condition (record/cover): EX- / VG+ (light ring wear) - With original innersleeve.

The document that introduced Morton Feldman's music to the listening public. Originally issued by Columbia as part of their "New Directions in Music" series, then reissued on Odyssey, this LP gathers works from the early 1950s - the period in which Feldman, galvanised by his encounter with John Cage in the lobby of a New York Philharmonic concert in 1950, developed the graph notation that would define his first decade: works notated on coordinate paper, pitches assigned by register rather than specific note, giving the performer a range within which to move. David Tudor performs throughout, alongside Edwin Hymovitz, Russell Sherman, Matthew Raimondi, Walter Trampler, and Seymour Barab. The works gathered - Durations I-IV, pieces for piano, violin, and chamber groupings - show Feldman at the beginning of a compositional project that would unfold over four decades: the gradual dismantling of cause and effect in music, the pursuit of sounds that exist without consequence, without memory, without direction. One of the essential documents in American music.