Photo Christian Steiner

Crippled Symmetry

     My thirty-fourth annual recital will take place on Sunday, September 12 at 3:00 pm, in England Conservatory's Jordan Hall. The program consists of a single work by Morton Feldman titled "Crippled Symmetry." The instrumentation includes flute and bass flute; Sarah Bob is the pianist, and percussionist Aaron Trant plays glockenspiel, vibraphone, and celesta. Please note: the piece is played without pause; the timing is approximately an hour and twenty-five minutes.

     Feldman's meticulously score shows no dynamic markings and no expression indications. There are no tunes, there is no intentional counterpoint, there is no discernible form or harmonic organization. One might ask, then, whether this is music -- just as many asked, in the 1950s, whether the works of Rothko, Pollock, and Rauschenberg were art.

     What "Crippled Symmetry" does consist of, is patterns. (In my 1987 recital I included a twenty-five-minute piece of Feldman's titled Why Patterns.) Each instrumental part consists of meticulously notated patterns of pitches and rhythms that perpetually metamorphose and recombine, sometimes subtly, sometimes clearly, sometimes abruptly. The instruments -- flute and bass flute, piano, glockenspiel, celesta, and vibraphone, all have clearly differentiated timbres that lend the three instrumental parts a crystalline clarity. The intertwining progress of the patterns invites active listening; the passive listener may find other rewards in the surface beauty of the music, its slow pace, and its quiet voice. . . . Feldman (1926 -- 1987) cites Rauschenberg's discovery that he wanted "neither life nor art, but something in between."

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