Morton Feldman - Three Voices, VI-IX

Three Voices, for soprano & tape, or 3 sopranos (1982)

I. Opening
II. 'Legato'
III. Slow Waltz
IV. First Words
V. 'Whisper'
VI. Chords
VII. 'A Non Accented Legato'
VIII. Snow Falls
IX. Legato
X. Slow Waltz And Ending

Joan La Barbara, voice

Morton Feldman wrote Three Voices for Joan La Barbara in 1982, and it stands out among the composer's output as one of the only works that he wrote with any electronic features. The singer performs in front of two loudspeakers that emit two additional female voices. The vocalist and recorded accompaniment emote both sung notes without text and a poem by Feldman's deceased friend, Frank O'Hara. The poem is called Wind, and it was written and dedicated to the composer in 1962. The two men met in New York in the early 1950s, and admired each other's work. They were also great friends. Joan La Barbara is a composer and performer who has been called "the vocal wizard of the avant-garde" by esteemed figures in the contemporary music scene.

Three Voices was conceived as a sort of eulogy for O'Hara and the painter Philip Guston, an abstract expressionist painter whose influence on Feldman's development was incalculable. The composer saw the two loudspeakers as tombstones, and with the vocalist on stage the effect was an exchange between the living and the dead. The only other work by Feldman to involve technological effects was his Intersection from 1953, for magnetic tape. He generally did not enjoy music with electronic features because of his preference for Western instruments and vocalists. Three Voices is both ethereal and haunting, yet not manipulative; there is no sense that the listener is intended to share any feeling of loss. Joan La Barbara's vocal talents are also deliberately demonstrated without pyrotechnics. It is unlikely that the work would have been written without her abilities in mind. The fifty-minute piece presents harmonic challenges that are daunting and beautiful. Like many great works, it sounds overheard rather than heard and is meant to be listened to at a low volume. Feldman said "Frank O'Hara dispenses with everything in his work but his feelings. This kind of modesty always disappoints culture, which time after time has mistaken coldness for Olympian objectivity." The originality of both artists is contained in this sentence. Forms that have been reused in order to get a rise out of an audience, which knows what it expects and wants little else, bound neither artist. Feldman equated the emotional artistic utterance with originality, while the reissue of tried and true forms, no matter what catchy twists the artist may inject, demonstrate an academic alertness at the expense of emotion. Both artists made works in a way that required an open heart to absorb, distrusting the standard epic styles. Guston was much the same, but Guston and O'Hara were different men indeed. While O'Hara enjoyed art on many levels, Guston was particular in the extreme. To him, very little deserved to be called art. As Feldman saw it, Guston's works revealed a unified emotion through the Abstract Experience. The composer loved both men greatly, and La Barbara was entrusted with a tribute that was very important to him. He did not describe Three Voices in those terms, but it amounts to that. The form of the work comes from nothing but his creative impulses; there is no precedent to its structure. Listeners are not taken on a journey of an emotional landscape but are steeped in the work's character. The lessons that Feldman garnered from these artists began with his meeting them in the early 1950s, and ended with his death in 1987. Three Voices for Joan La Barbara consummates love, honesty, talent, and integrity, amounting to great music. It is the opposite of trivial. [Allmusic.com]

Art by Philip Guston

Category:

Music

Tags:

• feldman
• barbara
• o'hara
• three
• voices
• soprano
• tape
• wind