Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music

5. Town Hall

5 town hall The Swallows of Salangan Morton Feldman’s The Swallows of Salangan (1960) is a work for chorus and orchestra. The title was taken from Safe Conduct , a biographical essay by Boris Pasternak. Here is a passage that appears in Feldman’s published score: I loved the living essence of historical symbolism, or, putting it another way, that instinct with the help of which we like Salangan swallows, built the world—an enormous nest, put together from the earth and sky, life and death, and two times, the ready to hand and the defaulting. I understood that it was prevented from crumbling by the strength of its links, consisting in the transparent figurativeness of all its parts. I conducted the first American performance of Swallows in 1963 in Town Hall, New York. The Brandeis Chamber Chorus, of which I was director, had been invited to participate in a concert of the works of Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. It was sponsored by The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. John Cage and Merce Cunningham were on the board of directors . There were wonderful musicians in the orchestra: Max Neuhaus and Paul Price played vibraphones, John Cage and David Tudor were the pianists. (Some orchestra.) All instruments and voices begin together; then each person proceeds at his or her own speed. All I had to do was give the downbeat, then stand there while the slowly changing sonic landscape unfolded. Since there was no tempo or meter, there was no 28 : m u s i c 1 0 9 definite speed at which the upbeat should be given. In conventional music, the tempo of the upbeat should be the same as that of the movement to be played. A good conductor will show the players the tempo by giving them an upbeat in that tempo. Therefore , I felt no compulsion to be absolutely precise but simply to indicate to the players when the work would begin. What happens when you let each performer choose the durations of the sounds? They gradually spread apart, going out of phase with each other. The further they go, the harder it is to hear what came before. Time erases memory. You know how it is when you look at clouds. As they move across the sky, they change shape. Or when you’re driving across the country, as you come up over a hill, for example, mountains seem to change their relationships with each other. They seem to move as your perspective changes. Artists know about this phenomenon. An object changes shape as the angle of light that illuminates it changes. The orchestra consists of six woodwinds, eight brass, eleven strings, two pianos, harp, guitar, and two vibraphones, as well as a chorus of eighteen singers. There are thirty-six separate parts. Most of the chords are made up of tone clusters, the individual notes of which are spread out and distributed throughout the orchestra and chorus. The opening chord consists of a cluster of five semitones: A, B-flat, B-natural, C, and D-flat. But it is spaced out over a range of four octaves. The chorus by itself encompasses more than two octaves. Between the bass, tenor, alto, and soprano are symmetrical intervals of a minor ninth; the tenor and alto parts are compressed into a three-note cluster, which covers only a minor third. Such a lovely symmetry. By starting with a neutral five-tone cluster, Feldman expresses the color of each instrument, as well as the simultaneities, free of functionality. Feldman loved the music of the Austrian composer, Anton Webern . Webern had been a student of Arnold Schoenberg, who developed the notorious and misunderstood twelve-tone system of Page 1 of The Swallows of Salangan by Morton Feldman. Copyright 1962 by C. F. Peters Corporation. Used by permission. 30 : m u s i c 1 0 9 composition. In this system, all twelve notes of the scale are equal, and because of this, music of a highly dissonant texture results. In order to avoid tonality, consonant intervals—thirds in particular —are used sparingly. Dissonant intervals—seconds, sevenths, ninths—are emphasized. By avoiding tonality, one more easily perceives tone color, density, and spaciousness. Webern’s music is characterized by wide intervals and single tones surrounded by silences. By separating tones in this way, attention is focused on the sounds themselves, not on their relationships. There are no climaxes...