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CD Review

Morton Feldman

For Samuel Beckett

Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin/Roland Kluttig
CPO 999647-2 DDD 43:17

Morton Feldman's For Samuel Beckett is a late work; at well under an hour, it is one of the shorter denizens of that realm. Feldman scored it for an ensemble consisting of doubled woodwind quartet, brass septet, string quartet, and a trio of harp, piano, and vibraphone. The brass and strings are muted, and the music hovers on the edge of inaudibility; there are no dynamic outbursts at all. The music just starts, as if it had always been there, ticks along irregularly for three-quarters of an hour, and then just ends. Weird, at least if you're not familiar with Feldman's music.

For Samuel Beckett is not illustrative of anything that the Irish author actually wrote – not as far as we know – but perhaps I am not stretching a point too far if I suggest two ways in which Beckett's spirit haunts this work. Imprecise repetition (one can't say "development," at least not in the usual sense) can be found in Beckett's writing, and certainly in Feldman's music. Similarly, Beckett seemed to be interested in the idea of entropy, of the universal clock slowing down, and of ordered systems becoming more and more irreversibly disordered as time went on. For Samuel Beckett depicts an endgame (the title of a Beckett play) in which the player/musicians – specifically, organized into the four groups listed above – have run short of possibilities, and are reduced to making the same moves again and again. In chess, the game ends with checkmate. In For Samuel Beckett, the game, horrifyingly, never ends. There is activity but no warmth, and the music gently persists in hitting its head against the wall. However, because the repetitions are imperfect, and the four layers of sound don't line up the same way each time, For Samuel Beckett isn't a static work. It has no "purpose," however, a quality which may endear it to Zen Buddhists. I find it fascinating, but it's not stuff to gratify the proverbial tired businessman.

This is at least the third CD of For Samuel Beckett – there are versions by Ensemble Modern and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players – but this may be the only one that is readily available now. Luckily, the German ensemble does a fine job of meeting Feldman's almost unreasonable demands, and the conductor and the engineers have collaborated to ensure that the ensemble's sound is balanced, and that the music's pulse is felt. The CD is being offered at a "Special Low Price," presumably because it is relatively short. That's good thinking from this German label.

Copyright © 2000, Raymond Tuttle