusion that considering the amount of repetition and the fact that what you hear in the middle of the work or in the last 30 minutes is not only not any kind of development or resolution, but rather is much the same as in the first 30 minutes, the work could have been shortened to 1 to 1 1/2 hours and the listener wouldn't have missed anything.
> 
> But then that's assuming that one listens to this kind of work the same way as one listens to 'traditional' classical music. I'm beginning to think that one doesn't and the experience may be more some kind of zoning out or ZENing in, in which case, it doesn't matter if it's 1, 3 or 5 hours.


Yup, that's how I hear it. The lack of resolution is unending. One thing leads to the next, and keeps moving, until you get no sense of beginning or end. It's like circular in structure.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Feldman was quoted as saying something to the effect, "with pieces of under one hour the work is about 'form' with pieces of 1.5 or 2 hours or more it becomes about 'scale'." I also know he was very much interested in Persian tapestries in his last decade, and was inspired by the variations of the pattern, which are not immediately obvious.

I really think he felt he needed long durations, 2 hours or more, in order to work out the slight variations of his motives and he was going for different kind of scale with the late works.

Some excerpts from this excellent article by *Kyle Gann*:

''It's like a jigsaw puzzle that every piece you put in fits,'' Feldman said of the quartet, ''and then when you finish it, you see that it's not the picture. That was the idea. The jigsaw puzzle, everything finishes, and it's not the picture. Then you do another version, and it's not the picture. Finally you realize that you are not going to get a picture.''

Feldman has also said he was more influenced by artists instead of composers, for example, "Like others in avant-garde musical circles of the 1950's, Feldman was intrigued by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, and he sought ways in which music could replicate the mobile's gradually metamorphosing shapes."



> Hypnosis, as the Random House Dictionary of the English language defines it, is ''an artificially induced trance state resembling sleep, characterized by heightened susceptibility to suggestion.'' Trance is not what Feldman's music induces, at least not for me. His repetition of chromatic, dissonant motifs of two to four notes doesn't draw the mind into the music but instead pushes it away.
> 
> Once you realize that two chords are going to alternate unchanged for a while, it becomes hard to keep focusing. Then the pattern changes, and your attention revives. You gradually realize that the music has changed, or you suddenly recognize something you heard earlier, you think, but the pieces of that puzzle never make a picture. It's a pleasantly loose mode of listening, better attuned than the linear narrative of the 19th-century symphony to the late 20th century, an era of aural overstimulation and conflicting sound bites.
> 
> Feldman called his compositional method one of ''negation.'' This operates on many levels. On the most minute level, each pitch tends to be canceled out by another.


The continual negation in Feldman links him to Samuel Beckett, the playwright he most resembles, just as Calder is the sculptor he most resembles; Mark Rothko, the painter; and Kafka, the novelist. ''In my new string quartet,'' Feldman said in 1984, ''in the third hour I start to take away material rather than bring in, [rather than] make it more interesting, and for about an hour I have a very placid world. I don't use the drama, essentially.''



> There are no extreme gestures of the kind to be found in ''For Philip Guston,'' where the players obsess for 25 minutes on a tiny chromatic segment, then burst across the entire range of the keyboard in pianissimo C major. Yet there are still changes from chromaticism to tonality and back as subtly compelling as a series of ominous clouds passing on a sunny winter day.
> 
> For all this to unfold, the piece must be enormously long. Feldman's early works were brief. Around 1970 he quit working in his uncle's dry-cleaning plant and took his first university position, and in 1973 he moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he would spend the last 15 years of his life. It was also around that time that he began vastly expanding his canvas to works of one, three, five hours. He felt that the 20-minute piece had become a modernist cliché, and scorning any kind of cliché, he expanded from what he called the level of ''form'' to the level of ''scale.''


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