Morton Feldman was born in New York on January 12, 1926. Music became a part of his life at an early age. As a twelve-year-old, he studied piano with Madame Maurina-Press and began to write his own compositions. In 1949, Feldman met John Cage and developed an artistic association crucial to music in America in the 1950s. Cage encouraged Feldman to trust his instincts, advice which helped free Feldman to create his totally intuitive compositions. He has never used any formalized systems, working instead from moment to moment, from one sound to the next. Feldman surrounded himself with creative geniuses. His friends in 1950s New York included composers Earle Brown and Christian Wolff; painters Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg; and pianist David Tudor. The painters in particular influenced Feldman to search for his own sound world, one that was more immediate and more physical than any Feldman had explored before. Feldman developed a graph notation form of music which relied heavily on player improvisation. Though he returned to precise notation in 1969, he remains notorious for his extremely long, indeterminate works. accessed 15.11.06 from http://www.epitonic.com/index.jsp?refer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epitonic.com%2Fartists%2Fmortonfeldman.html