Feldman and Beckett: Words and Music review hypnotic absurdism at Sheffield Chamber Music festival

Morton Feldman described Samuel Beckett as a word man and himself as a note man. Feldman and Beckett collaborated twice, including the 1987 radio play Words and Music, where Beckett repurposed Feldman’s music. A concert paired a minimalist Beckett monologue with one of Feldman’s classic uncoordinated scores to reveal their artistic alignment. Rockaby opened with a desolate exploration of ageing and isolation, featuring a protagonist in a rocking chair who listened and responded to her recorded voice. Why Patterns? followed, with flautist, piano, and glockenspiel performers creating independent, shifting rhythmic patterns and timbral variations. Words and Music then centered on a love-hate relationship between characters through Feldman’s music and Beckett’s absurdist text.

"A few months before he died, Morton Feldman told a radio interviewer that he considered Samuel Beckett to be a word man, a fantastic word man and that he, Feldman, always thought of himself as a note man. The two worked together twice, first on an opera and then, in 1987, on Words and Music, an absurdist radio play that Beckett repurposed with Feldman's music."

"Rockaby, a desolate exploration of ageing and isolation, was the opener. Directed in the round by Vicky Featherstone, the rigid protagonist a magnetic Siobhan McSweeney revolved in her rocking chair, listening and occasionally responding to her own recorded voice. It was hard not to sense the heavy hand of dementia behind the singsong fragments and the fading woman's desperate final quest for human connection."

"Where Beckett's speech rhythms were tightly bound to the metronomic rocking of McSweeney's chair, in Feldman's Why Patterns?, flautist Clare Jefferis, Tim Horton on piano and Lewis Lee on glockenspiel crafted independent patterns in ever-changing time signatures. Roaming independently, their response to each other's rhythmic permutations was both timbral and durational."

"While Jefferis stirred the acoustic pot by switching to mellow alto or sonorous bass flute, Lee conjured iridescent variations through the simultaneous use of up to four sticks. The result was hypnotic, and pure Feldman. Anarchically comic: Jonjo O'Neill as Croak in Words and Music, part of Feldman / Becket at Sheffield Chamber Music festival."

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