Morton Feldman - Triadic Memories (Aki Takahashi)

"What Western musical forms have become is a paraphrase of memory. But memory could operate otherwise as well. In Triadic Memories, […], there is a section of different types of chords where each chord is slowly repeated. One chord might be repeated three times, another, seven or eight - depending on how long I felt it should go on. Quite soon into a new chord I would forget the reiterated chord before it. I then reconstructed the entire section: rearranging its earlier progression and changing the number of times a particular chord was repeated. This way of working was a conscious attempt at "formalizing" a disorientation of memory. Chords are heard repeated without any discernible pattern. In this regularity (though there are slight gradations of tempo) there is a suggestion that what we hear is functional and directional, but we soon realize that this is an illusion; a bit like walking the streets of Berlin - where all the buildings look alike, even if they're not."

Morton Feldman, "Crippled Symmetry," Res (Autumn 1981)