Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
This interview with American composer Morton Feldman (1926–1987) has never before been available in English. Recorded in Paris in 1970, when Feldman's music was just at the point of significant change, it was published (in French) by the interviewer, critic Françoise Esselier, in the short-lived journal VH 101 which she co-ran with the Austrian critic Otto Hahn, in a translation by Nicole Tisserand. The original recording seems not to have survived. Here re-translated into English by the pianist and Feldman specialist Ivan Ilić, the interest of its content makes it a valuable addition to the literature on Feldman.
1 Ideation = the formation of ideas or concepts. (Transl.)
2 A claque is an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. (Transl.)
3 When Jonathan Cott read Stockhausen the passages of this interview that mention him, he retorted, ‘I told Feldman one day that one of his works could pass for a fragment of one of mine. But the reverse? Never’. Cott, Jonathan, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (London: Robson Books, 1974)Google Scholar, p. 136.