ABSTRACT
Structures of both pitch and of time in Morton Feldman's music of the early 1950s were designed and composed in identifiable ways. This has been conclusively demonstrated in each of the four analyses with regard to several levels of pitch organisation, the time-architecture of the four works and also in terms of interactions between these structures of pitch/density and of time. The kinetic sensation of playing Feldman's music does suggest that he composed using the piano itself as a tool in many instances. The very mechanics of the human body's interaction with the keyboard is one of the structuring frames of Piano Piece 1952, with its design concept based upon the alternation of hands, and there are aspects of keyboard ergonomics clearly evident in all four works discussed. In this broad sense, the play of music is fundamental to human experience and, as Schechner observed, represents a process by which order is improvised.
