Table of Contents

Contents: Listening to process, playing the system; ’To create music as if on a canvas’: Intermission 5 (1952); Piano Piece (1952): ’a discipline of vagueness’; Intermission 6 (1953): ’the outlines of becoming’: ’Primitive designs’: hearing and thinking through Intersection 3; Playing Feldman; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author

Dr Alistair Noble is a musicologist, composer, and pianist. He teaches in the School of Music at The Australian National University, where he is also Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences.

Reviews

'Noble was too modest when he said he hoped ’to place a few solid foundation stones for future scholars in this field to build upon’; in fact, he has supplied the foundation itself. With this book, Feldman scholarship enters a new stage of maturity.' American Record Guide ’... Noble’s remarkable text offers a much deeper insight and covers a notably more extensive range of circumstantial issues than the Table of Contents may humbly indicate. The main content of every chapter consists of a chain of analytical attempts that lead one to a concluding section, where the particular piece of music is being discussed in a more general context. Seemingly unrelated content finally appears to be interconnected in multiple ways, creating in a masterly fashion a fine web of recognizable lines of thought. As a pianist himself, Noble approaches Feldman’s pieces with a subtle performer’s sensitivity for the sonority, touch, registral and dynamic richness of his instrument - a sense of technical and artistic proficiency he shares with the composer himself. The manifold original insights into Feldman’s compositional practice based upon the investigation of primary sources make this book worthy of recommendation to any reader curious to explore the technical aspect of this music or to seek a different approach to his distinctive sonorities’. IRASM (Recenzije i obavijesti o izdanjima)