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Give My Regards To Eighth Street (Exact Change)

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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.

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 day Jackson Pollock died I called a certain man I knew- a very great painter-and told him the news. After a long pause he said, in a voice so low it was barely a whisper,' That son of a b---he did it'. . . . With this supreme gesture Pollock had wrapped up an era and walked away from it." Feldman was very much part of that era, the Fifties when American art was becoming the most important post-war art there was its unique expressions. Sure Europeans tried to copy us but only became more academic about as Boulez and his excursions into chance/aleatoric gesturing. This collection of essays very clearly reveals how important American expeimentalism was to music. Feldman's forever endeavor to merely create, create at a high intensity working like a Dutch diamond cutter,or lens grinder,toying with creative means as his use of indelible ink, this he said makes you think about what your writing than how you are writing, puts the creative process back into the head.Or composing at the piano, which slows you down so you need to think more. He followed the intellectual currents, anything that brought a sense of richness and other dimension to his art, he knew for instance Henri Bergson's concept of memory and time,how that might affect his music,and painterly means was second nature to him hanging out at the Cedar Bar in New York talking for hours on Light,texture,perception,shape,design,concept, facility,gesture,timbre,tone,chiarscuro, there is ample historical data here as well, almost like a subtext of these ,like an unwritten history of the avant-garde, a "Conversation with Stravinsky"(not really),his first meeting with John Cage(after a performance of Webern), Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, also his travels to Berlin, and England and experiencing the avant-garde through Cornelius Cardew, and British experimentalism.His last years was devoted to long durational compositions, and he merely said he had more time to compose in these years,but Feldman here is filled with marvelous quotes,things,items,shapes for the mind"I knew I was going to be a professional the day I first became practical.Practicality took the form of copying out my music neatly,keeping my desk tidy and organized-all the unimportant things that seem unrelated to the work,yet somehow do affect it.". He also knows how to look from greater heights from mountains, tothe substance of modernity, those who stopped creating and became more interested in themselves as Stockhausen were "Modernists"; for Feldman allowing your materials,the shape,structures of your music tell you the secrets of creativity was most important and became a cause.

It won't matter if you are only casually familiar with Morton Feldman's work. You will still revel in 'Give My Regards to Eight Street.' The book is a collection of short pieces that will have you entering the mind of Feldman with all his plucky demotic brilliance. You often will feel as you become rapt reading these snippets no more than a gossamer like coat of music for all weather, entering a perfectly vibrating void that returns you to this lush place of mind.

This brilliant artist relates how strongly he was influenced by and thought more like (in some respects) the painters of his day (Primarily from 1950's...) including Rothko, Guston, and many others, as opposed to some of his musical contemporaries. His discussions of his own music and contemporaries such as Cage or Wolf, as well as 'modernists' such as Webern or Stravinsky, never fail to provoke thought, smiles, and wonder. Feldman's take on these artists and his own music and thinking in relation to New York during its artistic renaissance is never inaccessible to someone unfamiliar with music theory or reading music for example. Hs writing is crammed with exciting stories and important reminders presented in a conversational tone that is always lifting.