ABSTRACT

It is possible that one should speak here about love, in other words about reality, or the probability of answering the sourceless echo. Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Description

§ In Shadow

Morton Feldman, a composer and professor of music at the State University of New York at Buffalo, had poor eyesight. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses. He composed leaning over his desk, face close to paper, inking each note chronologically through the score without correction: ‘no going back’.2 In the spring of 1976 he began preliminary work on an operatic composition with words by Samuel Beckett, a commission from Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera. He completed three works in July that he considered preparations. These he titled Orchestra, Elemental Procedures and Routine Investigations. Orchestra received its premier in Glasgow on 18 September. Feldman attended the concert then travelled to Berlin.3 At midday on 20 September, he arrived at the Schiller Theater, where rehearsals were underway for That Time and Footfalls.