Crippled Symmetry 14.04.

2016
The chamber music ensemble Het Collectief presented tonight Crippled Symmetry
- a work by Morton Feldman. The piece is composed for Piano, Celesta,
Vibraphone, Glockenspiel, Flute and Alto Flute.
It is said that no full score exists of Crippled Symmetry: the three performers each
have their own parts, but those contain no indications of how and where they
should synchronize. The lacking of precise co-ordination creates the sense of every
sound constantly being reassessed and placed in a slightly different context.
The piece begins with a mysterious atmosphere, and scattered notes, and slowly
evolves to a repetitive pattern. Different ostinatos appear to each instrument,always
rearranged, and the entire pace of the piece is quite slow. The higher point of the
piece is reached when all the musical layers become very dense. After that, the
layers are slowly deconstructed, and finally reduced to a single sound.
However, I believe that this one hour and a half piece is quite long, and requires
full attention and concentration from the public, otherwise it could be quite easily
to get lost and not follow the broken symmetries within the piece.