When you listen to Morton Feldman, one of the foremost American composers of the 20th century, you become enveloped in a sound world unrestrained by conventions. His music is hushed and meditative; from indeterminate, minimalist foundations, it drifts like slowly dispersing clouds, with an uncharacteristic emphasis on pitch relationships, relying more on intuition than on method. Born in 1926 in New York to Russian Jewish immigrants, Feldman began composing at nine; he later studied with Wallingford Riegger and Stefan Wolpe. But it was his friendship with John Cage, whom he met in 1950, that shaped his career. Cage inspired Feldman to follow his own voice—shunning serialism and neoclassicism—and also introduced him to New York’s leading Abstract Expressionist painters. Rothko Chapel, arguably Feldman’s signature piece, is a 1971 tribute to painter Mark Rothko, who had died the year before. Unshackled from time, unfolding in long breaths and sketched in unusual colours and shadings—including celesta, viola and chorus—Rothko Chapel is an excellent gateway to Feldman’s music. In 1973, he became the Edgard Varèse Professor at the University at Buffalo, holding the post until his death in 1987. Some of Feldman’s late pieces are punishingly long, but at half an hour, Coptic Light—his last orchestral piece—is worth visiting for the way it employs large-scale saturation to build hazy washes of sound.