Morton Feldman Quotes About Composition

• It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows just don't happen. They must be constructed....To demonstrate any formal idea in music, whether structure or stricture, is a matter of construction, in which the methodology is the controlling metaphor of the composition...Only by 'unfixing' the elements traditionally used to construct a piece of music could the sounds exist in themselves--not as symbols, or memories which were memories of other music to begin with.

  Morton Feldman

  Music, Memories, Ideas

  "Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music" by Richard Kostelanetz, Joseph Darby, 1996.

• At one point [Cardew] taught himself to play guitar simply in order to take part in the performance in a composition by Boulez, which is a little like saying he learned Danish to read Kiekegaard.

  Morton Feldman

  Guitar, Order, Play

• No one has the Houdini school of composition.

  Morton Feldman

  School, Houdini, Composition

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