Musical Rhetoric, Narrative, Drama, and Their Negation in Morton Feldman\u27s Piano and String Quartet

Abstract

Though Morton Feldman famously expressed his aversion to conventional compositional rhetoric early in his career, an examination of his music from the late 1970s onward reveals a more complex and ambiguous relationship with musical rhetoric than has often been acknowledged. In his own writings Feldman hinted at the notion of illusory function and directionality in his music, as well as to the phenomenon of negation. It is my contention that the extended-length works written in the last years of the composer\u27s life, which frequently feature tantalizing suggestions of conventional musical narrative, provide rich opportunity for readings of these statements. My examination focuses upon Piano and String Quartet, one of the composer\u27s very last works, which, I argue, exemplifies compositional approaches characteristic of much of Feldman\u27s music from this period in its evocation and simultaneous negation of a sense of traditional narrative linearity