Painting and music formed a unusual alliance in the mid-1950s in New York City. What came to be called The New York School of music found its first audience among the Abstract Expressionist painters. As a matter of fact, John Cage recalled that his circle of musicians were shunned by the musical establishment of the day and instead were embraced by the painters. Their shared aesthetic sensibilities made for a fluid exchange between the arts; it's no coincidence that Morton Feldman's music was used as a soundtrack for a documentary on Jackson Pollack. Likewise, in 1971, Feldman was commissioned to create a composition to accompany a series of paintings by Mark Rothko in a non-denominational chapel. Scored for chorus, viola and percussion, Feldman's piece obliquely mirrors Rothko's aesthetic practices, incorporating deeply- coloured fields of musical stasis. By employing a droning chorus intertwined with clean viola lines, Feldman creates a more ethereal type of composition than is usual. This version, in particular, has a softness and sparseness which is at once rigorous yet comforting, attaining the spirituality that both artists sought. --Kenneth Goldsmith
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