Driven to Abstraction

The Philadelphia Singers do the time warp in Rothko Chapel.

by Peter Burwasser

classical

Morton Feldman was 6 feet tall, hulking and fond of loud sport jackets. He held court with a braying Queens accent that pierced the air like the horn on a yellow cab. He also wrote some of the most delicate, ethereally beautiful music in the history of the art. Another biographical irony: If New Yorkers are known for being in a hurry, Feldman's music is the antithesis. It is hard to think of a composer for whom time, in the most literal sense, was delegated to so inferior a position in the architecture of his music. Time cannot be removed from music, but the clock can, and that's what Feldman explored. He viewed sound with a powerful microscope, revealing a huge inner world in precise detail, expounded at a luxurious pace. Some of his works can go on for hours, and fervent Feldman fans have been known to arrive at concerts with sleeping bags in tow.

Philadelphia Singers music director David Hayes discovered Feldman as a viola student seeking out an interesting repertoire. That's how he came across the masterpiece, Rothko Chapel (it includes a prominent viola solo). The title refers to a space in Houston that houses 14 large canvases by Mark Rothko, the great American abstract expressionist painter, and a close friend of Feldman. Feldman was asked to write this music in 1971 as a tribute to Rothko, who committed suicide a year before the chapel's completion.

Hayes has long harbored a desire to perform the work, which, it should be said, clocks in at well under 30 minutes, and he opens his 15th year with the Singers with a rare performance, with no less than former Philadelphia Orchestra viola principal Roberto Diaz and current principal timpanist Don Liuzzi as soloists.

Hayes actually traveled to Houston in the course of preparing this performance. "I now really understand how it works. I had the great fortune of hearing music in the space, not Feldman, but a new work for cello that was Feldmanesque. There was pitch, then silence, color, then silence. Silence in that space is not empty. It is palpable, profound and full."

The visit also drove home the crucial relationship between Feldman and abstract painting. "Feldman had more painters than musicians as friends. He was hugely influenced by the New York abstractionists." At the chapel, Hayes first experienced the Rothko, specifically the north triptych, as "a big blob of purple. But it is the deepest purple you can imagine. You begin to see subtle shifts in the color, and as you let your mind relax, it becomes alive with imagery." The music, similarly, "seems simple on the surface." This weekend, Philadelphians will have the extraordinary and exclusive opportunity to experience this musical magic in the flesh, albeit without the artwork.

The concert, which also includes the beloved Requiem of Duruflé and a recent work by Philadelphian Andrea Clearfield, the River of God, is what Hayes calls "a tiny preview of our projected vision. We want to gravitate towards American choral music, which goes back 400 years, but I also think we need to get out of the box." Thus the Feldman, a composer, in the estimation of Hayes and many others, who is "arguably the most important American composer of the mid-20th century," despite the reality that his is hardly a household name.

(p_burwasser@citypaper.net)

The Philadelphia Singers, Sat., Oct. 20, 8 p.m., $26-$40, Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, 330 S. 13th St., 215-893-1999, www.philadelphiasingers.org.