Morton Feldman

Beschreibung

What happens when we listen to the same piece of music again and again—and allow it to change the way we hear the world?

Guillaume Belhomme turns to one of Morton Feldman’s most enigmatic late works: For Bunita Marcus, the vast, hushed composition for solo piano written in 1985.

Taking Hildegard Kleeb’s celebrated recording as his point of departure, Belhomme listens to the work again and again—in private rooms, on city streets and across landscapes from Prague and Vienna to Morocco and Mauritania. Each encounter alters the music. Silences admit the noises of the world; repetitions return changed; Feldman’s seventy-one minutes become a surface on which memory, place and expectation continually redraw one another.

Moving in fifty fragmentary chapters between musical criticism, travelogue, philosophical meditation and personal testimony, Belhomme explores Feldman’s preoccupation with time, his affinities with Samuel Beckett and the painters of the New York School, and the creative partnership behind the work’s dedication. Bunita Marcus herself enters the book to explain why Feldman placed her name in its title and what their seven years of artistic exchange meant.

For Bunita Marcus is not a guide that resolves Feldman’s music, but an invitation to lose yourself in it: to listen, to fail, to begin again—and to discover how a work changes whenever we return.

A book for the arts pages—at the intersection of music, literature, art, and travel.

What changes when we listen to the same piece of music again and again? Guillaume Belhomme takes Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus as the starting point for a deeply personal and cross-disciplinary essay. Hildegard Kleeb’s recording of the seventy-minute-plus piano work accompanies him through rooms, streets, and landscapes from Prague and Vienna to Morocco and Mauritania. Every new encounter alters the music: sounds enter its silences, memories overlap with repetitions, and places become part of the way the work is perceived.

Across fifty short fragments, Belhomme brings music criticism into contact with travel writing, literature, and the visual arts. Morton Feldman’s thinking about time and silence leads to Samuel Beckett and John Cage, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, and the New York School. Bunita Marcus herself also enters the book, recalling her seven-year artistic collaboration with Feldman and the unusual story behind the work’s title.

Morton Feldman. For Bunita Marcus offers multiple editorial angles: for literary and cultural reviews, music and art criticism, radio and podcasts devoted to contemporary music, essays on listening, and features exploring the relationships between music, painting, literature, and personal experience.

The volume concludes with One Minute, Just One, Belhomme’s imagined letter from Morton Feldman to Philip Guston—a literary miniature about friendship, art, distance, and disappearance.

Autor*in

Guillaume Belhomme
Guillaume Belhomme, geboren 1976, ist Musiker, Schriftsteller und Verleger. Seine eigene Musik erschien auf verschiedenen internationalen Labels. 2004 gründete er le son du grisli, eine Website für kreative und experimentelle Musik. Daneben schrieb er Rezensionen und Interviews unter anderem für Les Inrockuptibles, Mouvement und Volume. Belhomme ist Autor der Anthologien Pop fin de siècle und Jazz en 150 figures sowie zahlreicher Monografien über Musiker:innen und Bands, darunter Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey und My Bloody Valentine. Seit 2013 leitet er den Verlag Lenka lente. Guillaume Belhomme, born in 1976, is a musician, writer, and publisher. His own music has appeared on a number of international labels. In 2004, he founded le son du grisli, a website devoted to creative and experimental music. He has also contributed reviews and interviews to publications including Les Inrockuptibles, Mouvement, and Volume. Belhomme is the author of the anthologies Pop fin de siècle and Jazz en 150 figures, as well as numerous monographs on musicians and bands including Eric Dolphy, Jackie McLean, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, and My Bloody Valentine. Since 2013, he has directed the publishing house Lenka lente.

Themen in »Morton Feldman«

music essay contemplative reading silence in music Hildegard Kleeb contemporary classical music enthusiasts deep listening practice New York School melancholic meditation on silence and sound experimental music lovers music minimalism philosophical meditation Mark Rothko musical time perception abstract expressionism

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