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‘The Breathing of Sound Itself’: Notation and Temporality in Feldman's Music to 1970

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 32; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07494467.2014.882548

1477-2256

Brett Boutwell,

Art, Technology, and Culture

Morton Feldman's well-known attraction to visual art is difficult to disentangle from another stimulus to his creative thought during the first two decades of his career: his obsession with musical time and struggle to represent it through the visual medium of notation. Inclined to frame compositional questions in terms drawn from painting, he was forced to reconcile the inherent temporality of his own art form with the inherent spatiality of another, often looking toward notation for answers. This essay explores the notational strategies Feldman cultivated between 1950 and 1970 in light of his evolving esthetics of musical time, taking into account the significance of his uniquely performative conception of the creative act, his fascination with the relationship of sound and sight, and his conviction that notation serves as a key determinant of musical style.