Thursday, 4/16 @4.30pm in Cobb 112
Prof. Ryan Dohoney (music, Northwestern) will present
“Shaken into Seeing: Morton Feldman’s Modernism on the Periphery”
In this excerpt from the author’s in-progress manuscript, Dohoney follows the path of Morton Feldman’s modernism to the peripheral site of Houston and explores the composer’s burgeoning relationship with patrons John and Dominique de Menil. Dohoney documents Feldman’s strategy of self-presentation which depended upon the celebrity of the New York art world—particularly the reputations of John Cage, Leonard Bernstein, and Abstract Expressionism. This excerpt focuses on a 1967 concert of Feldman’s music given in Houston and explores aspects of techne and affect on display—Feldman’s notational inventions and their role in producing sensations of “abstract experience.” Through an analysis of Vertical Thoughts 1 for two pianos, Dohoney argues that Feldman’s anxious equivocality made his music especially suitable for assimilation to the de Menil’s “off-modern” ecumenical aesthetics which would eventually materialize in their Rothko Chapel.
the paper will be available here. Please contact coordinators for the password after 4.10.15.