Schubert dub 4
Going and coming
The following is an extract from my current book-in-progress, Schubert dub. If you are new here: welcome! You may like to know that a list of previous instalments can be found here.
If Barrett’s nacht und träume sits at the crossing of two lines that project out from Beckett and Schubert, at another sits the American composer Morton Feldman (1926–1987). It is often said that Feldman was Beckett’s closest equivalent in the field of music. An experimental innovator – he is credited with the creation of the graphic score, in which the traditional five-line stave marked with dots for pitches and beams for rhythms is replaced with a more open-ended series of visual suggestions – Feldman changed tack in his later years to fill large, slow spans of time with the obsessive restitching of small details. In these works, which can last up to several hours, nothing ever quite repeats; but nothing ever quite stays the same, either. Feldman called his method ‘crippled symmetry’, a name he gave to a 1983 trio for flutes, mallet percussion and piano/celeste. It refers to a kind of looping, self-sustaining circularity that Pozzo, Winnie and Krapp would all have recognised.
Barrett and Beckett never met, but Feldman and Beckett did. In September 1976, Beckett was at the Schiller-Theater in Berlin, supervising rehearsals of his Footfalls and That Time. Feldman was also in town and took the opportunity to introduce himself, although this wasn’t the dignified meeting of two great artistic minds one might have hoped for. At least not at first: Feldman was brought onto the stage where Beckett was rehearsing but, already short-sighted and further dazzled by having come straight from outside into the dark theatre, he managed only to shake Beckett’s thumb before tripping on a curtain and falling to the floor. Feldman tells this story against himself, and I suspect he enjoyed a pratfall as much as the playwright.
They went out for lunch, although Beckett had only a beer. Feldman had received a commission to write a work for Rome Opera. Would Beckett consider providing a libretto? ‘Mr Feldman, I don’t like opera’, was Beckett’s reply. ‘I don’t blame you!’ responds Feldman. ‘I don’t like my words being set to music’, insisted Beckett. ‘I’m in complete agreement’, replied Feldman. Evidently confused, Beckett looks at him again. ‘But what do you want?’ ‘I have no idea!’ laughs Feldman.
