Música Morton Feldman, Textos Johnson

Estética de la música 2018.
Práctico 11: Forma y percepción 4
Bibliografía:
Feldman, Morton. 2012. Pensamientos verticales. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra
(selección).
Johnson. Steven. 1994. “Rothko Chapel and Rothko’s Chapel”, en Perspectives

of New Music, vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 6-53.
Música:
Feldman, Morton. Rothko Chapel
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Rothko Chapel and Rothko's Chapel
Author(s): Steven Johnson
Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 6-53
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833598 .
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ROTHKO CHAPEL
AND
ROTHKO'S CHAPEL
STEVENJOHNSON
IN 1964 MARK ROTHKO agreed to provide paintings for a catholic chapel

being planned in Houston.1 The founders of the project, John and
Dominique de Menil, chose Rothko in part because of his well-known
insistence on the spiritual character of his work. Knowing that Rothko
had long desired a place devoted exclusively to his paintings, the de
Menils also let him design the space itself. He completed the paintings in
1967 and seemed eager to participate in their installation, even becoming
involved in the finishing details of the structure. But suddenly Rothko's
life fell apart. He suffered a disabling aneurysm, began drinking heavily,
and separated from his wife and five-year old son. These circumstances so
deepened Rothko's naturally gloomy temperament that, fully a year
before the chapel was completed, he killed himself in his Manhattan
25/72
RothkoChapel and Rothko'sChapel 7
studio. When the chapel-changed to interdenominational status-

opened with a dedicatory ceremony in February 1971, Rothko's suicide
conferred upon the event a solemnity it would not have had otherwise.
At the ceremony the de Menils asked Rothko's friend Morton Feldman
to compose a work in tribute to Rothko. Feldman agreed and finished
the music-called Rothko Chapel-only a few months later.2
Feldman was a particularlysuitable choice for the commission, for he
had regularly used visual arts to explain his music and especially stressed
the connection between himself and the Abstract Expressionist painters
of the 1940s and 1950s.3 Believing that he and they shared a "powerful,
mysterious aesthetic,"4 Feldman credited their paintings with showing
him "a sound world more direct, more immediate, more physical than
anything that had existed heretofore."5 At first glance, Rothko Chapel
seems just one of many pieces-like For Franz Kline or De Kooning, for
instance-that Feldman titled to underscore this kinship. But in fact it
occupies a unique place. According to Feldman, the earlier titles were
dedications, and weren't intended to signal a correspondence between
the music and a painter.6 Rothko Chapel, however, contained abundant
extramusical references,7 and Feldman left no doubt about its special
character:it was, he said, "the only score where other factors determined
what kind of music it was going to be," the "only piece-and it will never
happen again-when all kinds of facts, literary facts, reminiscent facts,
came into the piece."8 Indeed, the singular relation between Rothko
Chapel and Rothko's chapel led Feldman to write one of his most
unusual pieces.
Looking back on the profound impact that visual artists had exerted
on his music, Feldman recollected that, even though he and John Cage
spoke little about music during those years,
there was an incredible amount of talk about painting. John and I

would drop in at the Cedar Bar at six in the afternoon and talk until
it closed and after it closed. I can say without exaggeration that we
did this every day for five years of our lives.9
Cage, however, reacted less sympathetically to Abstract Expressionism

than did Feldman. The painters-including Rothko, Barnett Newman,
Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Clyfford Still, to name a few-
used abstract, improvisational methods but their intentions were hardly
random. Indeed, most recent scholars have supported the painters' own
claims that their work contained purposeful subject matter-that it com-
municated ideas and emotions. As Stephen Polcari writes, Abstract
26/72
8 Perspectivesof New Music
Expressionism arose mainly as a response to "historical, social, and cul-

tural crises" of the thirties and forties and it was meant to express a prin-
cipal theme: "To be caught in a web of difficulties and to seek to
overcome them through an inward transformation and rebirth."10
Unlike Cage, they had somethingto say and they were saying it.11 To this
end, the painters were strongly influenced by "psychic automatism," the
technique, derived from the Surrealists, in which the painters projected
their inner, primal selves onto the canvas by letting their subconscious
dictate hand movements. Sharing Duchamp's dislike of the Artistic Ego,
Cage would have regarded such a technique warily.He especially rejected
the Abstract Expressionists' view of the artist as an "existential hero or
shaman." Remembering a conversation with De Kooning, in which the
painter expressed his desire to be a great artist, Cage said that "it was this
aspect of wanting to be an artist . . . who had something to say, who
wanted through his work to appear really great . . . which I could not
12
accept.
Feldman, on the other hand, supported the value Abstract Expression-
ists placed on inner experience. There is a striking parallel between the
painters' stress on process and Feldman's compositional technique.
Using psychic automatism to access primal emotive states, the Abstract
Expressionists began to view the surface "as an arena in which to act."13
Similarly,Feldman placed great value on "touch," the "feel of the pencil
in my hand when I work."'4 He stressed that, for him, "concentration"
during the act of composition was as fundamental to his music as pitch
organization was to the work of another composer. When asked once
what he got from the Abstract Expressionists, Feldman answered: "the
insight where process could be a fantastic subject-matter."15He illus-
trated what he meant by referring to Pollock's "dance around the can-
vas," in which "what he's doing is in a sense what the thing is."16
Feldman made the same claim of his music: "what I do is what I
mean."17
It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to specify with any precision
what elements in Feldman derive from which painters. But his quiet,
nearly inert style seems far removed from the hectic rhythms and turbu-
lent spaces of an "action painter" such as Pollock, even though Feldman
later recognized similarities in their working methods.18 In its general
temperament, his music seems better suited to the meditative, ethereal
pictures of Philip Guston and Rothko. The connection is particularly
strong with Guston, whom Feldman considered his closest friend and
with whom he spent many hours in the studio comparing aesthetic
visions.19 Guston's abstractions of the 1950s featured tentative, "dissolv-
ing forms" made with short, delicate brushstrokes. Feldman himself
27/72
RothkoChapel and Rothko's Chapel 9
described these paintings as seemingly "pregnant with a content of sorts,

without giving us a resolution into what might be considered con-
crete."20 This observation applies equally well to Feldman's own music,
of course, which presents short, fragmentaryevents that seem ever on the
verge of coalescing into something more tangible. This spartan, hesitant
aesthetic was an element that both men recognized in the other.
But Feldman also felt a kinship with Rothko. In 1949 Rothko settled
upon an austere, abstract scheme that he retained, with only slight depar-
tures, for the remainder of his career. In these "classic"paintings, Rothko
typically presented a group of symmetrically arranged, rectangular color
fields (see Example 1). The fields often appear as spectral and atmo-
spheric, and tensions arise from uneasy juxtapositions of color. In sympa-
thetic viewers, the pictures evoke primal-but ultimately enigmatic-
emotions. To a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rothko main-
tained a consistent personal voice, his rectangular scheme becoming a
"signature image"21 from which he rarely strayed. If some found the
scheme monotonous and lacking in invention, others recognized the
potential in such a restricted format. De Kooning, for example, told
Rothko that "your house has many mansions."22
This repetitive aesthetic impressed Feldman, who argued that "free-
dom is best understood by someone like Rothko, who was free to do
only one thing-to make a Rothko-and did so over and over again."23
Like Rothko, Feldman made "Feldmans" again and again. Dedicated to
conventional media, quiet dynamic levels, inaudible meters, and sparse,
vertical textures, he created his own signature image. Feldman recog-
nized that his music sounded the same to many people, but insisted that
each piece was different in "weight,"24 and described his method as
"rearrangingthe same furniture in the same room."25 Feldman's nearly
inert music resembles the Rothko who had discovered that a surface "did
not have to be activated by the rhythmic vitality of a Pollock to be kept
alive, [but] could exist as a strange, vast, monolithic sundial."26Rothko's
obsession with lighting correlates with Feldman's concern with dynam-
ics. Rothko wanted his work exhibited in low light, because it permitted
"the most subtle vibrations of the color."27 In his scores and in notes to
recordings, Feldman insisted that his music be played quietly, perhaps
recognizing that reduced volume intensified the listener's concentration
and enabled him to hear minute fluctuations in tone quality. Both men
also favored intangible, incorporeal materials. Rothko employed non-
calligraphic, self-effacing brushstrokes and a method of staining with
thinned paint to create atmospheric surfaces. Feldman was especially fond
of ethereal, sourceless tone, which he produced by asking performers to
suppress attack. This, he observed, led from wanting his "paint to seep in
a bit."28
28/72
MarkRothko,American,1903-1970, Purple,Whiteand Red,oil on canvas,

