Deconstructive criticism

An apocryphal tale of Morton Feldman, the ugliest composer who ever lived, reaches me. If it isn't true it ought to be.

Feldman's later music is notorious for its extreme length, and his second string quartet must be one of the lengthiest pieces ever written, clocking up at some 5-6 hours (yes, hours). Understandably, it's rarely performed in its entirety, due to the immense stamina it requires.*

Anyway, the story goes that a young quartet decided to take up the challenge, and having prepared themselves, they played this behemoth through for the composer. Feldman sat quietly through the performance for the full six-odd hours it took to perform it. On finishing, the quartet looked, tired but filled with a sense of achievement, to the composer for his opinion. Feldman stood up and announced:

"That was fucking rubbish."


* I believe the Kronos Quartet, for whom it was written, never performed it in full, although in recent years a couple of recordings have appeared, notably an excellent one by the Flux Quartet on DVD, meaning you can listen to it without having to get up and change the disc. If you've got the guts to sit through it, it's well worth your time.

I suspect the quote is inaccurate, mainly because it's highly unlikely that an eminent American composer would use the word "rubbish". It is, however, entirely probable he'd have used the word "fucking".

Captain America cheers me up

Some days you just wish you hadn't got out of bed. We have this irritating Nazi phone system at work which works on the assumption that all we do is sit around waiting for the phone to ring. So when you're busy doing something it sometimes feels impossible to make any headway, as you're constantly interrupted by phone calls from people who want things doing NOW! NOW!. We also had a visit from a large group of librarians today (god knows why) who spent a long time milling around right in front of my desk drinking tea, which made it impossible to concentrate on work for the feeling of being in a goldfish bowl. And also made it impossible to get at the kettle and make tea for myself. Oh, and they've put this new door in the office which you need one of those fob things to open, but as i haven't yet been given a fob thing whenever I leave the office I'm locked out and on my return have to stand at the door knocking and looking through the glass trying to capture someone's eye like an abandoned puppy. GRRRR! At least I had the mighty Fall in the CD drive to channel the irritation. And I have this splendid picture on my desktop, which makes me laugh, in that way that only rude words can :