Several years ago, I had the rare opportunity to perform Morton Feldman‘s 2nd String Quartet, a six-hour masterpiece of subtly shifting patterns and musical meditation. Yes, you read that correctly; a single movement that is continuously played for six hours. This was way back in the pre-iPad days, and since the music was only available in full score, we had hundreds of page turns, which I suppose was helpful in keeping our minds off the need to go to the bathroom.

The amazing thing about that piece, and frankly all of Feldman’s music, is that it’s never boring. Like all great composers, Feldman understands how to keep our interest, inviting us to slow down and smell the half-steps. Steve Reich called this style of music “perceptible process,” and in Feldman’s hands we have the time to really hear the ideas unfolding beautifully, naturally, in a slow-moving stream of constant musical invention.

Clarinet and String Quartet is one of his last works, a relatively short piece (by Feldman’s standards) that clocks in at around 40 minutes. Everything we love about Morton’s music is there; fragile tensions created by quiet dissonances, and patterns that unfold like living origami. There is one tempo (1/4 note = 63) and one dynamic for the entire piece… ppp sempre.

As we’ve rehearsed this amazing piece, I can’t stop thinking about the iconic clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms, and how Feldman has managed to turn that tradition completely on its head with the exact same roster of instruments.

While researching a project many years ago, I came across these amazing recordings of Feldman and John Cage in conversation, recorded in 1966-67. Their six-hour “Radio Happening” covers a lot of territory, including politics, the state of art in the US, and artists they admired, among many other subjects. While their words are critical to understanding their creative processes, it’s the rhythm of their actual voices that I find most interesting. In Feldman’s case, the pauses and emphases in his speech are perfect models for how we are to play his music. You can hear a portion of their conversation here.

1966 was also the year of the landmark Miranda v. Arizona decision, requiring law enforcement to give formal warning of a defendant’s rights before arrest. I love the thought of Feldman and Cage choosing to have a serious conversation regarding art at such a tumultuous time, and can’t help feeling that the spirit that moved them to respond in such a way is exactly what we need right now.

It often takes a generation to forget why we have things such as Miranda rights, and just as often those rights will be tested so that we can feel secure in their immutability, and thus find hope in the possibility of an enlightened way forward.

In his score for Clarinet and String Quartet, Morton doesn’t use the rehearsal letter “I” in the score, planting his foot firmly on the letter “K” and leaping all the way to “L”. I rather like the idea that since in Clarinet and String Quartet no one is allowed to play above ppp, there’s no “I”, only “we.” The lessons of Morton Feldman never seemed more appropriate to this moment.

Ron Blessinger
Executive Director, 45^th Parallel Universe