1953, 197.5 x 207.6cm, Bequestof SigmundE. Edelstone,1983.509. The
Art Instituteof Chicago,All RightsReserved.
EXAMPLE 1
Rothko clearly regarded his Chapel commission as the major event in

his career. His paintings were to hang by themselves in a space he had
designed, and they would be viewed in a context that would emphasize
humanistic meaning over abstraction. He conceived the Chapel as an
octagonal space, with large paintings-including five individual panels
and three triptychs-placed on each wall. (See Example 2 for the diagram
of the Chapel. Example 3 provides a photograph of the North, North-
east, and East paintings.) Abandoning his trademarkscheme of stacked,
soft-edged rectangles, the painter included seven nearly monochrome
panels (i.e., the three panels of the North apse triptych and the North-
east, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest panels). Each panel in the
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RothkoChapel and Rothko'sChapel II
East and West triptychs contains straight-edged black fields that domi-
nate almost all of the panel surface. Only in the South panel does the
black field lie centered within a ground in a way that resembles Rothko's
earlier style. The colors of the entire ensemble-black, blackish purple,
purple, and oxblood-reflect the trend toward darkerhues characterizing
his late work,29 and although Rothko told Dore Ashton that in the
Chapel he "was interested neither in symmetry or asymmetry, but only in
proportions and shapes,"30symmetry and asymmetry play a major role in
its "narrative"theme.
North apse triptych
rthwest Northeast /
pan
pariel -. - - panel
I
West ! East
triptych'I 'triptych
I
\ Skylight
Southwest Southeast
panel panel
Entrance
Diagrammatic plan of the Rothko Chapel. Reproduced with permission

from The Rothko Chapel:An Act of Faith by Susan J. Barnes, copyright by
The Rothko Chapel, distributed by the University of Texas Press.
EXAMPLE 2
30/72
Photograph of the inside space of The Rotliko Chapel, showing the North, N
and East paintings. Hickey and Robertson, Houston, courtesy of The Rothk
EXAMPLE 3
31/72
RothkoChapeland Rothko's Chapel 13
As I read it, the Chapel presents a progression of affective states mov-

ing in two symmetricallyrelated arcs. The progression begins with a con-
dition of static neutrality, proceeds through increasingly dark and tragic
moods, then advances finally to incrementally brighter, uplifting states.
The North apse triptych and the South panel-the only singular pictures
in the ensemble-form the axis. The triptych serves as the point of ori-
gin, because it faces the entrance and, because the apse is inset six feet
from the other walls, receives the most illumination from the overhead
skylight. Since its outer panels feature the same black-purple and the
middle panel holds a slightly lighter purple, the triptych itself is symmet-
rical. Stability and neutrality arise from its massive rectilinearity,prepon-
derance of horizontal internal shapes, and its balancing of light and dark
hues. As the panels progress east and west away from the apse, Rothko
turns to progressively darker colors. The Northeast and Northwest
panels-one closely doubling the other-take up the black-purple of the
outer North apse panels but, because they feature less internal move-
ment, present more monochromatic surfaces. Since they crowd their
walls and stand closer to the viewer than the inset apse, the panels appear
more frontally aggressive than the triptych. The Chapel reaches a dark
climax with the nearly identical, predominantly black East and West cru-
ciform triptychs.31Here crowding grows disturbingly severe, as the inter-
nal rectangles appear to annihilate the oxblood borders, and the triptychs
as a whole extend so close to the wall edges that they nearly annihilate
the Chapel structure itself. Beyond the cruciform triptychs the mood
brightens slightly. The Southeast and Southwest panels, again doubling
each other, take up the light purple from the middle panel of the apse
triptych. In addition, the panels hold the most rhythmicallyactive brush-
strokes in the Chapel, taking the form of jagged, rising peaks that stretch
horizontally across the canvas, one system atop another. These distinctive
purple "mountain ranges" inject a free lifting movement unique to the
ensemble.
As the point of termination, the South panel completes the progres-
sion by offering respite-albeit qualified and enigmatic-from the tragic
cruciform triptychs. James E. B. Breslin describes the panel (accurately,in
my view) as a temporary "resolution to the ensemble's tensions between
containment and diffusion, prominence and relation."32 The resolution
mainly involves a turning back of the forces of annihilation, since the
panel itself fits within a spacious wall with no chance of overdominating
it, and the outer frame of the panel contains the black field securely.
While the black here is the densest of all the black rectangles, it rests sol-
idly on a thick oxblood band at the bottom, which also presents one of
the most sensuous, conventionally "beautiful" surfaces in the Chapel. In
32/72
addition, the South panel seems to respond inversionally to its axial part-
ner, the North triptych. In contrast to the latter, which exhibits the wid-
est, most rectilinear surface and places its lightest color in the center, the
South panel presents the thinnest, most vertically oriented picture and
puts black in the center. While the other panels confront their doubles,
then, the North and South pictures pose an antithesis, thus providing the
same "momentary stasis" of a "confronting unity" that Rothko had long
claimed as a central aesthetic.33
Complex asymmetricalinterrelationships arise from a variety of irregu-
lar internal patterns, consisting of vertical versus horizontal brushstrokes,
perhaps, or glossy versus flat surfaces. One clearly visible interrelation
involves a red event-much more sensuous in hue than the prevailing
purples and oxbloods-that appears in three different panels. The most
conspicuous of these events occurs in the apse triptych, where, in the
lower right portion of the left (or west) panel, a reddish, sun-like form
(about two feet in diameter) emerges out of the black-purple ground.
The event is also distinguished by its glowing, burnished surface, which
stands out against the flat, dappled texture of the surrounding black-
purple. Intense at its core but never fully separated from the prevailing
black-purple, the red gradually diminishes at its outer limits, until it
finally disappearsinto its environment. The circular form seems to move
toward and beyond the right edge of the panel, but the light purple
middle panel, exhibiting no trace of the red, abruptly terminates this
movement. However intense, the event itself is extremely subtle: on
sunny days in Houston the red may radiate a lyrical warmth; but passing
clouds can diminish this effect dramatically,and in dim light the red dis-
appearsaltogether.34
The red recurs in two other panels, where again it suggests forms
related to the sun. In the Northeast panel, a few narrow streaks of deep
scarlet run horizontally along the bottom of the picture. The effect
resembles the final traces of a sun setting on a low horizon, about to be
expunged by the black-purple night towering above it. Another sun-like
sphere appears in the lower left portion of the Southwest panel (about
two-thirds down from the top, about two feet over from the left edge).
Although a small strip of white at the edge of the sphere clearly articu-
lates the form, the event is less intense than the other two. The form is
relatively tiny (smaller than a basketball), and Rothko nearly extinguishes
the red with a blot of purple in its center. In the context of the overall
painting, the form appears as a faint red sun just about to sink behind a
mountain-like range of deep purple. As a group, the red events insert an
asymmetrical counter-rhythm into the overall progression of the en-
semble, and, as sun-like forms, they hint at some lyrical, optimistic state
rendered poignant by their nearness to obliteration. As we shall note
33/72
below, in a few places in Rothko ChapelFeldman inserts a lyrical and rela-

tively consonant solo soprano figure that, for brief moments, gives the
music a similarlysensuous and optimistic quality.
In 1966, as he worked on the pictures, Rothko wrote the de Menils
that "the magnitude, on every level of experience and meaning, of the
task in which you have involved me, exceeds all my preconceptions. And
it is teaching me to extend myself beyond what I thought was possible for
me."35 Perhaps it was this attitude that led Feldman to place a similar
importance on Rothko Chapel. Included among those invited to see the
panels in Rothko's studio, Feldman was clearly impressed with them. He
felt "very close to Rothko's last pictures" and recalled that, "a few
months before he killed himself, when he was very upset about his work,
Rothko kept on saying to me: 'Do you think it's there?"' Feldman saw
something he could only identify as "poetry."36When he began to com-
pose the music, he went to Houston and "just walked around the
Chapel."37 Reflecting on the place, the painter, and the art, Feldman
gathered a number of impressions that he would build into the music.
While it's impossible to know if Feldman "read" the ensemble in the way
that I have described it above, I shall argue that something like the
Chapel's progression from neutrality through dark nihilism to enigmatic
resolution governs Rothko Chapel, with Feldman using linear rhetoric,
degrees of dissonance and consonance, and different kinds of vertical and
linear time to articulate the progression.
The Chapel inspired Feldman to create a composition with four main
sections. He described these as "a longish declamatory opening," "a
more stationary 'abstract' section for chorus and chimes," "a motivic
interlude for soprano, viola and timpani," and "a lyrical ending for viola
with vibraphone accompaniment."38 The first section is heterogeneous,
including not only declamatory passages for viola and (briefly) for solo
soprano, but also others appearing as static, uniform bands of sound, and
still others that unfold in a modular manner, as sequences of isolated
harmonies and motivic fragments. The second section (measure 211)
presents a single choral chord, sustained for about three minutes, punc-
tuated by chime chords. The third (measure 243) and fourth sections
(measure 314) are intensely lyrical; the fourth, in fact, presents a modal
viola melody, written when Feldman was fourteen and described by him
as "quasi-Hebraic." Indeed, both sections-along with the declamatory
passages from the first section-exhibit a linear rhetoric utterly uncharac-
teristic of Feldman.
What provoked this? After all, Rothko Chapel memorializes one of
the leading Abstract Expressionists, the same group who had inspired
Feldman to free his sounds "from a compositional rhetoric."39 Perhaps
34/72
Feldman, recognizing the distinctive position of the Chapel paintings in

Rothko's career, felt that the music required a stylistic departure of his
own. Perhaps the tragic nature of Rothko's death, combined with
the awareness-on both Rothko's and Feldman's part-that Abstract
Expressionism had run its course, left Feldman with a melancholy that
demanded an atypically expressive response.40 Or, as I suspect, he may
have detected the progression of moods in the Chapel and searched for a
way to express it musically. Feldman himself implied that the new rheto-
ric stemmed from his autobiographical conception of the piece. He
noted, for example, that "it leaned very heavily" on him that, when he
first met Rothko, the painter talked enthusiasticallyabout "the youth and
lyricism of Mendelssohn." This memory led Feldman to recall that
Rothko did a lot of paintings with the WPA, social realist, and then I
saw the whole life of this guy. So what I decided in the Rothko
Chapelwas to ... write an autobiographical piece. The piece begins
in a synagoguey type of way; a little rhetorical and declamatory.And
as I get older the piece gets a little abstract, just like my own
career.41
Rhetoric in Rothko Chapel appears in several guises. The work exhibits

