Daily Inspiration Quote by Morton Feldman

Feldman opens with the swagger of a man baiting a room full of polite specialists: “Any professional knows…” is less a fact than a provocation, a way of weaponizing insider consensus. He’s not really litigating flute-plus-piano as instrumentation; he’s attacking the reflexes that come with it. Call it “boring” and you force the listener to confront why it so often ends up as agreeable wallpaper: the flute sings, the piano accompanies, everyone nods, the piece “works,” and nothing is at stake.

The phrase “typical gestural crap” is doing the heavy lifting. Feldman’s target is gesture as shorthand - prepackaged musical acting: the fluttery entrance, the tasteful arpeggio, the obliging swell. Gestures are how composers simulate motion, drama, and meaning without inventing a new syntax. In a familiar duo format, those gestures arrive pre-approved by tradition, by conservatory training, by the market for recital-friendly repertoire. The insult is also a diagnosis: the combination tempts you into writing what audiences already think chamber music should sound like.

Then comes the sly twist: “You might agree, though you wouldn’t call it gestural crap.” Feldman is mocking professional decorum - the way institutions domesticate criticism into euphemism. He’s signaling his own aesthetic project (austere, attentive, suspicious of rhetoric): if the default moves are “crap,” the composer’s job is to refuse the defaults, to make sound that doesn’t behave, doesn’t persuade, doesn’t perform sincerity. The joke lands because it’s half-confession, half dare: if you’re a “professional,” prove it by not sounding professional.