So sorry I’m running late one this one – but then, I can only tell you about part of what went on at Tuesday’s fifth and final Music in Time program. The fare was Morton Feldman’s four-hour-plus work, For Philip Guston: a meditative tribute to the composer’s friend and famed graphic artist. It also honors another friend, the avant-garde composer John Cage. That part of the tribute was purely musical, as the entire number was built upon the diatonic notes – C-A-G-E – that correspond to the name. The work is scored for three musicians playing a total of nine instruments: Lydia Brown was on piano and celesta, Margaret Lancaster handled the flute duties (including alto flute and piccolo), and percussionist David Tolen did the honors on glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba and chimes.

As host John Kennedy told us, such an unconventional (and seemingly endless) piece of music cannot be experienced in the context of conventional concert etiquette. He therefore passed on to us the composer’s express permission to come and go as we pleased: to take breaks as needed – for snacks, bathroom visits, picking up Aunt Tillie at the airport … or just a good stretch. Not even naps were out of bounds (unless you snore): the only stipulation was that we should go about our business quietly.

I ended up staying for just over eighty minutes (Kennedy later told me that it ran exactly four-and-a-half hours): I had to leave early, to prepare for the big choral-orchestral gig at the Gaillard later that evening (Read my review HERE). But that was long enough to get the essential drift of the piece – and drift is just what the music did. At first, I occupied my mind with the piece’s musical structure: not a terribly hard thing to do, with only four basic notes to keep track of. And we heard those four notes in every possible sequence and permutation, plus exploration of the assorted intervals between them. It seems that every time the going began to get harmonically tedious, different instruments or thematic variations would kick in, altering the sounds, balances and effects. Tempos were consistently slow and dreamy.

But not even the most attentive and focused minds could’ve pumped their undivided attention span up to four-plus hours here … and the composer knew that. You could, indeed, leave your seat for a potty break and come back five minutes later without feeling like you’d missed something important – because you really hadn’t! Several times, when my mind lost track of a passage, I’d slip into a sort of limbo state, and let my imagination run wild, as the gentle tones massaged my subconscious. Behind closed eyes, I “saw” things … wonderful things, like a fog-shrouded pagoda – an alpine meadow – a waterfall under moonlight – snowfields stretching as far as the mind could conjure. The happy (but stressful) hubbub of covering Spoleto’s entire classical scene faded, and my soul roamed free, the world momentarily forgotten. I was surprised that, despite my usual chronic festival sleep deficit, I remained awake throughout.

When it occurred to me that I had to beat feet to get ready for my next concert, I felt almost bereft: like when you wake up in the morning and have to sleepily talk yourself into dragging your butt out of your soft, warm bed and face your day. It was a blessed musical refuge – and I would have sat there very contentedly for the entire duration. My disappointment notwithstanding, I left the hall feeling refreshed and mentally rejuvenated.

We may yet get a belated guest blog on this one – but you’ll have to settle for mine for now, incomplete though my experience was. If you ever get a chance to hear this one … TAKE it!