Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” is the most spiritual piece of music written in the 20th century. He wrote this short suite to open the eponymous pan-spiritual chapel in Houston and memorialize his close friend, Mark Rothko, who died by his own hand a year earlier. 🧵↴
As Rothko sought to evoke awe with just color, Feldman sought to do the same with timbre — not rhythm or musical momentum, but pure sound and texture. The five-section suite was written for viola, celeste, percussion, and choir, but crucially, the choir had no words to sing.
The Rothko Chapel is a non-denominational place of contemplation, described as “a holy place open to all religions and belonging to none,” so taking language out of the equation makes sense if you’re to create a place for all — but then why use singers at all?
Before the advent of just intonation and instrumental music (outside of “vulgar” folk traditions), sacred music was sung recitations of sacred texts with minimal accompaniment and no melodic repetition. Melodic repetition was an invention of early instrumental composers.
Feldman nudges subtly back toward old sacred traditions. Without true repetition—just as there’s no true repetition in nature—you must maintain a presence of mind to grasp the beauty of the time-based art form passing you by. What could be more spiritual than that?
Some might contend that John Cage, a devoted Buddhist and granddaddy of the avant-garde, would vie for the role of great musical spiritualist, but Cage’s rigorous focus on process aligns him more closely with mysticism than pure spirituality.
I think of mysticism as being a discipline of categorizing and ordering spiritual pursuit, as in Cage’s laborious use of the “I Ching” in his compositional technique.
Feldman let the tones lead, giving in to intuition like his friends, the expressionists, action painters, and color field painters at the time. This instinctual approach echoed Romanticism, whereas Cage and Schoenberg rhymed more with meticulous Baroque ideals.
The shimmering, diaphanous suite is quiet and sublime, and as a memorial to his great friend Mark Rothko, it also includes a sung melody written on the day of Stravinsky’s funeral and a distinctly Hebraic viola melody culled from Feldman’s teenage compositions.
“Rothko Chapel” is a perfect entry point to Feldman’s work, probably his most accessible work. When you graduate from this piece, move on to Feldman’s “Coptic Light” and “Patterns in a Chromatic Field”
