Flux Quartet - String Quartet 2 (Morton Feldman)

_{2002 | Modern Classical, Chamber Music}

My favorite classical piece. A few notes to those who aren't convinced:

- It's not all nonsense. There are a lot of brief moments of melody sprinkled throughout the entire piece, lasting as long as a single measure to entire pages. Despite this, if you don't like atonal music then it's just not for you, moments of melody or not.

- It's supposed to be awkward and uncomfortable. I wholeheartedly believe that laughing is part of the experience; some of the ideas that Feldman put into this piece are so emotionless and ridiculous that all you can really do is laugh. With that said, as the piece goes on you end up finding comfort in this discomfort - especially when the tension breaks away into melody.

- The section from pages 20-24 (50:00 - 54:30 for the youtube recording) is genuinely some of the most beautiful music ever written and recorded.

- At first it might feel like Feldman composed this by throwing a bunch of ideas at a wall, but when looking at the bigger picture I don't think this is the case. There are a multitude of instrumental motifs and reoccurring themes that get repeated quite a bit throughout, morphing ever so slightly every time they are revisited. Phrases never really repeat in Feldman's pieces, he just wants you to think they do.

- The dynamic range of the recording is incredible. There are moments that are so quiet that the instruments almost have an onkyo-like quality to them - I find myself almost paying more attention to the sound of the bow physically rubbing against the strings than the note itself. In other moments it feels like the timbre completely changes into wind instruments instead of violins.

- It's probably too long. Part of me wants to think that Feldman had some sort of compositional revelation that could only be executed with a piece of this length, but the other part of me feels like he just wrote a 6 hour piece to say he wrote a 6 hour piece. I'm inclined to go with the latter.

Lastly, I do think you should listen to this in one sitting, but I don't think it's as big of a deal as some make it out to be. It's true there are no breaks in the recording, and the original intent is for the listener to take no breaks as well, but, in my opinion there is no problem with splitting it up into parts. Music is meant to be listened to, and if the only reason you aren't listening to this (or any long album/piece of music for that matter) is because it's too long then it completely defeats the purpose of the music in the first place.