New Music USA Online Library

Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman)

Chester Biscardi

Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman), for piano (1989/1991) Published by C. F. Peters: Edition Peters No. P67493b Recorded: Chester Biscardi • At the Still Point, CRI CD 686 (Anthony de Mare). Original version for contrabass and piano was commissioned by and written for Robert Black and Anthony de Mare. Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman), for piano (1989/1991) 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 work I am commenting musically on Morton Feldman’s Extensions 3, written for piano in 1952. This solo piano version of Companion Piece (for Morton Feldman) -premiered by Anthony de Mare at Sarah Lawrence College on November 21, 1991 - is based on the original duet for contrabass and piano written for Robert Black and Anthony de Mare who first performed it at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in England on November 20, 1989. Feldman: Homages; and Encounters with Feldman

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