Toronto, April 17, 1982

Composer Morton Feldman was invited to the Mercer Union Gallery by Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, to give a lecture and play some tape recordings of Triadic Memories (1981), one of his latest works for solo piano.

During the conference, Feldman talked at length about Cy Twombly, who he knew personally, and how one of his works influenced the composition of the piece.

In 1977 the composer had visited the artist in Rome and had been struck by a series of paintings that he would see on exhibition in New York the following year. According to the few elements provided by Feldman during the conference, it is thought that the Cy Twombly cycle to which the composer refers is Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978 (work in 10 parts), inspired by Homer’s Iliad and now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In particular, Feldman had attentively observed what he defines as “very thin gesso”, probably wax crayon, and the way in which Twombly had managed to modulate the color tones, obtaining almost imperceptible shades and changes in tone between one painting and the other.

Those delicate and changing ‘gesso’ tones are rendered in Feldman’s Triadic Memories through the use of the piano’s damper pedal, held during the entire performance of the piece “half down”, as the composer explained.

[...]

The 90-minute composition imposes on the composer and the performer absolute control of the piece, as "it requires a heightened kind of concentration. Before, my pieces were like objects; now, they are like evolving things" [I].

In that delated time, we are asked to slow down and at the same time activate our ability as listeners, following in a state of alert unconsciousness the cadenced rhythm and the reverberating notes of the piano, which in their overlapping and repetition resemble resonances of the memory.

Excerpt from the essay "Roots" by Eleonora Di Erasmo, published in "Un/veiled. Inside the creative process (after Cy Twombly)", Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio and Cy Twombly Foundation, 2024.

Translation by Flavio Erra.

[I] B. H. Friedman, (ed.), Give My Regards to Eighth Street. Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, Cambridge, MA, Exact Change, 2000, p. XXVI.

Discover more about Morton Feldman as well as his works and connection with Cy Twombly through the piece Triadic Memories.

The podcast is in Italian. An English translation of the full podcast is downloadable here.

Francesco Adinolfi is a music journalist and radio host. He is in charge of the “Ultrasuoni” section of "Alias", the cultural supplement of the Italian newspaper “il manifesto". Over the years he has hosted numerous radio shows on Radio Rai, including “Stereonotte”, “Ultrasuoni Cocktail”, “Popcorner”, “Beat Connection” and “Beat Club”. Since 2021, he has been hosting “Ultrapop” on Radio 24. He was editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine "Ciao 2001" and a regular contributor to various national and international newspapers and magazines, including “Il Mattino”, “L’Espresso”, “Melody Maker” and “Sounds”. He has taught university courses at the Sociology Department of Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" and served as a music consultant for various TV shows such as “Il caso Scafroglia” and “Per un pugno di libri”. Among his various publications, he authored “Suoni dal ghetto” (Costa & Nolan, 1989), the first essay on hip hop culture ever published in Italy and “Mondo Exotica” (Einaudi, 2000/Marsilio, 2021), an updated essay on Exotica in all sounds and forms. The English edition of “Mondo Exotica” (Duke University Press, 2008) has been awarded the 2009 “ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research”.

We are grateful to Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio for the generous support.