an uncharacteristically expressive surface, with many varied dynamic
markings throughout (see Example 4). It also features, for Feldman, an
uncommon amount of melody. Even though Feldman had begun to use
melody regularly in the four Viola in My Life pieces, written just before
Rothko Chapel, its appearance here certainly derives in part from his
knowledge of Rothko's love of melody.42 Most significantly, expressive
surface and melody unite with an unusual degree of organic develop-
ment. While organicism exists more pervasively in Feldman than com-
mentators have recognized, it usually appears in veiled, covert ways.43
Even Feldman claimed that his music generally "wasn't organic, with that
strong variational approach" found in other composers.44 But as his
remarksabove show, Feldman knew that Rothko Chapelwas different.
Organicism appears most audibly in the viola melodies. The work
opens with two long, clearly defined viola phrases, the second an
expanded variant of the first. (Example 4 gives the opening viola melody
of the work, followed by the first four choral chords; Example 5 gives a
reduction and interpretation of the passage.) Each phrase presents
a broad arch, in which initial material-constrained and compressed
spatially-yields to more expansive gestures, which in turn yield to still
more expansive gestures, finally culminating with an event (k) that,
reversing direction, serves both to climax the phrase and release its accu-
mulated tension. In the first phrase, a narrow oscillating pattern in the
35/72
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? Copyright 1972 by Universal Edition (New York). All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of
European American Music Distributors Corporation, sole U. S. and Canadian agent for Universal
Edition (New York).
Morton Feldman, Rothko Chapel, measures 1-30. Shows the opening viola
melody and the first four choral chords (percussion omitted in reduction).
EXAMPLE 4
36/72
timpani (a) leads to a pair of ascending two-note figures in the viola (b).
The melody then broadens into a three-note gesture (c), which Feldman
immediately repeats (d) with a new pitch (E3 replacing E 3) and a still
wider profile. The second phrase follows a similar pattern of ascending
register, interval expansion, and progressively elongated gestures. More-
over, its materialsderive from the first and loosely parallelit. The first two
pitches, B3 and D3, recall the opening timpani material (a). The D3-C#4
of e derives from an earlier vertical between the viola and timpani (mea-
sure 6). The opening segments of the second phrase (e, f, and g) use the
same interval-class pattern (1-3) found in d. In their interval spans and
registralpositions, both g and h relate to c and d; in addition, three of the
four pitch classes in c and d recur in g and h.
The second phrase builds more intensely to the same climax, using
more gestures with more pitches and-with i-the widest profile. Feld-
man's "variationalapproach" is especially evident in g, h, and i. All three
pitch classes ofg transfer to h, while four of the five pitch classes of h
transfer to i. In fact, the first seven pitches of i appropriate the identical
span of h (Gb3-Ab5), but fill it with additional pitches. From the horizon-
tal perspective, interval-classes 1 and 3 disappear afterg. A vertical inter-
pretation, however, discloses that both h and i (the first seven pitches) are
built on interval-class 1. Both feature a network of pitch-class adjacent
dyads or trichords, spaced so that they interlock or nest within one
another. (This is shown in Example 5 in diagrams below h and i, where
the interval-class 1 relations are stemmed.) Finally, Feldman creates an
organic link between the end of the viola melody and the first choral
chord. As Example 5 shows, the chord duplicates a semitone higher the
same harmony as the last four pitches of k (4-9).
Although the k material returns several times in the following section,
either complete or in fragmentary form, Feldman magnifies its expressive
characterthe last time it appears (see Example 6). In two successive state-
ments (measures 109-12 and 113-16), he uses the chorus to set up k
and recasts the beginning of the melody as the apex of a dynamic arch. At
the apex Feldman presents one of the rare-and certainly the most
acute-instances of forte in Rothko Chapel, transforming the phrase into
perhaps the most dramatic single gesture of the work.
A number of other materials unify Rothko Chapel and, in some
instances, promote organic continuity. The first four choral chords
(Example 4, measures 29-30) recur throughout the first section. Some-
times they retain their original form and order (measures 69-74), some-
times they appear individually, as isolated units in a modular sequence
(chord 4 occurs most often in this manner). In Example 6, variants of
chords 2, 3, and 4 lead to the final, most climactic statement of k.45
37/72
Rothko Chapel and Rothko's Chapel 19
ic: 3 3, 4 2-3 1-3
k choral
A e ~ e ff g
g .
/
/
...^h
. ..
chord 1
'.- J1--^-----
- I--- '
\7- ~,/ i?:::i~
ic: 1 1-3 1-3 4-9 4-9
B?
t~~~~~op
. Po:"
+ ~ i#-
~~~~~
#r _11
A pitch reduction of the opening of Rothko Chapel (measures 1-30). Num-

bers below the first two systems denote interval-class relations. The lowest
system shows, with connected stems, the interlocking interval-class 1 rela-
tions within groups h and i.
EXAMPLE 5
38/72
Another sonority, consisting of a timpani B62 and a choral C4/C5,

evolves considerably.After appearing first as an isolated vertical in a mod-
ular context (marked x in Example 7), it returns soon after (Example 8),
where Feldman expands it, (measures 48-52), develops it with new
pitches (D13 and Eb4, measures 54-58), then dissolves it into new sonor-
ities (measures 60-62). The Db3 and the Eb4 are not entirely new, since
they had already appeared in the three-note viola figure immediately pre-
ceding x in Example 7; as so often happens in Feldman, a linear relation-
ship has simply been transformed into a vertical one. In a later passage,
the choral/timpani sonority also returns, as do the previously discussed
choral chords, to form an association with k (see Example 6, measures
109-10). Later still, Feldman extracts elements of the sonority-its tim-
pani timbre and choral C4/C5-and develops them in an extended osti-
nato passage (Example 9). In the timpani, the ostinato D3-B2, reprising
the figure that began the work, replaces Bb2; the Db4 relates back to the
earlier,developed version of the sonority (Example 8, measure 54).
The rhetorical element engendering the greatest expressivityin Rothko
Chapel involves the evolution from atonal to tonal materials. The pro-
gression takes place mainly in melody. As noted above, the opening
atonal viola melody concentrates especially on interval classes 1 and 3.
Later in the first section Feldman again presents an extended viola mel-
ody, this time followed almost immediately by a melody for solo soprano.
The viola melody (Example 10) appropriates the 1-3 interval-class pat-
tern from the opening, but now dwells on it almost singlemindedly. In
contrast, the soprano melody (Example lla) focuses exclusively on the
more consonant interval classes 2 and 5. This is a brief but stunning
departure, for these interval classes haven't appeared in so concentrated a
form until this moment.
This juxtaposition foreshadows events in the third section (the so-
called "lyrical interlude"), where Feldman treats the viola and soprano
melodies more extensively but modifies them to advance the progress
toward consonance. He alters the balance between the viola and soprano:
reversing the proportions of the previous passage, Feldman now devotes
far more space to the soprano. While hardly changing the viola material,
he expands the pitch-class content of the soprano (Example lib),
increasing its level of consonance: the soprano's original set, Db-Ab-B
(3-7, 011010), becomes D-A-C-E (4-22, 021120). The new pitch class,
E, takes the form of a grace-note, giving the melody a more rhythmically
buoyant and uplifting affect. He fortifies the affect literally by raising the
first two notes of the melody up a semitone. This almost certainly was a
conscious part of Feldman's expressive strategy. First, Feldman has speci-
fied his admiration for Stravinsky'ssemitone modulations;46 second, he
described the soprano melody as "a little Stravinskyishon purpose," since
39/72
RothkoChapeland Rothko'sChapel 21
x ,, k
1103 -3-
viola3$ j If P
i4
r U
f molto PP
chimes
celesta ,_
3Cp 3 -5 - z-4
chorus f
pJ ~'- 6'p
i 4 8 2
Pf ff
33.
ilth ^4L-
? ^
#ce ^ jq. 2^c" 5 ~
I: 5' w, -
T\I?^
C. i _ ^Q". -
-
_
-
-I's rr
,, l
PM --- if f
Edition (New York).
A passage from the first section of Rothko Chapel (measures 108-16), show-
ing the return of the k motive from Example 4, the return of two different
choral figures (x and y) in association with k, and the principle of the
"Rothko Edge" (to be discussed below).
EXAMPLE 6
40/72
he wrote it on the day of Stravinsky'sfuneral.47Nor is it accidental that

Feldman reinforced the relation visually by moving from "flat" pitches to
a white-note collection: years later, Feldman used the same technique
more extensively in Triadic Memories (1980) with similarly consonant
material.48
x -- chorus via.
vla. chorus 351
AS [
br" -9. $ S? X --3
1
timp. 3
4V0I < Q f 4
cel. P 3-
ci ?? 3
? Coyvib.
molto p
Edition (New York).
A modularpassagefromthe firstsectionof RothkoChapel(measures33-43,

bass drum trill omitted in measure 37), showing the first appearanceof the
choralgesturex fromExample6.
EXAMPLE 7
The diatonic Hebrew tune that concludes Rothko Chapel thus repre-
sents a culmination of a carefullymanaged and broadly implemented pro-
cess. As shown in Example lc, the tune features the same preference as
the two soprano melodies for interval classes 2 and 5 (and, secondarily,
3). It contains a prominent cell that belongs to the same pitch-class set
(3-7) as the principal motives of both soprano melodies. Example 12
summarizes the pitch class relations between the two soprano melodies
(a and b) and the Hebrew tune (c): the dotted lines between a and b
show the semitone transposition; the slurs between b and c show the sim-
ilar pitch-class content between b and c. Note, too, that the interval-class
vector of c is incrementally more consonant than that of b. Finally, the
41/72
scalar spacing of the accompanying vibraphone ostinato (G3-B3-A3-C4)

maximizes its diatonic character.As further evidence of long-range plan-
ning, the ostinato belongs to the same pitch-class set (4-11) as the four-
note viola motive that opens the work (see b in Example 4). In a subtle
but nonetheless organic operation, then, Feldman has transformed the
opening motive, embedded in an atonal context, into one of the crown-
ing diatonic gestures of Rothko Chapel.
chorus 501 55]
