And I don’t know what it is to be a composer now … unless

Play these two files at the same time. Go about your business. Thank me later.


NB: Every hour and ten minutes you’ll have to refresh the second file.

UPDATE [4/5/15]: Looks like the original clip I used for the second file, Feldman’s “For John Cage,” has been taken off YouTube. So I’ve replaced it with something close.

Regarding the first file, from ubu.com:

John Cage / Morton Feldman: Radio Happenings I – V (1967)
Recorded at WBAI, New York City, July 1966 – January 1967

John Cage and Morton Feldman recorded four open-ended conversations at the studios of radio station WBAI in New York. These meetings spanned six months between July 1966 and January 1967, and were produced as five “Radio Happenings”. Both were at transitional points in their music. Cage had completed Variations V in 1965 and Variations VI and VII in 1966, and would publish “A Year from Monday” in 1967. Most of Feldman’s important work was yet to come. These conversations between two old friends, relaxed, smoking, and throwing out ideas, are full of laughter and long ponderous silences. They form an incredible historical record of their concerns and preoccupations with making music, art, society, and politics of the moment.

5 responses to “And I don’t know what it is to be a composer now … unless”

  1. Stella says:

    Thanking you later, bw. My Saturday morning was transformed.

  2. Bryan says:

    Hooray!

  3. Dave says:

    This was cool!

  4. GF says:

    Bunita Marcus (to whom the second piece is decated) turns out to be an apparently very good composer who was close with Feldman. You can find plenty of his stuff on Spotify and, so far as I can tell, none of hers. Oy.

  5. Bryan says:

    3. I had fun playing the vocal track against all sorts of stuff for a few days. I preferred it to very minimalist piano stuff a la Feldman. But let me know if you create other enjoyable mashups.

    4. I didn’t know!