Although the sparse, delicate, and spacious sound world of Morton Feldman’s later epic-length compositions hovers around the music of his widow Barbara Monk Feldman, she goes her own way. If anything, the slow-moving notes, muted sonorities, and canny registral deployment characterizing her solo piano composition Soft Horizons brings to mind Alvin Curran’s Inner Cities series. The music appears static on the surface, yet repeated hearings reveal careful balancing of consonance and dissonance, of single notes and chords.
In both the String Quartet and The Chaco Wilderness, Monk Feldman succeeds in her intention to evoke northern New Mexico’s high deserts through sound alone. In the Quartet, high-register harmonics and decorative gestures weave in and out of long sustained melodic lines. On the other hand, the relatively brief triptych The Chaco Wilderness, scored for lute, clarinet, guitar/mandolin, piano, and vibraphone is about quiet timbral blending. Soft Horizons holds my attention more than the other two works, although listeners sympathetic to Monk Feldman’s aesthetic may disagree.
It’s best to listen to each work by itself rather than to all three in succession, and in a calm environment without distraction. The music particularly lends itself well to headphone listening. Performances and sonics are ideal, as are Benjamin Levy’s scholarly, cogently descriptive booklet notes.
