Phillip Bush performs Morton Feldman’s “Triadic Memories”
One of the major figures of American avant-garde composition, Morton Feldman (1926-1987), was born on Jan. 12, 1926. Feldman's music is more closely related to visual artists of his era (many of whom were his friends and aesthetic compadres) in that it concerns itself more with proportion and scale rather than form as is usually discussed in classical music terms. For most of his career his music stayed within a quiet dynamic range, with small evolutions and recurrances that occur over a great length of time. Late in his life he wrote several works of enormous duration, including his six-hour-long Second String Quartet and the four-hour-long “For Philip Guston.” By comparison, "Triadic Memories" is a miniature, usually lasting 60-80 minutes in time depending on the interpretation. The piece is one of several for which Feldman found inspiration in the small pattern changes within individual Persian rugs. Widely considered a masterpiece of Feldman’s late period though rarely performed live, “Triadic Memories” rewards the listener with the sheer beauty of its sound-world and the temporal journey it provides, so different from much of the classical music repertoire of preceding centuries, even other music of the Modernist period of the late twentieth century.