eo o- o !o2
timp. 0: I o
PP
(chorus) S
mp <^ pj
fsag I_
- il? - 1^" X - a1:
Edition (New York).
A passagefrom the firstsectionof RothkoChapel(measures48-62, percus-

sion omitted),showingthe developmentof choralgesturex (see Examples6
and 7).
EXAMPLE 8
Feldman translated his physical impressions of the Chapel into music in

several ways. He clearly tried to duplicate Rothko's sense of the physical
relation between the art object and its audience. Rothko had long
attempted to "control the situation," to manage the context in which his
paintings were shown. After 1950 he began to paint on large surfaces and
to organize his exhibitions in such a way that viewers were forced to
stand close to the pictures. Surrounding the viewer would draw him
inside the painting.49 Rothko extended these principles in the Chapel,
creating a hermetic environment in which the viewer immersed himself in
the paintings free from outside distractions and from other, competing
artistic visions.
42/72
a E
I-- > . '-
A^I- } J.. J .
r-
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T3
-
flK5-
Ifp--r rIr
5r' - r
II
T^ I
Iv Ai
- 'YP
|rI |I1 I r
r 7P
ly - I I ;
imIp.
|I i rI r
AWM
It II
Ch.
Edition (New York).
The "ostinato" passage from the first section of Rothko Chapel (measures
135-70, in full score).
EXAMPLE 9
43/72
16
A. _ - ? 7 ? ) t _
Ch.
T ! - -
l p
8h. - - - o a
I. r r r i r
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f
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via.IjL I? I - I - I - 1 - 1
EXAMPLE 9 (CONT.)
44/72
s -- I - I
I
A*
- I I }7 1> I I J
Ch.l
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Sot
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Tim
Via
p-- P
p
EXAMPLE 9 (CONT.)
45/72
RothkoChapeland Rothko'sChapel 27
17
'
'" -
div.
s
Ck2 HM>l=to=
if"tOb. = : - -
o---- div.
Iq --motto ---- b.
div.
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up
? v-9Ito "h
v ?*f ^io jyb

^rd
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EXAMPLE 9 (CONT.)
46/72
via. r- 3 r-- 3 r- 3 175l

l9ll,I#7t
vCI
II ,
Irrrr1
- P ,
I I
r fr '
1 ..
.9 I
ic: 2 - 3, 1, 1 - 3, 1 - 3,
fl K r r 1' Ir
jyC
ic: 1 - 3, 1
Edition (New York).
A passage of viola declamation in the first section of Rothko Chapel (mea-

sures 171-78), showing the concentration on the interval-classpattern 1-3.
EXAMPLE 10
,.I1J
|3J, 1 1
PP
12441/ 3 I250
b
__W_
i'-
Inlt
I -
r-3-i I
-i
I
Ii i"
4.V
pp-mpP
Edition (New York).
a shows the first appearanceof the solo soprano melody near the end of the
first section of Rothko Chapel (measures 180-84). b shows the second ver-
sion of the solo soprano melody as it appears in dialogue with the viola and
timpani in the third section (measures 244-50). c shows the opening phrase
of the Hebrew tune from the concluding section (measures 380-86).
EXAMPLE 11
47/72
a b c
4-22 4-23
(021120) (021030)
Showsthe pitch and harmonicrelationsof Example lla, b, and c. Set-class

vectorsappearbelow 1lb and c.
designationsand the interval-class
EXAMPLE 12
Feldman strove for a similar effect. His choice of instruments to a large

degree was determined
by the space of the chapel as well as the paintings. Rothko's imagery

goes right to the edge of his canvas, and I wanted the same effect
with the music-that it should permeate the whole octagonal-
shaped room and not be heard from a certain distance. The result is
[that] the sound is closer, more physicallywith you than in a concert
hall.50
Sensing that the room required sound to come from the sides, Feld-
man deployed his chorus antiphonally, forcing the listener to become
"involved with the totality." He regarded the antiphonal arrangement as
a metaphor for the way in which the chapel panels relate to one another.
At the first performance, which took place in the chapel, the choirs faced
each other as the pictures do. Recalling that the "effect was absolutely
stunning," Feldman considered this event to be, for him, "the first and
last performance."51
The structure of the piece also matched the spirit of the chapel. Feld-
man seems to have noticed a sense of progression in the ensemble:
The total rhythm of the paintings as Rothko arranged them created

an unbroken continuity. While it was possible with the paintings to
reiterate color and scale and still retain dramatic interest, I felt that
the music called for a series of highly contrasted merging sections. I
envisioned an immobile procession not unlike the friezes on Greek
temples.52
48/72
Feldman's disinclination to match this continuity with music of a similar

character is revealing. In fact, Feldman could have duplicated the effect
easily: his music usually proceeds as a fluid continuum, not in sharply
defined sections. In his notes to For Frank O'Hara, in fact, Feldman
observed that his "primary concern (as in all my music) is to sustain a
'flat surface' with a minimum of contrast."53 His desire for contrast in
Rothko Chapel, then, seems a response to other principles in Rothko.
Feldman's reference to Greek friezes is crucial here. Rothko spent many
hours at the Metropolitan Museum, often in the company of Feldman,
studying Greek friezes and Pompeian frescos.54 The calm and silence he
admired in these works are elements we readily detect in his pictures; but
we also find something like the "immobile procession" Feldman noted
above.
An immobile procession suggests the contradictory principles of stasis
and movement, elements which permeate Rothko's classic paintings. Sta-
bility arises from rectangular shapes and symmetrical arrangements, flux
from the ambiguous relation between the rectangles and the surface
plane. Movement occurs not from side to side, but from front to back, as
rectangles appear simultaneously to advance or recede. Purple, Whiteand
Red from 1953 illustrates this ambiguity (see Example 1). The picture
contains three prominent rectangles-a purple one at the top, a white
one in the middle, and red one at the bottom-superimposed on a
muddy gray ground. The three surfaces relate enigmatically with the
ground and each other. At the uppermost horizontal boundary of the top
rectangle, purple paint spreads out over the gray, suggesting that the
purple surface lies in front of the ground. At the lower boundary, how-
ever, Rothko scumbles purple and gray together seamlessly, leaving the
relation between the two surfaces unresolved. (Unfortunately, these mul-
tiple surfaces can by fully experienced only in front of the painting itself.)
Similarly, the upper horizontal border of the white rectangle clearly
spreads over the ground while the lower border slides just as clearly
underneath the ground. The left and right vertical borders of the white
surface meet the ground so nebulously that it becomes impossible to
determine the depths of either surface. The ground covers all four bor-
ders of the lower red rectangle except a small area at the lower left-hand
corner, where a few tiny drips of red paint spill out atop the gray surface.
In the Chapel, stasis and flux take on different forms. Only the South
panel exhibits the ambiguity of depth characterizing the classic paintings:
its central black field lies behind the frame low in the picture, but appears
in front higher up.55 Elsewhere, movement mostly emanates from the
collective arrangement of the panels, a product of the eye roving from
one to another. The monochrome panels seem relatively immobile,
49/72
because they lack the conflicting rectangles of earlierpaintings. As already

noted, the cruciform triptychs have an unsettling tendency to expand lat-
erally. In the Chapel, then, movement does occur from side to side, as
tension and contrast arise between the panels, not within them.56 A sense
of the processional becomes central to the experience.
Feldman believed that, to evoke an analogous processional quality, his
music must unfold in discrete, dissimilar sections. The contrasting units
of Rothko Chapel, then, resemble Rothko's sequence of panels. Feld-
man's "panels" achieve identity through peculiar combinations of har-
mony, textural density, instrumental timbre, and thematic material. The
third section, for example, stands apart because of its prevailing mono-
phonic texture, its nearly exclusive attention to the soprano and viola,
and because Feldman limits the range of motivic material for both of
these instruments. The fourth section is distinguished by the vibraphone
ostinato and the diatonic Hebrew tune. The most clearly articulated
panel, however, is the second section.
Feldman singled out this section, which he described as abstract and
"monochromey," as coming very close to the chapel pictures.57 This
observation suggests that the sectionalism of Rothko Chapel represents a
conscious reference to the paintings. The passage is highly distinct. Using
the treble ranges of the sopranos, altos, and chimes to fill in a region
from C#4 to E5, Feldman created an inordinately dense and consistent
texture (see Example 13). The voices remain fixed on a hexachord
packed into a nearly contiguous cluster (from bottom to top: Eb4, G4,
AL4,A4, B4, and C5). Meanwhile, the chimes introduce the six remaining
pitch classes a few notes at a time, assuring the gradual saturation of all
twelve. The rhythms contribute greatly to the uniformity of the passage.
Feldman disperses the attacks evenly among the performers, so that one
part renews its pitch while the others rest or sustain their own pitch. No
beat receives greater rhythmic emphasis than another. This uniformity
has the effect of suspending time, since it presents a single, extended
moment in which no point in time may be distinguished from another. In
Rothko, such stasis arises from the frontality of his schemes, where sur-
faces maintain a uniform distance in relation to the picture plane and the
inherent stability of symmetrically arranged rectangles inhibit lateral
movement. Years later, Feldman reflected that the "degrees of stasis,
found in a Rothko or a Guston, were perhaps the most significant ele-
ments that I brought to my music from painting."58
The "monochromey" passage also captures the "play between pres-
ence and absence" contained in the Chapel panels.59Even though several
of the paintings seem all ground or even void, lacking the interior
rectangles of his earlier work, they nevertheless possess an "internal
50/72
-"
sr" - r
'or-_rvr - r' '"
1
_"
barelyaudible
r~--- ~~~3----~~~ r~-8--,
* e o o r r
'- rf--? ?-"
2 s .
2
p^
?-barely audible
-o
^- f7't"-
3 1 -J - - -^ ., . .
,
sour. Sop. barely adible
barely audible
65 - % - --? Y ? ? f t ?
bareJ audible r
r-3-.
1fc. "4. frJ

"" ,J -lJ eJd'J ~ _ bJ,_ _Ji,L 4. J --- ---,i
. barely ~bare barely dible
au
2 1 - __ :j - 16 6 4 ^ 6 -J
-
barely audible
r-3,~~- --- ---
*-_- ._ audible J t7 j -aJ. J__ ,

barely
3-3--,
Alto barely audible

-3---.-,
*1 - -bj .. 5_| 6J j. -s
barely audible
6 -
I ~~~~~barely
J
audible ~ JJ_. J -o.
0
J O
