The Wisdom of Morton Feldman

I came across a great quote from an essay that Morton Feldman wrote for Source that amounts to a no-holds-barred polemic against “academic” perspectives on making music:

It becomes increasingly obvious that to these fellows, music is not an art.  It is a process of teaching teachers to teach teachers.  In this process it is only natural that the music of the teacher will be no different from that of the teacher he’s teaching.  Academic freedom seems to be the comfort of knowing one is free to be academic.

Needless to say, I sympathize with his polemic approach and fervently hope that, before Feldman died, he found at least one good spokesperson to carry on this torch!