Morton Feldman, “For Philip Guston”

Villa La Pietra presents Morton Feldman’s piece “For Philip Guston”, by  FLAME | Florence Art Music Ensemble.

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was a 20^th century American composer. He was a leading figure in the development of “indeterminate music,” a movement associated with a group of New York composers that included John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff. Feldman’s experimental style eschewed traditional harmonic structures, pioneering new systems of musical notation to create free-floating rhythms and intimate, slowly evolving sounds. “For Philip Guston” exemplifies Feldman’s later exploration of time and scale in his works, with single-movement compositions of quiet notes that lasted 30 minutes or longer. He composed the piece in 1984, a few years after the death of Guston, who was a New York painter and close friend of the musician. The two men fell out following Guston’s repudiation of abstraction in his art, but the slow, gently dissonant chords of this piece express Feldman’s regret and sadness at the artist’s death.

Video presentation by Michele Greco.