An analysis on one of the most significant friendships and collaborations in the New York School.
Something amazing happened in 1951 at the Eighth Street Artists Club. Morton Feldman was brought to the club by his composition teacher Stefan Wolpe and friend John Cage. It was here that Feldman met O'Hara.
Feldman's earliest documented reference to O'Hara is located in one of his sketchbooks
from 1952. On the back cover of the book, Feldman drew plans for an opera based on the novel Straight Is the Gate with words written by O'Hara. The opera would include stars such as Patricia Neway and Leslie Chabay . This dreaming led to a close friendship between Feldman and O'Hara that brought Feldman into O'Hara's circle of young poets and painters, most of whom were in the New York School. This group would be Feldman's first and most enthusiastic audience at the time, before Feldman's rise to stardom.
On the other hand, O'Hara's earliest documented opinion of Feldman is contained within a post-concert note from the poet to the composer in 1954. In it he says:
"Just a note to thank you for such a beautiful concert. The performance was wonderful and it was so exciting and inspiring to find one's sensibility led into absolutely new experiences in such a subtle, authoritative way - without any posings or denial which only distract one when it's a matter of real music." (Silverberg)
O'Hara continues to highlight elements of Feldman's music in his later writings. In the sleeve notes for Feldman's first recording for Columbia Records' New Directions in Music series, O'Hara writes that Feldman created works of unpremeditated expression working through poetics of individualistic action. This album also serves as an example of collaboration in the New York School. O'Hara's notes of Feldman featured a reproduction of Philip Guston's ink drawing Head-Double View on the cover of the album.
It wasn't until 1962 that Feldman and O'Hara collaborated in The O'Hara Songs. In these songs, Feldman composed music to the words of O'Hara's poem "Wind" for an ensemble of bass-baritone, piano, chimes, violin, viola, and cello. After the composition of The O'Hara Songs, O'Hara invited Feldman to another collaboration, saying:
"I am very happy to be 'set' by you." (Silverberg)
In this letter, O'Hara provided the poem "Now it seems far away and gentle". Feldman did not use the poem, but he later returned to the text of "Wind" in his composition of Three Voices in 1982. Three Voices was written as a piece for solo soprano that Feldman composed as a dual elegy for both Frank O'Hara and Philip Guston.
After O'Hara's death in 1966, Feldman eulogized his friend in his lecture "Frank O'Hara: Lost Times and Future Hopes", which was given at the New York Studio School and later in Art in America. This essay was both a remembrance of O'Hara and an insightful interpretation of O'Hara's work. He also goes on to describe death as a means to understand O'Hara's poetry. By doing this, Feldman comments on how he was drawn to the unpredictability of the poems and the sense of risk that he felt while reading them:
"When we read O'Hara we are going along and everything seems very casual, but as we come to the end of the poem we hear the gunshot of The Sea Gull. There is no time to analyze, to evaluate. We are face with something as definite and read and finite as a sudden death." (Silverberg)
In the years after O'Hara's death, Feldman's mourning that was represented in his music encouraged people to hear and feel his loss, what Lytle Shaw would call "coterie", as something that has vanished but yet still lives on. Feldman tries to capture his mourning in his popular song below titled "For Frank O'Hara".
Consider playing audio of "For Frank O'Hara" while reading the information below.
As stated earlier, Feldman described O'Hara's poems as capable of delivering devastating and sudden turns of lines that are indeed as "definite and real and finite as a sudden death." The opening lines of "In Memory of My Feelings" appealed to Feldman because it it deals with vast unpredictability. The poem opens:
"My Quietness has a man in it, he is transparent and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets" (O'Hara)
After all, quietness is a major part of Feldman's aesthetic, with an emphasis on the semi-audible.
Feldman flirted with "In Memory of My Feelings" as a title for "For Frank O'Hara". This implies that the audience can hear the translation of O'Hara's "sudden death" into the realm of Feldman's sound and composition.
Throughout Feldman's "For Frank O'Hara", there is a continuous feeling of coming together and falling apart. The piece begins with a passing back and forth of sounds, which is then violently interrupted by the loud dissonant chord played by the piano. This instance of sound threatens to rupture the moment and force the music apart. Around two thirds into the piece, two percussionist perform rolls on snare drums that is sudden and incredibly loud, which creates a devastating and terrifying impact on the listener. This interruption of increased volume intrudes the quietness of the sound, which is a staple for Feldman's music.
The music continues with this winding up and unraveling that was described. The audiences senses that they are in a musical landscape where anything is possible, anything can happen, and they should be ready for it, even if this anticipation can be translated as anxiousness or dread.
Overall, Feldman and O'Hara had a significant relationship that led to a notable collaboration that has endured to this day. The two had an impact on each other that resulted in the sullen musicality of many of O'Hara's poems and the violent unpredictability of a number of Feldman's compositions. Their relationship exemplifies the sociability of the New York School and the influences that many of the New York School poets and artists had on one another.
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