MODERNIST MUSICAL ENCOUNTERS 1

Morton Feldman in the Rockies

Snuggled underneath Sulphur Mountain in the middle of the Canadian Rockies lies the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Here I spent two winters in the mid-80’s (my mid-twenties) at the Music Theatre Studio Ensemble. It was a heady time, and my first experience of living away from England for an extended period. Putting together a crowd of emergent composers, writers, designers and performers far from the outside world was asking for trouble: emotional highs and lows and catharses occurred on a weekly basis.

Our ensemble numbered about 20 and was regarded with suspicion by the much more stitched up Music program participants and the more laid back, yet quietly subversive Visual Arts crowd. We all worked, ate, played and slept together, and rejoiced in our shared eccentricities. I remember a gay taxidermist, a self-styled witch from Quebec who would stay in bed all day with the curtains drawn whenever the moon was at its apex, a fearless photographer who would barge into the most dangerous situations and click away, a lumberjack (also called Julian) who wrote poetry, a macho clarinetist who caused a record breaking outbreak of STD’s (and who couldn’t count) and many more.

A magic mountain, indeed!

The centre was awash in funding; and some extraordinary folks would show up and minister to us: Luciano Berio, Witold Lutoslawski, doyenne of actresses Helen Burns, the poet Charles Causley, cellist Paul Tortelier, the director Richard Jones.; and in early in 1987, it was announced that Morton Feldman would be in residence at the music department, but available to the musicians in our Music Theatre program.

I have to confess that at the time I didn’t really know who he was. My appreciation of his music and the likes of John Cage and Harry Partch—that whole American experimental aesthetic—came later. Like so many of my contemporaries, I was entrenched in my own little fortress of self-discovery, very much subscribing to the view that taste was something that I—and I alone—had; and that John Cage, 4’33” and all that aleatoric stuff was plain silly. Looking back, such hubris was simply age appropriate; I was right on schedule.

Just before the arrival of Mr Feldman, the weather changed. Accustomed to extreme cold in the winter (the temperature could dive to minus 40—where Centigrade and Fahrenheit meet) —we would periodically experience a warm wind, the Chinook, which would blow through, leading to an overnight temperature spike of fifty degrees or more, playing havoc with our sinuses—and minds. It was just another excuse for the Quebecois witch to retreat to her bed and hide under the blankets. No surprise, then, that just about everyone would also come down with sniffles and colds. And that is exactly what happened: the Music department conductor and the assistant were both incapacitated. Thus, in a pinch,  I was contacted to fill in for them. I had never seen myself as a conductor, though I had just led several of the musicians through a double-bill of one act operas of my own, which had gone well, with a fun rapport established amongst the musicians, a couple of whom were friends.

A parcel of Feldman”s chamber scores arrived: ‘I met Heine on the Rue Fürstenburg,’ ‘Routine Investigations’ and one of the sequence, ‘The viola in my life.’ When the musicians gathered for a rehearsal before the arrival of the master, no one had ever played such music. It is worth remembering that this was well before Morton Feldman had became a cult figure. What were we to make of everything exposed, extreme quiet, silences to fall into, multiple time changes, often with the irregular bars silent? This made for a great deal of eyebrow waggling and finger pointing from me. The players froze, scared to make a sound, I directed them to ignore the extremely quiet dynamics for now, in order simply to get some kind of shape and flow. The first run-throughs left us bewildered.

By the time Mr Feldman arrived, we were all highly nervous; and his demeanor hardly put us at ease. He had the gruffness of a Brooklyn taxi driver, a reptilian stare, and a forbidding greasy lock of hair that covered his eyes. He was spectacularly and fascinatingly ugly—and we’d heard a babe magnet, as well: there was an entourage of improbably nubile young women in tow. Though his schtick was downright funny, he could be scathing. We attended a talk where he mentioned that he didn’t give ‘a rat’s ass’ about what people thought of his music. We quickly scheduled an unofficial rehearsal, with nervousness giving way to dread.

Foreboding focused the mind, with the awkward levity of the first rehearsal giving way to a collective purpose; we began to make sense of this elusive and unique music. There were some real challenges, though, for these excellent players. The oboe part in ‘Routine Investigations’ had a passage that was unconscionably low, florid, and quiet—always the hardest register of the instrument to play, and to blend. It seemed a peculiarity;  an early lesson in orchestration—kind of a no no. Short of my directing everyone to play up, it was proving impossible to make it work. We wondered if the oboist should muffle her instrument with a cloth. If she attempted to play too quietly then nothing would come out.

Before our first rehearsal with him, I was asked, or rather told, that Mr Feldman was giving all the composers on campus a session, and even though I was not one of the official Music Department composers (Music Theatre types were presumed to be far too fluffy, no doubt), I would be included. Thus I showed up to a practice room, with a score and recording of a recent piece of mine.

There was no small talk. In glacial silence he perused the score carefully, with no interest in listening to a recording. The tension was palpable, at least on my side. After an endless while, he shut the score, fixed me with a basilisk stare and pronounced: ‘This isn’t music, it’s CONFECTIONERY’!