barely audible
Chms. [4 IP I -
Edition (New York).
The beginning of the second, "monochromatic" section of Rothko Chapel

(measures 211-17, in full score).
EXAMPLE 13
51/72
modeling" produced by Rothko's painterly brushstrokes.60 Thus, dif-

ferentiated areas do emerge to the patient viewer. The uniformity of
Feldman's music here similarlyburies definition, suppressing the identity
of its constituent parts. But as evidence of the composer's own "paint-
erly" approach, patterns lurk beneath the surface. Freely imitative rela-
tionships, for example, arise between those choral voices which sing the
same pitch (compare sopranos 1 and 4, 2 and 5, altos 1 and 4, and so
on). And the seemingly steady musical surface-like Rothko's-in fact
fluctuates constantly, if minutely. Feldman assigned the choral hexachord
to two groups simultaneously, so that each pitch may be sung by one or
two groups or be momentarily absent. Naturally, this arrangement pro-
duces faint variations in tone quality. In addition, Feldman's manipula-
tion of the chime hexachord continually alters both the pitch content and
spacing of the total sonority.
The interplay of stasis and flux is an extraordinary feature in Rothko
Chapel, since it represents the rare use by Feldman of multiple kinds of
time. As defined by Jonathan Kramer, musical time exists in two basic
forms. Linear time involves a "succession of events in which earlier events
imply later ones and later ones are consequences of earlier ones."61 Non-
linear or "vertical" time involves a nonteleological "extended present,"
which abjuresvariation, development, motives, rhythmic groupings, hier-
archy, and expression. Kramer has claimed that Feldman's music repre-
sents the epitome of vertical time, since it has "nothing to do with
teleology."62 If somewhat overstated, this view has been carefully nur-
tured by Feldman himself (as the remark quoted just above suggests),
and indeed, on one level it accurately describes most of his music. The
elevated rhetoric in Rothko Chapel, however, combined with passages of
Feldman's more typically vertical music, leads to an "immobile proces-
sion" captured through the mixture of linear and vertical time.
Feldman integrates the two by creating a continuum of different times
defined by their varying degrees of verticality or linearity. Example 14
charts a continuum of five more or less distinct categories, moving from
the most vertical to the most linear. In the piece, the two extreme catego-
ries are represented each by one single section. The monochromatic sec-
ond section just discussed may be the most vertical music Feldman ever
wrote; the concluding Hebrew tune, with its regular meter and tonal
transpositions by fourth and fifth in ever-ascending registers, may be the
most linear.63The categories between these extremes are less clear-cut
and interact more fluidly with one another. Most of the modular music in
the first section involves a free succession of brief, disconnected frag-
ments (see Example 7). The isolated nature of the events forces the lis-
tener to experience them vertically, yet the very existence of a
52/72
"succession" creates a momentum that the second section altogether

lacks. But in a few passages in the first section, Feldman treats his modu-
lar material more expansively,producing both linear and nonlinear quali-
ties. In the ostinato passage-the best example of this-the reiteration of
the D-B ostinato and the C/D choral dyad engenders stasis, but the
gradual accumulation of layers creates a faint directionality (see Example
9). This passage, along with a few less extended ones (such as Example
8), serves as a transition between vertical and linear time.
Complete Succession StaticPanels Directional Directional

Stasis: of Static with Some Atonal Modal
Extended Fragments Directional Motivic Melody
SingleChord Quality Development
I I
monochromatic modular declamatory tune
I VERTICAL TIME - LINEAR TIME
The fivekindsof time exhibitedin RothkoChapel,shownas a continuum.
EXAMPLE 14
Feldman's mixture of the two times seems to correspond to Rothko. It

might have arisen naturally and indirectly, as a byproduct of Feldman's
decision to articulate the autobiographical conception of the work with
such un-Feldman-like elements as motivic development and tonal mate-
rial. The mixture may also reflect a conscious attempt to match the varied
rhythms of Rothko's surfaces. We have alreadydiscussed Feldman's sensi-
tivity to the "rhythms" of the Chapel paintings; we must also remember
that, from very early in his career, Feldman linked musical time with sur-
face in art.64He conceived his early graphic pieces, for example, as musi-
cal equivalents for the "raw space" he so admired in the Abstract
Expressionists. In 1964 he told O'Doherty, while pointing to one of
these pieces, that
this score is my canvas, this is my space. What I do is try to sensitize

this area-this time-space.... The time structure is more or less in
vision before I begin. I know I need 8 or 10 minutes like an artist
needs 5 yards of canvas.65
53/72
Example 15 gives an overview of how different "surfaces"-or kinds of

time-determine the shape of the piece. Linear time seems to function
teleologically, acquiring progressively greater expressive weight as the
piece unfolds. Viola declamation introduces the work, returns briefly near
the end of the first section in dialogue with a soprano melody, resumes
the dialogue more extensively in the third section, then finally yields to
the overtly linear Hebrew tune. Not surprisingly,the progression toward
linear time parallelsthe advance toward consonance discussed earlier,and
both of these directional elements seem to correlate generally with the
progression of affective states contained in the Chapel paintings. Ex-
ample 15 fails to show, however, that in most sections linear and vertical
time interpenetrate. In the modular stretches of the first section, as we've
just discussed, several choral passages approach linear behavior. The pre-
dominately declamatory third section also includes a number of isolated
modular segments, and concludes with a thoroughly vertical reiteration
of an atonal choral chord. In addition, the ostensibly linear soprano
"tune," as Feldman called it, in actuality possesses an equally strong verti-
cal nature, since it simply reiterates rather than develops its motives and
presents a limited-and therefore static-group of pitch classes. In the
final section, Feldman juxtaposes the outright linearity of the Hebrew
tune against the utterly stationary vibraphone ostinato and an unchang-
ing atonal choral chord.
I II III IV
mm. 29 135 171 185 211 244 314

monochromatic
modular "ostinato modular
passage modal
viola viola& soprano viola& soprano Hebrew
declamation declamation declamation tune
A graph of Rothko Chapel, showing how the different kinds of time shape
the global structure of the piece. The most vertical kind of time appears as
black; static modular passages appear as dark gray; a modular passage with
elements of directional time (i.e., the "ostinato" passage) appears as
medium gray; linear atonal declamation appears as light gray; and the linear
modal melody (i.e., the Hebrew tune) appearsas white.
EXAMPLE 15
54/72
The only section that resists penetration is the "monochromey"

second-again, the one that Feldman specifically related to the Chapel.
Its sharply defined borders, along with its solitary disposition, resemble
the black rectangles in the Chapel's East- and West-wall triptychs. The
rectangles were highly unusual for Rothko because, in addition to mak-
ing them unremittingly dense and impenetrable, he used tape to create
precise, straight borders. Although by the mid-1960s this technique was
being used regularly by the younger "hard-edged" abstractionists, it was
a first for Rothko, who for most of his career was known for his soft
edges-for blurring the contours of his surfaces.
It is the soft contour in Rothko, in fact, that Feldman utilizes with
greatest frequency.While the rectangles in Rothko's classic pictures strike
the viewer as distinct, independent entities, they frequently dematerialize
at their borders. Edges float raggedly across grounds and occasionally
into other rectangles. In some places they vaporize so unevenly and inde-
terminately that the viewer has difficulty distinguishing where one sur-
face leaves off, the other begins. Even though the Chapel paintings lack
blurred contours, Feldman was attentive to this element in Rothko and
sought musical equivalents. Wilson Baldridge remembered an occasion
when Feldman, while listening to one of his own pieces, burst into a
smile and remarked, "There'sa Rothko edge."66
As a principle involving one distinct entity blending with another, the
"Rothko edge" can take many forms. The most clearly perceived
instances appear in the horizontal domain and depend on the presence of
differentiated material. Feldman probably recognized this when he con-
templated the need in Rothko Chapel for "contrasted merging sec-
tions."67 The merging of the third and fourth constitutes the clearest
midlevel instance of a "Rothko edge." The beginning of the last section
marks perhaps the sharpest structural division in the piece, because tonal
elements-the vibraphone ostinato and Hebrew tune-enter directly
after a prolonged atonal choral chord. (As noted above, this division is
reinforced by the change from vertical to linear time.) After about a
minute, however, the same choral chord reappears, joining the vibra-
phone and viola "in a collage effect."68As in Rothko, then, material from
the "edge" of one section drifts into the next. The first and third sections
also blend together, since the viola declamation, soprano melody, and the
B-D timpani motive of the third derives directly from the first. Such
long-range connections between non-adjacent "surfaces" resemble
instances in Rothko where a particular color will mix with others in one
surface, then disappear beneath one or two denser surfaces before
reemerging in concentrated form in a third.
"Rothko edges" appear frequently at the local level, especially in the
heterogeneous first section. The opening viola melody, for example,
55/72
seems to represent a fairly defined passage, not only because it dwells so

consistently on a single timbre, but also because it ends so abruptly with
the entrance of the choral chords (Example 4, measure 29). But if the
choral chords strike the listener as the beginning of a new passage, the
viola soon makes several attempts to revive its declamation (see measures
33, 38-41, and 44). Although these recurrences are fragmented and
muffled by their mixture with other materials, they nevertheless create
the effect of having one section float past the beginning of the next.
Example 6 illustrates another "Rothko edge." As noted earlier, the
