edited by Benjamin R. Levy, Turhout, Brepols, 2026 (Contemporary Composers, 8).
There is something inscrutable about Morton Feldman. His music resists analysis, first through its indeterminacy and later through its vast scale. His personality was also contradictory—a «fascinating balance» of «tenderness and toughness», as Christian Wolff states in the book’s preface.
Familiar biographical narratives, for example his connections to the New York School of composers and artists or his discovery of Turkish rugs, seem to transform as subtly as his music in their frequent retellings. Indeed, the more we examine his life and creative output, the more questions seem to arise. In this spirit of open inquiry, the present volume offers a mixture of analytical and musicological studies spanning the whole range of Feldman’s career, as well as his continuing legacy.
The essays cover topics ranging from his literary entanglements with Rilke in Only (1947) and Pasternak in Swallows of Salangan (1960), to timbre in his free-durations pieces of the 1960s, and ample discussion of the late works, including studies on memory in Violin and Orchestra, time in Piano and String Quartet, enharmonic spelling and intonation in String Quartet no. 2, and the defining themes of the Beckett-related works of his final decade.
The final two chapters address the reception of Feldman’s ideas in the works of James Tenney and Linda Catlin Smith, prompting a reconsideration of the composer’s important position not just in American music, but in the broader scope of the Western tradition.
Benjamin R. Levy is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on modernist and contemporary music and on connections between music, literature, and the arts. In addition to articles on subjects including Feldman, Xenakis, the Second Viennese School, and the architect Bruce Goff, he has published widely on the music of Ligeti, including the monograph Metamorphosis in Music: The Compositions of György Ligeti in the 1950s and 1960s.
