MORTON FELDMAN AT 100: WHY ANALYZE HIS MUSIC TODAY?

Abstract

This chapter examines the continuing analytical relevance of Morton Feldman’s (1926–1987) work in the context of the centenary of his birth. It proceeds from the hypothesis that his music challenges analytical models based on pre-established parametric hierarchies, particularly those centred on pitch, motivic development, and formal continuity. The study brings together specialist scholarship, the composer’s own writings, and analyses of four selected works from his career, chosen because they pose distinct analytical problems: Projection 1 (1950), Marginal Intersection (1951), Rothko Chapel (1971), and For John Cage (1982). The discussion shows that, in Projection 1, structure is redistributed across timbre, register, duration, density, and silence; in Marginal Intersection, notation participates directly in the constitution of the work; in Rothko Chapel, space and perception become components of formal experience; and, in For John Cage, repetition, difference, and memory begin to affect the very identity of the musical materials. These transformations are understood not as a succession of substitutions, but as an expansion, within the trajectory examined here, of what may assume a structural function. The chapter concludes that analysing Feldman today requires recognising that method, parameter, and analytical category should not precede the work as fixed assumptions. His music remains relevant because it compels analysis to reflect critically on the criteria by which it identifies organisation, coherence, and form.