passage presents two phrases, each consisting of two different elements
(marked x-k, y-k). Earlier in the piece Feldman had established all three
gestures (x, y, and k) as separate entities. In this passage, however, the
independence of each is compromised when first x, then y, blends
together with k. Blurring takes place in several ways. Obviously, a
"Rothko edge" may arise between contrasting side-by-side entities, as it
does in Rothko's paintings. Here, the choral segments (x and y) overlap
the viola melody (k), a merger reinforced by the dynamic arch. But
"Rothko edges" may also involve the blurring of identities. A pair of
adjacent events in the percussion (measures 110 and 114), for example,
not only perpetuates the drift of choral into viola material but links one
choral gesture to the other. The celesta clusters duplicate (an octave
higher) the bottom four notes of choral chord 4, which appears for the
first time with an added A3. The chime dyads appropriatethe D /C in x.
In the first phrase, then, the chime dyad carriesover a portion of the just-
stated x, while the celesta cluster-bearing no relation to x-serves only
to foreshadow a future event. In the second phrase, the roles are
reversed: the celesta cluster now carries over a portion of y, while the
chime dyad-unrelated to y-recalls the earlier phrase. Since the closely
paired percussion events refer simultaneously to two different, nonadja-
cent choral segments, the listener may fuse the identities of x and y. A
passage following just after this presents another blending of side-by-side
materials (see Example 16). This passage also divides into two segments,
each pairing two different materials:a new viola melody and choral chord
4 (again with the added A3). In the second segment (measures 125-28),
the choral chord enters before the viola melody finishes, creating the
same overlapping of disparate materials encountered in Example 6. But
the blurred edge is made more acute by the first segment (measures 119-
24), which introduces the materials as discrete events, separated by a
well-defined "hard edge."
In both Rothko and Feldman, "Rothko edges" may arise from mul-
tiple, parallel surfaces. Critics frequently refer to oscillating planes in
Rothko, a characteristic arising from minute changes in the density of
56/72
paint and from Rothko's technique of overpainting. Rectangles are cre-

ated from paint applied so thinly that in places the ground shows
through. This often stimulates a pulsation between surfaces, or what Ash-
ton called a "Mozartian vibrato."69It also promotes a sense of the atmo-
spheric, since the fields appear disembodied, as "blocks of colored
ether."70The ground may radiate light from behind or it may loom as a
shadow. In either case, the viewer perceives multiple surfaces. Homage to
Matisse (1953) features a ground which itself contains two layers, a yel-
lowish orange almost entirely covering a greenish yellow. In front, several
more distinct fields hang in suspension. At the top, a lighter yellow area
veils one of a reddish orange; at the bottom, a blue area veils a green.71
In Orange and Tan (1954), an orange ground peeks brightly through
the upper red field, but lurks more ominously behind a lighter tan rec-
tangle below.
viola
A 1!201
Z3 I 13 . . 1 I I I~ 1 tlo I 3 - 3 -- 3
I 1Ij_I I,-
IVIY; J. ,-l#rj . I -I"l I x 4 ,,4
?t o&' I I.''' " ......
mp < MP f '
molto
is0.
~6$:
chorus
PPP
9:
1251 r 4
113 , I 13 I II 13
, - , he' ~p r? I
"' ' I L. II I ;* I I
-eI, I.J..L. - - - V&
Z:- mp
molto f
po
chorus
mp molto
o=tf
v
#(P
Edition (New York).
A passagefromthe firstsectionof RothkoChapel(measures119-28, percus-

sion omitted),showingthe principleof the "Rothkoedge."
EXAMPLE 16
57/72
In Rothko Chapel, multiple surfaces occur in passages where several

strands of material proceed simultaneously but independently of one
another. In the ostinato passage, as previously noted, Feldman juxtaposes
a timpani ostinato and a C/D; dyad for chorus (Example 9). Each
progresses autonomously in its own rhythmic domain. Pulsations arise
when one layer presents material close to, but slightly offset from,
another. The antiphonal choirs express the same dyad in different spac-
ings; the D-B ostinato in the basses states the timpani motive in a differ-
ent rhythm; and the late-arriving alto solo (measure 162) presents the
timpani motive a half-step lower. The fact that the choral dyad and the
timpani ostinato have appeared earlier by themselves, thus establishing
independent identities, serves to reinforce the listener's awareness of
multiple surfaces.
Passages like this recall a device Feldman used often in his early pieces,
where performers begin together but move through their parts at inde-
pendent speeds (e.g., Piece for Four Pianos, 1957; or The Swallows of
Salangan, 1960).72 The term "race-course design," used by Peter Dick-
inson to describe this device,73 seems inappropriate,since it trivializes the
intent of the composer and misrepresents the spirit of the relation
between performers. I suggest that Feldman used this device to create
separate strata of time. And knowing that the composer linked musical
time with visual surface, we may consider the technique as a way of creat-
ing multiple surfaces in music. A comparison of two other passages from
the second section illustrates a conventionally notated example of this
technique (see Examples 17a and 17b). In the first passage (measures
83-94), Feldman introduces a series of eight choral chords (marked m
through t). Later he returns to these chords (measures 197-200) but
splits them into two antiphonally opposed planes. As one choir presents
chords m, n, and o, the other simultaneously presents chords p, q, r, s,
and t. By dividing this music into multiple layers-separated in physical
space as well as by their musical content-Feldman achieves an effect akin
to Rothko's vibrating surfaces.
The most surprising event in Rothko Chapel is the beginning of the
final section. The tonal nature of the vibraphone ostinato and Hebrew
tune, while foreshadowed by earlier events, nonetheless departs dramati-
cally from the preceding music. At the junction between the third and
fourth sections (Example 18), pitch structure and the spacing of the
sonorities reinforce the abruptness of the departure. At the end of the
third section (measures 302-13), Feldman sustains a single chord, inter-
rupting it once by an ethereal instrumental chord (measure 306). Taken
together, the two sonorities include all pitch classes except G and C,
which are precisely the ones forming the outer boundary of the vibra-
phone ostinato. In addition, Feldman creates a gap in the choral chord
58/72
40 Perspectives of New Music
m ( n o p
- s_ . a-,~~~~~~~
I) *' rI
?r r rr r r
s
r.--8 p.--pooo -
Ch.A
,
-
_^
_-
- r-r -r r r -r
- P -_ - --8..-- =
f_--8--
,- ,- .p-- . pooo=
I l Iq
[~ --h#- f- f-_=
CeL
W - 8 T- 7 - ^r *l2f ifrT -K -
- I I I
lI II-
rII_ I Ir ---- II
Edition (New York).
a shows a sequence of eight choral chords (marked m through t) from the

first section of Rothko Chapel (measures 84-93). b shows a later passage in
which the chords are split into two planes (measures 197-200, both
examples in full score).
EXAMPLE 17a
59/72
qf
() r S t
,.-.-.
ir " f to r r--r - rr l-
s
U-k
___r r- *
f -w
0- -, r - J
W J. J ' 4 -.
. ---4 -
JTIC
--------?I-- "P 1BP
a
''r' ?
--r r rr r-"- r' ' -
Cel.
l *I #b 1:: - I . I - I
l^ ;!
a - -
bb_
-S - I1_U- l? -
Vibr.
Via.
Cl.
pr r I mpI i I| - I - IIa -
l I
Vl.
C - _
EXAMPLE 17a (CONT.)
60/72
om
m n o E
s
7- = _ __
'- - - :.
7'7J,: J - ,. .._ -
1 s --
i-I
?'L _ -_ _ k- B - -
.y w AV, _
64 '- r
r r krr r 4'-
.r.LJe-rr-r*
>.
Is --P-
Ch .,
A
D.~~~r---J. r----r---r .
i f-O
r-- *
Tfc^ f~ r- --ft ---
- I rj- ',---:I - -r',- -' -

G
a
Edition (New York).
EXAMPLE 17b
61/72
between F3 and C#4, leaving space to fit in the following ostinato.74

Assuring the freshness of register and of the boundary pitch classes of the
ostinato, these strategies help mark the point of division.
306' chorus I
ppp -= - pppp = -
p: s^8 i- i - i - # : 7
cel., vla.
L chorus 2
'^
^^.? . L'
_ - v .'01 _ o0 Tl^ X v
- 9---!K~5 -~ s
Section IV
I B
E3S
-
^2 ' ^ S -
91 1. IiX X
vib.
_PPWPsp simile
- -
Cf
ci _- IX . - I-
r
? Copyright1972 by UniversalEdition(New York).All RightsReserved.Used by permissionof

EuropeanAmericanMusicDistributorsCorporation,sole U. S. andCanadianagentfor Universal
Edition(New York).
The juncture between the third and fourth sections of Rothko Chapel (mea-
sures 306-315, percussion omitted).
EXAMPLE 18
We know Feldman connected Rothko to the final section in one sense,

because he identified the viola melody as a reference to Rothko's love of
62/72
melody. But this music may correspond to other things as well. As a cul-
minating point for the interrelated progressions toward consonance and
linear time, the section may correspond to Rothko's South panel, which
serves a similar structural function in the Chapel. But its singular charac-
ter reminds us as well of Rothko's habit of posing rectangles that stand
out conspicuously from their environment. In No. 61 from 1953 a dark
brown rectangle at the top relates enigmatically to the other, predomi-
nantly blue areas; in Blue over Orange (1956) a cold blue rectangle jars
against the warm reds and oranges which surround it.75 Such rectangles
appear as "baffling juxtapositions,"76 visual non sequiturs analogous to
the unexpected diatonic conclusion of Rothko Chapel.
The conclusion may also relate to a prominent motive contained in the
chapel paintings. By raising the middle panel above the outer ones in the
East and West triptychs, Rothko introduced the theme of the Christian
cross (see Example 3). For Feldman's friend O'Doherty this was a "rhe-
torical coup," an interjection of a human dimension and a tragic element
into a scheme that otherwise would have lacked a subject.77While uncus-
tomarily referential, the gesture was not inconsistent for Rothko. Deny-
ing repeatedly that his work was abstract, he insisted that his art had
subject matter, which he defined as the expression of "basic human emo-
tions" like "tragedy, ecstasy, [and] doom." He also insisted on the spiri-
tual nature of his paintings, observing that the "people who weep before
my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I
painted them."78 Even though the Chapel had become an ecumenical
facility by the time it opened, Rothko committed to it as a specifically
Catholic enterprise. He therefore inserted other religious motives into
his scheme as well. The fourteen paintings equal the number associated
with the traditional Stations of the Cross; triptychs are commonly associ-
ated with altarpieces; and the octagon was the structure used for the
Eastern Orthodox church.79
Feldman's concluding viola melody has the same referential impact as
Rothko's cross motive, injecting into the music an equally unexpected
