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RESEARCH ARTICLES
Introduction
The following interview with Morton Feldman was first published in the winter 1970-71 issue of VH 101, a French arts journal (on pp. 34-44). The journal was created by Austrian critic Otto Hahn and French critic Françoise Esselier and published from 1969 to 1972, and the list of interviewees is impressive, including Marcel Duchamp, Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss. It is Esselier who interviewed Feldman.
There are several unusual aspects to this interview. The first is that it was conducted in English originally, but the audio tapes appear to have been lost. Therefore until now this interview has only been available in French translation; it was republished in Jean-Yves Bosseur's excellent book about Feldman, Écrits et Paroles (Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan, 2000).
The second notable aspect is that, given the abrupt beginning of the interview, and other hints sprinkled throughout, it appears that this is 'take two' of an interview that, for some reason, was not recorded properly the first time. In certain passages, it appears that Feldman may be repeating or rephrasing an answer given during 'take one', perhaps making it more concise, as certain answers are uncharacteristically short and direct. At other times it seems that he is improvising and that the second version of the interview has taken a different, unexpected turn. The contrast between these two types of material is striking and revealing.
Thirdly, Esselier has a background in the visual arts rather than music, and therefore the interview remains quite conceptual. The result is that in addition to the familiar digressive quality of some of Feldman's answers, he phrases things differently than he does in other interviews, perhaps in order to bridge the gap between the different language used in the visual arts and in contemporary music.
My 're-translation' to English was facilitated by Nicole Tisserand's French translation, which captured the spirit of Feldman's cadence. Anyone familiar with Feldman's copious interviews, lectures and essays quickly recognizes the vocabulary and concerns that recur frequently throughout his career. Just as in Feldman's late music, certain motifs return again and again, but they are never exactly the same, and it is this variation that is compelling.
Today interest in Feldman's music is still quite...