Écrits et paroles

Morton Feldman occupies a highly singular position in contemporary American musical creation. Deliberately aloof from the modes and systems of writing developed from the 1950s onwards, he has carved out a path that leads him to probe ever more deeply into the contemplative dimension of listening and to apprehend the temporal fluidity inherent in the musical phenomenon.
Feldman’s writings represent not only a forum for confrontations between music and the visual arts, but also a form of soliloquy in which we can perceive preoccupations that several generations of artists have shared. In this way, this solitary and paradigmatic musician spread around him what might be called a personal ethic: the conviction that in art in general, and in music in particular, every project and every initiative is worth exploring, provided that it is carried out with uncompromising ideological rigour.
This revised edition brings together the composer’s writings and lectures on his life, work, composition and writing techniques, his relationships with Varèse, Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage and Stravinsky, as well as with Rauschenberg, De Kooning, Rothko and Mondrian, his philosophical reflections, his interviews with Iannis Xenakis and Françoise Esselier, a comprehensive 150-page monographic study of his work by Jean-Yves Bosseur, and testimonies from Steve Reich and Joan La Barbara.