rhetorical and emotional quality. Having described the melody as
"Hebrewesque,"80 Feldman probably intended it to evoke the cantilla-
tion of the synagogue: it is modal; features a vocal character,ornamental
triplets, and asymmetrical phrasing; relies on a stock of short, simple
motives; and vaguely suggests responsorial presentation.81 The melody
particularly suited the religious aspect of Rothko's chapel, then, and it
may have related to Rothko's Jewishness as well as his love of melody. We
may never know Feldman's exact intentions here, but we can be certain
that he wanted Rothko Chapel to match the spiritual aura of Rothko's
Chapel. He described his work as a "secular service" and wrote of his
63/72
wish to communicate an "emotional longing."82 With its recollection of

a tonal past, its link to Feldman's youth and to a religious context, the
viola melody does more to accomplish these goals than any other section
of the music.
While comparing mediums as disparate as painting and music is always

risky,it was Feldman who insisted that his music lay "between categories,
between time and space, between painting and music."83 And it was
Feldman who declared his affinity for Rothko and who identified Rothko
Chapel as his only work to seek direct links between music and art. The
links Feldman admitted to, along with the ones I have speculatively set
forth above, show that the connection ran unusually deep. Nevertheless,
there is a peculiar irony in the relation between Rothko Chapel and
Rothko's Chapel. Both works were commissioned for a specific purpose,
giving each a general theme or subject, and both provoked stylistic
departures. Yet the two men took different-even opposite-directions.
In the Chapel paintings Rothko turned to severe abstraction, abandoning
soft, biomorphic form and voluptuous color for hard-edged geometry
and nearly frozen, gloomy hues. The black rectangles in particular
present bleak surfaces of "self-obliterating despair."84Feldman, on the
other hand, momentarily exchanged his abstract style for one that, for
long stretches, embraced an expressive, linear aesthetic. If Rothko's pan-
els reflect the painter in his most remote state, Rothko Chapel reveals an
unexpectedly accessible, sensuous side of Feldman's musical personality.
The difference between the two works can be explained at least par-
tially by their different contexts. In his sixties, well aware that Abstract
Expressionism had long since yielded to a new generation-and one
largely unsympathetic to Abstraction Expressionism-Rothko knew that
the Chapel represented the culmination of his career. In addition, the
theme of the Chapel was essentially spiritual and metaphysical, and
impersonal to the extent that he meant to comment broadly on the
human situation, not on the situation of a human. Feldman, however,
was in the middle of his career (he was forty-five when he wrote Rothko
Chapel), and the subject of his piece was specificallypersonal. It lamented
the death of a friend and artist who had helped stimulate the develop-
ment of his aesthetic. The commission also prodded him to meditate
autobiographically on his own career as well. Feldman therefore took
unusual steps to remind us of the debt he and his contemporaries owed
the New York painters of the 1940s and 1950s. Rothko once claimed
that "I became a painter because I wanted to raise painting to the level of
poignancy of music and poetry."85 In Rothko Chapel Feldman returned
the favor.
64/72
NOTES
1. The author is grateful to Dore Ashton, Thomas DeLio, and Michael

Hicks for their helpful comments.
2. Rothko died 25 February 1970; the Rothko Chapel was dedicated
on 27 February 1971. Feldman's Rothko Chapel was premiered at
the Chapel 9 April 1972. The Chapel was intended originally for a
catholic institution, the University of St. Thomas, but strains
between the University and the de Menils prompted the latter, prior
to its construction, to give the Chapel an ecumenical status. Today it
serves as a place for interdenominational worship and affirmation of
human rights.
3. The literature on Abstract Expressionism is too extensive to cite
here. Sources consulted by this author include William Seitz,
Abstract ExpressionistPainting in America (Ph.D. diss., Princeton
University, 1955; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1983); Irving Sandler, The TriumphofAmerican Painting: A History
of Abstract Expressionism(New York:Harper and Row, 1970); Irving
Sandler, The New YorkSchool:The Painters and Sculptorsof the Fifties
(New York: Harper and Row, 1978); Dore Ashton, The New York
School:A Cultural Reckoning (reprint, New York: Penguin, 1979);
David Shapiro and Cecile Shapiro, Abstract Expressionism:A Critical
Record (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Stephen
Polcari, Abstract Expressionismand the Modern Experience (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Michael Leja, Refram-
ing Abstract Expressionism:Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
4. Morton Feldman, "Morton Feldman: An Interview with Robert
Ashley, August 1964," in ContemporaryComposerson Contemporary
Music, ed. Elliot Schwartz and Barney Childs (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1967), 364-65.
5. Morton Feldman, "Autobiography," in Morton Feldman Essays,ed.
Walter Zimmermann (Cologne: Beginner Press, 1985), 38.
6. Morton Feldman, "Morton Feldman: Interview by Gavin Bryarsand
Fred Orton," in Studio International 192, no. 984 (November-
December 1976): 244.
7. Morton Feldman, Notes to Rothko Chapel;For Frank O'Hara, Mod-
ern American Music Series/First Recordings, Columbia Records
Y 34138. The notes are reprinted in Essays,141-42.
65/72
8. Morton Feldman, Interview by Bryars and Orton, 244.

9. Morton Feldman, "Autobiography," Essays,38.
10. Polcari, 20 and 33.
11. Dore Ashton, Yes,but...: A Critical Study of Philip Guston (New
York: Viking Press, 1976), 95, recalls an incident which underlines
the different positions taken by Cage and Feldman: "Once Cage
came with Feldman [to Guston's studio] at a time when Guston had
completed one of his sparsest abstractions. He responded with an
exclamation, 'My God, it's possible to paint a magnificent picture
about nothing.' To which Feldman replied, with characteristicspeed,
'But, John, it's about everything."'
12. Quoted in Sandler, New YorkSchool, 164. Sandler discusses Cage's
relation to Abstract Expressionism in some detail here; Polcari, 44,
discusses the shaman-like attitudes of the Abstract Expressionists,
which he argues were derived largely from C. G. Jung. Morton
Feldman, "Give My Regards to Eighth Street," Essays,71-78, pro-
vides a number of reminiscences about Cage and the New York
painters. For a discussion of Cage's relation to the art world and to
Marcel Duchamp, see Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors
(New York:Viking Press, 1962). Cage, For the Birds, 221-22, gives a
view of himself in relation to Dada and Surrealism,the movement so
closely related to Abstract Expressionism. He observes that he has
"never really appreciated Surrealist works," but that "critics who in
general link my activities with Dada are not mistaken." In a clarifying
footnote, Cage adds that if he "were obliged to choose between Sur-
realism and Dada, I would naturally choose Dada. And if I had to
prefer one Dadaist above all others, I would keep Duchamp." John
Cage, Silence (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970; first published
by Wesleyan University Press, 1961), contains "Lecture on Nothing"
and "Lecture on Something," two talks given to art organizations in
the late 1940s and early 1950s.
13. Harold Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters," in Abstract
Expressionism:A Critical Record, 76. Appearing in Art News,
December 1952, this is one of the most famous early critical state-
ments about Abstract Expressionism.
14. Feldman, "The Anxiety of Art," 94. Dore Ashton, Philip Guston, 94,
writes about Feldman's "touch" in relation to Philip Guston. Feld-
man's reliance on instinct has also been noticed by Michael Nyman,
Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (London: Cassell and Collier
Macmillan, 1974), 44.
66/72
15. Feldman, Interview by Bryars and Orton, 245. Brian O'Doherty,

"Feldman Throws a Switch Between Sight and Sound," New York
Times, 2 February 1964, 11-3, 11, observed, after interviewing
Feldman, that a fairly exact parallel exists between abstract expres-
sionist theory and Feldman's music. It involves an association with
the "self," a "mode of discipline in freedom," and the "capacity for
infinite variations within that discipline" while preserving the focus
on the self.
16. Feldman, Interview by Bryars and Orton, 245.
17. Feldman, Conversation with Zimmermann, 240.
18. Feldman, "Crippled Symmetry," Essays, 136. "I realize now how
much the musical ideas I had in 1951 paralleled [Pollock's] mode of
working. Pollock placed his canvas on the ground and painted as he
walked around it. I put sheets of graph paper on the wall; each sheet
framed the same time duration and was, in effect, a visual rhythmic
structure."
19. Ashton, Philip Guston, 94. Morton Feldman, "After Modernism," in
Exhibition Catalogue, Six Painters: Mondrian, Guston, Kline, De
Kooning, Pollock,Rothko (Houston, Texas: University of St. Thomas
Art Department, 1967), 14-22, discusses Mondrian, Guston, and
Rothko as painters who have taken a route forgotten by modernity,
but who, for Feldman, represent "the path that has really kept art
alive."
20. Morton Feldman, "Essay,"Essays,117.
21. Anna C. Chave, Mark Rothko:Subjectsin Abstraction (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), 12.
22. Quoted in Dore Ashton, About Rothko (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1983), 4.
23. Feldman, "Regards to Eighth Street," 76-77.
24. Morton Feldman, "Morton Feldman," Interview by Paul Griffiths,
in Musical Times 113 (August 1972): 72, 758.
25. Feldman, quoted in Peter Dickinson, "Morton Feldman Explains
Himself," in Music and Musicians 14, no. 11 (July 1966): 22.
26. Feldman, "Between Categories," The Composer1, no. 2 (September,
1969), 74.
67/72
27. Katharine Kuh, Interview by Susan J.Barnes, 1981. Quoted in

Barnes, The Rothko Chapel: An Act of Faith (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1989), 24.
28. Feldman, Interview by Griffiths, 72, 758.
29. For a discussion of the darkening colors in Rothko's late work, see
Robert Goldwater, "Rothko's Black Paintings," Art in America 59
(March-April, 1971): 58, 62. Bonnie Clearwater, Mark Rothko:
Workson Paper (New York: Hudson Hills, 1984), 55-59, demon-
strates that this trend was by no means all-inclusive.
30. Ashton, About Rothko, 170.
31. Commenting on the Chapel paintings, Rothko told a friend that "It
is all a study in proportion and one can become quite engulfed in
