Crippled Symmetry

Crippled Symmetry, from 1983, is one of Feldman's typical late epic-length works. It's about 90 minutes long; nothing compared to the 5-6 hours of the Second Quartet, composed the same year.

Nevertheless, due to its duration and the limited musical elements it uses, this piece demands a very different kind of listening than traditional or even contemporary chamber music.

The adjective crippled means also "paralyzed, blocked, damaged." And it is in this sense that the symmetries within the piece should be sought. The three performers—one on flute and bass flute, one on glockenspiel and vibraphone, and the third on piano and celesta—play short, repeated fragments that gradually vary over time, creating complex rhythmic patterns in which the coordination between the performers is apparent for a moment, then disappears and a new pattern emerges.

However, this is not minimal music. Feldman's work is far removed from the stylistic features of Reich, Glass, and their companions, as well as those of Arvo Pärt or Giya Kancheli. In a 1981 essay, Feldman stated that

Music can achieve aspects of immobility, or the illusion of it.

and then

The degrees of stasis, found in a Rothko or a Guston, were perhaps the most significant elements that I brought to my music from painting.

Many critics compare the evolutionary process of this latest pieces by Feldman to that of the slow and invisible, but inexorable, evolution of glaciers or geological entities.

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