Morton Feldman - For Samuel Beckett (2000)

No other musician can stake a claim for primary Beckett-related importance more than Morton Feldman. Not only are Feldman's timeless, repetitive compositions often evocative of Beckett's minimalist prose, but a meeting in Berlin, 1976, lead to a warm relationship between the composer and the writer, one that bore fruit in several projects and collaborations. In 1976 he met Samuel Beckett in Berlin, at the Schiller-Theater, where Beckett was overseeing rehearsals of Footfalls and That Time. Coming in from the sunlight into the dark theatre, the already terribly myopic Feldman could barely see Beckett, and literally tripped on the stage after "shaking his thumb." Inviting the author to lunch, and armed with a score for part of Film, Feldman attempted to get the embarrassed writer to provide text for a composition intended for the Rome Opera. The two discussed their mutual disdain for traditional opera, groping around each other for a possible middle ground – Feldman didn't want to use any existing text, and Beckett wasn't exactly fond of having his words set to music. Eventually, Beckett agreed to elaborate on some words he called "the theme of his life," the result being Neither, mailed to the composer a few weeks later – before Beckett had ever heard a note of Feldman's music! Coincidentally, the very week he mailed the poem, he heard Feldman's Orchestra on the BBC. Perhaps sensing similarities in their artistic vision, Beckett approved of his music and continued their friendship, though the younger man remained somewhat in awe of Beckett for the rest of his life. In 1985 Beckett suggested Feldman as the composer for a new version of Words and Music being produced for American radio. Putting aside his other work, Feldman completed the score, following it with a long piece dedicated to his friend, For Samuel Beckett, in 1986. It was the last thing he finished composing; he died a year later, before starting a score for Beckett's Cascando.

An earlier version of Morton Feldman's For Samuel Beckett existed on a 1992 hat ART CD performed by Ensemble Modern. Their take on this eerie, meditative study in slow, dissonant pulses and atonal moods was somewhat more muted than on this disc. The timings are virtually the same (about 43 minutes), but the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin gives a more assertive role to the piano's out-of-sync declarations, betraying the work's skeletal underpinnings. (Amazon.com)

Morton Feldman (1926 - 1987)
For Samuel Beckett (43:17)
CPO 999 647-2
Recorded/released 1995/2000