Product Description

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) is among the most influential American composers of the 20th century. While his music is known for its extreme quiet and delicate beauty, Feldman himself was famously large and loud. His writings are both funny and illuminating, not only about his own music but about the entire New York School of painters, poets, and composers that coalesced in the 1950s, including his friends Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank O'Hara, and John Cage. Give My Regards to Eighth Street is an authoritative collection of Feldman's writings, culled from published articles, program notes, LP liners, lectures, interviews, and unpublished writings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137118 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-26
• Released on: 2004-03-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Composer Morton Feldman (1926-87) was a crucial figure in the post-war New York art world, using elements of chance composition to construct exquisite, quietly powerful scores that produce wonderfully varied interpretations. In Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, Feldman reflects on his own work and ideas, as well as on those of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank O'Hara, John Cage and many others. If "Silence is my substitute for counterpoint," these occasional articulations give us a way into it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher
About Morton Feldman:

"Like the artists involved in the new American painting, he was pursuing a personal search for expression which could not be limited by any system… His music sets in motion a spiritual life which is rare in any period and especially so in ours."
— Frank O'Hara

"He talked wonderfully, sharply, outrageously, but that wasn't quite his music. One thinks of the disparity of his large, strong presence and the delicate, hypersoft music, but in fact he too was, among other things, full of tenderness and the music is, among other things, as tough as nails."
— Christian Wolff

"There are people who say, `If music's that easy to write, I could do it.' Of course they could, but they don't. I find Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, `Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do.' And then he went back to sleep."
— John Cage

"He was extremely nearsighted and wrote his music as if touching the notes with his eyes. Whenever I hear his music I think of its tactile quality, of his eyes `hearing' the sounds."
— Toru Takemitsu

About the Author
B.H. Friedman (b. 1926) is a novelist, dramatist, and art critic who was first introduced to Morton Feldman by their mutual friend Jackson Pollock. He is the author of Jackson Pollock: Energy made Visible (McGraw-Hill, 1972; revised edition Da Capo Press, 1995), and the monographs Franz Kline (Fundació Antonio Tàpies, 1994) and Lee Krasner (Abrams, 1999), in adddition to numerous novels and plays.

Customer Reviews

Wondering if there's more
If there's one book on the mystery that is Morton Feldman, it's "Give My Regards", it's in his own words, for starters. In it he covers his fascination and love of painting, particularly shedding light on his relationship with Philip Guston, and giving pretty expansive coverage of his early years as a composer in the 1950s.

Along with his views on art, he gives insight into his musical philosophy, some places echoing what his colleague and friend John Cage would say. Feldman even gives sharp musical criticism about Cage, while at the same time, extolling their friendship, and writing about him in the most flattering light.

Aside from his relationship with Cage, Feldman covers Stockhausen and Boulez quite a lot, paying particular attention to Boulez's philosophy, as he humorously tears it apart. While not compiled by Feldman himself (complied by his widow and released in 2000) it gives a great look into Feldman, the composer, writer, and art critic. The book is even interspersed with various liner notes he wrote from his numerous recordings, and programs. At twelve dollars, I strongly recommend this book to anyone that wants to learn about Morton Feldman.

The Ever-Lasting Yes
Morton Feldman's essays and liner notes are every bit as challenging as his music. In fact, I would like to turn one of Morty's quotable lines on its ear and say that "Feldman couldn't write a note unless it was literary." Of course, I'm inserting Feldman's name for the orginal Ives (see page 165 of this book), but I have to say that this composer provides in these pages the "narrative dark matter and coherent strange attractors" for his--in the main--disjunctive sounds. With this book Feldman positions himself in the same great tradition of writer-musicians as Berlioz, while all the while disparaging that very tradition! In fact, I would say that of all the recent experimentalists--Cage included--Feldman had to have been the most literary.

What a fine mind, and what a great loss to have only one side of Feldman's legendary conversational powers in this book, but, until everyone in the world has sense enough to stop what they're doing and applaud Morton Feldman's brilliance and the END of TIME COMES and Feldman himself descends from on high seated on a golden bar stool, ready to take on all comers, they will have to be content with this written fossil. And of course the music...but that's another story.

This book includes an appreciation of Morty and his work by Frank O'Hara, another person I wish I'd met.

Essential reading for Feldman fans
This book, collecting all of Morton Feldman's published writings--along with four miscellaneous pieces--is an expanded version of a book originally published in a bilingual German/English edition in 1985, edited by Walter Zimmermann. To the original book, the editor, B. H. Friedman has added his own introduction, a postface by the poet Frank O'Hara, a late friend of Feldman's, and various other writings not collected in the original book.

There is much to enjoy here, from Feldman's reminiscences of his New York School colleagues, his admiration for Varese, his not uncritical appreciation of Webern and Stockhausen and his dislike for Boulez and Schoenberg. Equally, there is much interesting material on the visual arts as well: Feldman's passions for Mondrian, Pollock, Guston and Rothko are intimately related to his music and this book illuminates this strongly. Feldman's understanding of the need for a specifically US artistic and musical tradition--and how this tradition came about--is particularly illuminating, as is his writing about his colleague and friend John Cage.

Feldman's writing style is clear and conversational--if it occasionally lacks in depth this is a minor sin in comparison to the wilfully obfuscatory writings of the young Boulez, for example. Because of its own nature as a collection of unrelated pieces, this book tends to contain a little too much repetition and some very slight pieces (often notes from recordings or performances). I would have liked a little more writing on Feldman's own music--the rare occasions where he explains his techniques are highly interesting--but even with these flaws anyone interested in Feldman's music or the New York School in general will find this book very interesting.