considering ... the two triptychs and wonder whether their shapes
are the same-they appear similar but are not the same, one has ver-
tically wider and horizontally narrower borders than the other-the
borders might have sheen and the dark inside [might] not or vice
versa." Quoted in James E. B. Breslin, Mark Rothko:A Biography
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 480.
32. Breslin, 478.
33. Seitz, 102.
34. In my first encounter with the Chapel paintings, which took place
just as the sun was setting, I never saw these red events. Only on the
following sunny day did I see them.
35. Barnes, 18, reproduces this excerpt.
38. Feldman, Notes to Rothko Chapel.
39. Feldman, "Autobiography," Essays,38.
40. Breslin, 425-30, writes eloquently of Rothko's anxiety about the
younger artists. Feldman disliked the formalism of postpainterly
abstraction (Dore Ashton in conversation with the author, Tortonto,
May 1993). In 1976, just a few years after composing Rothko Chapel,
he remarked that "For me to look at art now would be like Lenin
coming back and seeing that everything had become 'radical chic'
when they talk revolution" (Interview with Orton and Bryars, 244).
68/72
41. Feldman, Interview with Orton and Bryars, 244.

42. Morton Feldman, Press release for the 9 April 1972 premiere of
Rothko Chapel, quoted in Ashton, About Rothko, 185.
43. Thomas DeLio, "Toward an Art of Imminence," in Circumscribing
the Open Universe (Lanham, MD: University of America Press,
1984), 31-47, analyses Feldman's Durations III, #3 (1961) to show
that ostensibly unrelated sound events in fact gradually acquire prin-
ciples of order, thus establishing "a language of pure process." In his
"Last Pieces #3," in The Music of Morton Feldman, ed. Thomas
DeLio (Excelsior Press, forthcoming), DeLio continues his investi-
gation of order in Feldman's music, focusing especially-though not
exclusively-on how relations transfer back and forth between the
horizontal to the vertical domain. (The author kindly thanks Mr.
DeLio for providing me with a copy of this last work in advance of
publication.) In Steven Johnson, "Organic Construction in Music of
Morton Feldman," paper read at the National Conference of the
Society of Music Theory, Montreal, November 1993, the author
investigates how apparently random, vertical sonorities in For Frank
O'Hara in fact exhibit coherent principles of order in the harmonic,
textural, timbral, and spatial domains.
44. Morton Feldman, Interview by Austin Clarkson, 13 November
1980, 2. (The author kindly thanks Austin Clarkson for providing a
transcriptof this interview.)
45. Chords 2 and 3 lack their lowest note; chord 4 appearswith an addi-
tional pitch, A3.
46. Morton Feldman, "Darmstadt Lecture," Essays,189.
47. Feldman, Interview with Orton and Bryars, 244.
48. The passages in Triadic Memories involve relatively consonant
material which, ascending by semitones until they reach a nearly
white-note collection, appear periodically with increasing promi-
nence during the latter parts of the piece. In Morton Feldman,
Triadic Memories (London: Universal Edition, 1987), compare the
following passages: page 25, measures 3-7; page 30, measures 18-
22; page 31, measures 4-11; page 32, measures 2-5 and 16-20.
49. In 1951 Rothko noted that the small picture places the artist outside
of his experience, whereas "however you paint the larger picture, you
are in it." Quoted in Maurice Tuchman, ed., The New YorkSchool:
The First Generation Paintings of the 1940s and 1950s (Los Angeles:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1965), 29.
69/72

51. Feldman, Interview by Bryars and Orton, 244. On 17 February
1994 Feldman's Rothko Chapelwas performed in the Chapel for only
the second time by the chamber choir and new music ensemble of
the University of North Texas, directed by Henry Gibbons and
Joseph Klein, respectively.Dominique de Menil attended the perfor-
mance.
53. Feldman, Notes to For Frank O'Hara.
54. Feldman, "Crippled Symmetry," Essays,137.
55. At the bottom of the South panel, the oxblood platform supporting
the black field seems thicker in surface than the black, and its top
edge is modeled in a way that makes it appear to taper inward to
meet the black. The impression is reversed higher up in the picture,
because Rothko-especially at the left edge-makes the black field
thicker.
56. O'Doherty, "The Rothko Chapel," 18, observed that the pictures
possessed an even greater mobility in Rothko's studio than they do
in the chapel. This has come about because the paintings were
restretched-with the painter's approval-before they were hung in
the Chapel, giving them "a more object-like and literal presence."
Thus, "each canvas does not relate or 'gesture' towards one another"
in the way Rothko's other work did.
57. Feldman, Interview by Bryarsand Orton, 244.
58. Feldman, "Crippled Symmetry," 137.
59. Chave, 196-97.
60. Breslin, 470, points out that, since Rothko worked with assistants,
"Rothko's hand did not touch the canvas in half of the works."
61. Jonathan Kramer, The Time of Music (New York: Schirmer Books,
1988), 20.
62. Kramer,384-86.
63. The tune begins respectively on B3, E4, B4, and E5.
64. Feldman, "Between Categories," 73-75.
65. Feldman, quoted by Brian O'Doherty, "Feldman Throws a Switch,"
11.
70/72
66. Wilson Baldridge, "Morton Feldman: One Whose Reality Is Acous-

tic," Perspectivesof New Music 21 (1982-83), 112.
67. Feldman, Notes to Rothko Chapel (my italics).
70. Sandler, Triumph, 183.
71. For a reproduction of Hommage to Matisse, see Waldman, figure
107; Brian O'Doherty, American Masters: The Voiceand the Myth
(New York:Random House, 1973), 181.
72. O'Doherty, American Masters, 166, reports that Rothko, who loved
music, was especially fond of Swallows of Salangan. In fact,
O'Doherty uses the piece to clarify certain elements in Rothko's
work.
73. Dickinson, "Feldman explains himself," 23.
74. Johnson, "Organic Construction in Music of Morton Feldman,"
treats in greater depth this notion of "spatialcomplementation" as it
operates in For Frank O'Hara. Feldman showed great sensitivity to
the "positive" and "negative" spaces in his vertical formations by
occasionally having a chord (or group of chords) fill in the empty
space left by a previous chord or passage, or vice versa. Positive and
negative space often plays a strong role in governing midlevel struc-
ture in Feldman's music. At times, he also carefully manipulates
pitch-class space. In measure 31 of Rothko Chapel, for example, a
Gb/F vibraphone dyad enters just after the first four choral chords,
which had collectively included all pitch classes except for Gb and F.
As noted above, in the monochromatic section the chime chords
complement the choral hexachord to complete the twelve-note set.
75. For reproductions, see Waldman, Figures 108 and 125.
77. O'Doherty, American Masters, 160.
78. Quoted in Selden Rodman, Conversationswith Artists (New York:
The Devin-Adair Co., 1957), 93-94.
79. Chave, 45.
71/72
81. The melody is stated four separate times: in E, A, then again in E and
A an octave higher.
82. Quoted in Ashton, About Rothko, 185.
83. Feldman, "Between Categories," 76.
84. Breslin, 477.
85. Quoted in O'Doherty, American Masters, 153.
72/72

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Práctico 11: Forma y percepción 4

Johnson. Steven. 1994. “Rothko Chapel and Rothko’s Chapel”, en Perspectives

IN 1964 MARK ROTHKO agreed to provide paintings for a catholic chapel

studio. When the chapel-changed to interdenominational status-

there was an incredible amount of talk about painting. John and I

Cage, however, reacted less sympathetically to Abstract Expressionism

Expressionism arose mainly as a response to "historical, social, and cul-

described these paintings as seemingly "pregnant with a content of sorts,

MarkRothko,American,1903-1970, Purple,Whiteand Red,oil on canvas,

Rothko clearly regarded his Chapel commission as the major event in

North apse triptych

Diagrammatic plan of the Rothko Chapel. Reproduced with permission

As I read it, the Chapel presents a progression of affective states mov-

below, in a few places in Rothko ChapelFeldman inserts a lyrical and rela-

Feldman, recognizing the distinctive position of the Chapel paintings in

Rhetoric in Rothko Chapel appears in several guises. The work exhibits

via. ' ~i e , ,,, - S

ic: 3 3, 4 2-3 1-3

ic: 1 1-3 1-3 4-9 4-9

A pitch reduction of the opening of Rothko Chapel (measures 1-30). Num-

Another sonority, consisting of a timpani B62 and a choral C4/C5,

he wrote it on the day of Stravinsky'sfuneral.47Nor is it accidental that

A modularpassagefromthe firstsectionof RothkoChapel(measures33-43,

scalar spacing of the accompanying vibraphone ostinato (G3-B3-A3-C4)

chorus 501 55]

A passagefrom the firstsectionof RothkoChapel(measures48-62, percus-

Feldman translated his physical impressions of the Chapel into music in

eltI* j t ^ ^ j> > j

~L'1 ~ 'r 'jjIj

v ?*f ^io jyb

via. r- 3 r-- 3 r- 3 175l

A passage of viola declamation in the first section of Rothko Chapel (mea-

Showsthe pitch and harmonicrelationsof Example lla, b, and c. Set-class

Feldman strove for a similar effect. His choice of instruments to a large

by the space of the chapel as well as the paintings. Rothko's imagery

The total rhythm of the paintings as Rothko arranged them created

Feldman's disinclination to match this continuity with music of a similar

because they lack the conflicting rectangles of earlierpaintings. As already

1fc. "4. frJ

*-_- ._ audible J t7 j -aJ. J__ ,

Alto barely audible

The beginning of the second, "monochromatic" section of Rothko Chapel

modeling" produced by Rothko's painterly brushstrokes.60 Thus, dif-

"succession" creates a momentum that the second section altogether

Complete Succession StaticPanels Directional Directional

I VERTICAL TIME - LINEAR TIME

The fivekindsof time exhibitedin RothkoChapel,shownas a continuum.

Feldman's mixture of the two times seems to correspond to Rothko. It

this score is my canvas, this is my space. What I do is try to sensitize

Example 15 gives an overview of how different "surfaces"-or kinds of

mm. 29 135 171 185 211 244 314

The only section that resists penetration is the "monochromey"

seems to represent a fairly defined passage, not only because it dwells so

paint and from Rothko's technique of overpainting. Rectangles are cre-

A passagefromthe firstsectionof RothkoChapel(measures119-28, percus-

In Rothko Chapel, multiple surfaces occur in passages where several

a shows a sequence of eight choral chords (marked m through t) from the

EXAMPLE 17a (CONT.)

- I rj- ',---:I - -r',- -' -

between F3 and C#4, leaving space to fit in the following ostinato.74

? Copyright1972 by UniversalEdition(New York).All RightsReserved.Used by permissionof

We know Feldman connected Rothko to the final section in one sense,