I was stunned. I momentarily thought of Saint-Saëns ‘Wedding Cake Caprice’ and wondered if I should ask if he knew it; possibly not a good move. Not knowing how to react, I found myself—in horror—fighting an irrepressible giggle welling up within me; try as I might, though, I simply couldn’t repress it and began spluttering helplessly, ‘Mr Feldman. Thank you, that’s priceless. Do I have your permission to use that as the epitaph on my gravestone?’.

Now he looked really surprised, but added ‘And you have no counterpoint in your DNA.’

I wondered if he was wasted in the earnest realm of contemporary music, and he should have been plying his trade on the Borscht belt. Without censoring myself, I replied.

‘And you do?’

This got a sharp look. ‘You’re rude’ he replied. Then suddenly, and surprisingly, he softened. He then conversed most illuminatingly on how music had come to pass, and how tonality was lazy and dead (this was the tail end of modernism in the 1980’s remember). He was, indeed, admirably persuasive and logical. He also gave some advice, looking back through the score, remarking, ‘It’s too conceptual, too European. Respect the notes, you’re too profligate. It’s sounds you’re playing with, not notes on a page - let them breathe. Relish them. If you push notes around, they’ll push you back.’ Even if I haven’t always managed to follow his advice, it has played in the back of my head like a mantra since this encounter.

Later that day was the first rehearsal where he would be present. He let us play for a minute or so.

‘Stop!’ he commanded. Then, to me, ‘Your shoulders are too expressive. Don’t shape my music. There’s no forwards. Let the sounds speak.’ I immediately suppressed and stiffened my shoulders, with the result that by the end of the rehearsal my arms felt as if they would go into spasm. After that, he more or less left us alone, apart from observing that it all sounded a bit too healthy. I promised we would refine it down.

The next session, the following day, started with us all feeling more confident about things. Big mistake! Every time we played something, Mr Feldman would yell out ‘Too loud.’ It happened several times, so much so that the players’ confidence was evaporating. There was a very sunny, pert cellist in the little ensemble, who always smiled and had cute dimples and was called Mary Jo, Mary Sue or Mary something. She was from deepest Kansas. In her part was a high plucked note marked ppp - infinitesimally quiet - totally exposed. We tried various ways to make it sound, but no matter what, it resembled knicker elastic being pinged. Mr. Feldman moved in on her, madly invading her space, prompting her to retreat behind her blonde locks like a nun behind a veil. He murmured to her, face to face, ‘I like my pizzicatos SENSUOUS.’ We were all very nonplussed by this—eyebrows raised—so I suggested she could play a little louder and vibrate the note madly. This was tried multiple times and it still sounded like knicker elastic. Now, the flautist in the little ensemble was a lovely pal of mine, Bernard Phillips, a consummate pro who was first flautist in the Houston Grand Opera orchestra—and its only black member. We had bonded almost immediately on arrival in Banff after celebrating his 30th birthday rather ill-advisedly clambering up Sulphur Mountain after a large snowstorm. He was a great giggler; and I could see his lip curling up as the music moved ahead. He had an ultra quiet entry coming up; and it’s mighty hard to control the release of air if you are about to explode with laughter. I glanced at the rest, and they, with the exception of Mary whatever, who was beyond perturbed, were starting to lose it as well. I made a split decision, suddenly banging my baton on the stand and calling a break. We all stampeded out of the hall at breakneck speed and fled to our respective restrooms. Those of us in the gents stuffed our hands in our mouths and squealed with helpless laughter, like a bunch of thirteen year old girls high on sugar. However hard we tried, we just couldn’t stop. When we eventually did, we caught each others eyes and it all started again. Then, upon encountering the girls in the hallway who had, like us, clearly been wrestling with giggles, it all started again.

Eventually we composed ourselves and returned to Mr Feldman, who had been mystified by our stampede from the hall. But we efficiently got back to work, odd splutter aside. He did get quite difficult with the oboist, though, who was struggling with the low florid passage I mentioned; and when we asked what his solution would be, he just muttered that his friend had no problem with it. Later I found out that the oboist who premiered the piece had a special reed she had adapted to make it possible. This tidbit would have helped our player no end whose confidence had been impaired by the composer’s gruffness.

The following day was the concert, which went extremely well. In fact, Morton Feldman stood up and clapped at the end of one of the pieces. This all happened in February of 1987. In July, I was shocked to read his obituary.

Over ten years later, at a dance course, the South-African-Irish composer Kevin Volans gave a talk which was a masterclass on Morton Feldman. They had gotten to know each other well at the University of Buffalo. Thanks to this lecture, my appreciation of Morton Feldman’s music was properly ignited. And Feldman’s music went positively mainstream by the 2000’s, with recordings and performances proliferating mightily. He and his music have taken up residency in the back of my head, even though it represents  the absolute antithesis of what I am able to do. It’s a glimpse of another musical ecosystem—tempting and beguiling—that I sometimes wish I had the temperament to inhabit.

© Julian Grant 2024