This piano work, composed near the end of
Feldman's life, is perhaps his signature composition for the instrument, and reveals his truly original method of opening up time and space by restricting the movement of sound within them. As
Feldman grew older and his compositions became longer (for example, the 4 CD-long "For Philip Guston"), his obsession with the space between sounds (how long it took to hear one before another was introduced) became a driving force in his work. It moved him to constrain the palette he wrote from, in this case to contain only two pitches (C sharp and D), and within these two pitches, an equally restrictive and systematic sequence of meters (alternating 3/8, 5/16). Add to this his direction to the pianist to push the keys just enough to make the slightest sound (ppp), and directions to the listener to playback at very low volume, and you have a very small world to peer into.