About this work: Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman), for contrabass and piano (1989)
Published by C. F. Peters Co.: Edition Peters No. P67493a.
Piano version recorded on
Chester Biscardi • At the Still Point, CRI CD 686 (Anthony de Mare).
Commissioned by and written for Robert Black and Anthony de Mare
Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman), for contrabass and piano (1989)
I first met Morton Feldman in Buffalo in 1979. His apartment was neat, sparse: a Steinway, a work table, a Rauschenberg on one wall, the now-famous Brown/Feldman cover from TIME records on another, and many ancient Oriental, Turkish and Iroquois carpets. He talked about his music and compositional techniques which had as lasting an impact on me as did his intense passion for those carpets. He encouraged me to get close to the floor and look at their textures, reliefs, orchestration, what he called “symmetry even through imperfection,” and explained how he was translating these impressions into the musical notes of the string quartet which he was writing.
In this duet, I am commenting musically on Morton Feldman’s
Extensions 3, written for solo piano in 1952. Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman) was written for Robert Black and Anthony de Mare who first performed it at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England on November 20, 1989. There is also a solo piano version - premiered by Anthony de Mare at Sarah Lawrence College on November 21, 1991, and recorded on CRI CD 686 in 1995 - based on the original duet.
Feldman: Homages; and
Encounters with Feldman