DESCRIPTION:
Violin and String Quartet, for violin & string quartet (1985)

Peter Rundel, violin
Pellegrini-Quartett

Morton Feldman's large scale work simply entitled Violin and String Quartet commences with the violin soloist contemplating the minor seventh interval A to G over and over again, in no predictable rhythmic configuration, while confronted by soft, dissonant chord clouds from the other musicians. The clouds quietly disintegrate as the entrances become more staggered. Ten minutes or so into the piece, Feldman refines the opening gestures, expanding the interval leaps, and voicing chord clusters in numerous configurations. At the 22-minute mark, Feldman arrives back where he started, but in a parallel universe, so to speak, with the aforementioned minor seventh transformed into a major ninth (G to A), the chord clouds fuller of body, and increased rhythmic momentum. Before you've noticed, the harmonic motion has grown more protracted when the time comes to switch discs. Continue listening, and you'll arrive at a soothing, yet somewhat darker lower-register variation on the opening material at the 13-minute mark (remember, we're on disc two). There's a poignant stretch of music between 26 and 31 minutes where the slowly reiterated chords take on a lush harmonic character, giving way to a section made up of staggered major ninths moving in opposite directions. Faster moving sustained chords ensue, but now coloured by discreetly placed pizzicatos, the first plucked notes we've heard in this piece. Soon all the instruments stack up the aforementioned minor ninth, sometimes in canon, sometimes together, all to intense, claustrophobic effect. An oasis in the form of a steady procession of short-breathed sustained chords lies ahead. On paper this music looks simple to play, even sight-read, yet to control the composer's pinpointed dynamics, rhythms, and articulations is easier said than done, let alone holding a listener's attention for nearly two hours. --Jed Distler

Two hours of sighs, whispers, murmurs, and tremolos from a string quartet etherealized further by a solo violin floating above. That's what you get with this epic anti-epic from 1985 by Morton Feldman. Feldman's admirers regard him as the most significant composer of our time. It's a hard case to make for something so minimal; this piece in particular seems less like music than music's ghost -- a pure essence that denies anything remotely substantial or corporeal. 'Let's get out of here before it starts to develop,' Debussy once said to a friend following the exposition in the opening of a Beethoven symphony; Feldman's music is the ultimate manifestation of that stance. Unlike Webern, who sometimes did develop his tiny cells, if only for a moment, Feldman creates the smallest musical materials imaginable, only to have them slowly vanish. Still, Feldman is a distinct, instantly recognizable voice (or anti-voice) -- something that cannot be said for many recent composers. Feldman may not be the greatest composer of our time, as his cultish advocates assert, but he may well be the greatest for insomniacs. This mysterious, wispy stuff is very close to a pure dream state, perhaps the best 3 AM music ever. --Jack Sullivan

Art by Sol LeWitt