Playlist 12-12-09

* Dowland: Complete Lute Works, Vols.3-5 (O’Dette) (Harmonia Mundi 5CD)
* Vivaldi: Cello Sonatas (ter Linden/Mortensen) (Brilliant Classics CD)
* Vivaldi: Violin Concertos, RV331, etc. (VBO/Marcon/Carmignola) (Arkiv Produktion CD)
* Venice Baroque Orchestra (Marcon/Carmignola): Concerto Veneziano (Arkiv Produktion CD)
* Feldman: String Quartet (The Group for Contemporary Music) (Koch CD)
* Feldman: Triadic Memories (Liebner) (Oehms Classics 2CD)
* Feldman: Piano and Orchestra (New World Symphony Orchestra/Tilson Thomas (Argo CD)
* Cage: Sonatas & Interludes for Prepared Piano (Tilbury) (Milan 10-21-07) (FM CDR)
* Cage: Music of Changes (Tudor) (hat[now]ART CD)
* John Coltrane: The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (d.1-2) (Impulse! 4CD)
* Sun Ra: Jazz in Silhouette (Saturn/Evidence CD)
* Sun Ra: Black Myth/Out in Space (d.1) (MPS/Motor Music 2CD)
* Sun Ra: Paradiso, Amsterdam 10-18-70 (FM 2CDR)
* Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: The Moment’s Energy (ECM CD)
* Henry Threadgill’s Zooid: This Brings Us To, Vol.1 (Pi CD)
* Jean-Luc Ponty: Royce Hall, U.C.L.A. 12-4-76 (Pre-FM CDR)
* The Beatles: “Baby It’s You” (Apple/EMI CDEP)
* The Beatles: “Free As a Bird” (Apple/EMI CDEP)
* The Beatles: “Real Love” (Apple/EMI CDEP)
* John Lennon: Anthology (d.3) (Capitol 4CD)
* Big Star: #1 Record (Ardent/Classic LP)
* Big Star: Radio City (Ardent/Classic LP)
* Big Star: 3rd (Ardent/4 Men With Beards LP)
* Grateful Dead: Auditorium Theatre, Chicago 5-12-77(x) (GD/Rhino “bonus” CD)
* Grateful Dead: Boston Garden 9-26-91 (SBD 2CDR)
* The Jam: All Mod Cons/Sound Effects (MFSL CD)
* Cocteau Twins: Echoes in a Shallow Bay (4AD/Capitol CDEP)
* Cocteau Twins: Tiny Dynamine (4AD/Capitol CDEP)
* Cocteau Twins: Sunburst and Snowblind (4AD/Capitol CDEP)
* Cocteau Twins: Iceblink Luck (4AD/Capitol CDEP)
* Sonic Youth: Sister (SST LP)
* Guided By Voices: Fast Japanese Spin Cycle (Engine 7”EP)
* Guided By Voices: Wish In One Hand (Jass 7”EP)
* Robert Pollard: Not In My Airforce (Matador LP)
* Wilco: Wilco (the album) (Nonesuch CD)
* The Flaming Lips: “Fight Test” (Warner Bros. CDEP)
* The Flaming Lips: “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell” (Warner Bros. CDEP)
* The Flaming Lips: Embryonic (Warner Bros. DVD-A)

Commentary:

I love Morton Feldman’s music, but it is difficult to find the time required. In his late period, Feldman’s extraordinarily subtle, extremely quiet music works with vast expanses of time: the first String Quartet (1979) lasts over an hour and Sabine Liebner’s performance of Triadic Memories (1981) stretches to over two. (String Quartet No.2 (1983) is perhaps the most extreme example of all at more than four hours in a single movement!) One must submit to Feldman’s singular soundworld: pitches float in an infinite space, not quite atonal but not quite tonal either, rhythms are not quite regular, repetitions not quite exactly alike. Uniquely beautiful but not exactly pretty, it is not quite minimalist, but well apart from the maximalist, total-serialism mainstream of the time (and very different from fellow-New York School luminary, John Cage, for that matter). Feldman’s music reminds me of Mark Rothko’s mature paintings: they lack all the bravura and extroverted machismo of the other so-called Abstract Expressionists and appear almost minimalist by comparison. But a closer look reveals the same concern for the painterly expression of transcendence rather than mere optical effects. Feldman’s music hovers in space, darkly shimmering like a Rothko painting, inviting contemplation but eternally resisting interpretation. There is the sense with Feldman’s longer pieces that there is neither beginning nor ending, only this (perhaps very large) fragment; the music is time, which is infinite and our experience of it is arbitrary and limited, like a painting that forever hangs on the wall, to be experienced – or not.