Brian Ferneyhough

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Quijote

permutational procedures in music based on pitch content alone (e.g. serialism)

FWIW and for the record -

The serialism Ferneyhough employs is 'total' or 'integral' serialism since it uses series applied to several parametres - rhythm, dynamics etc.

Of course, all those nested tuplets are the most striking aspect of Ferneyhough's scores. He may have been influenced by Stockhausen's Klavierstueke I - IV in this regard. I have read about him composing the rhythm of a piece in its entirety before even starting with pitch.

[Felix]

Herzleide, it was about time you chipped in to get us back to the real subject of this thread. Unfortunately my musical education is not advanced enough to understand everything you say. I have to listen to the music as it comes and of course I have noticed some of the ways it evolves, but it is a consolation for me to think of Schönberg saying he didn't want his listeners to hear the mechanisms and techniques in his music.

I need an expert sitting next to me with a score to explain things. I did have this with a super-musical friend who made the form of a Kammerkonzert by Ligeti clear to me. I don't know why I only went once, as I enjoyed the session tremendously. When I went into his house and towards his music studio there was a tremendous clash of metals outside the house, and he was not all that amused when I said that I had at first thought it was a composition of his. - once I was having coffee with him and a friend and the conversation about music became entirely incomprehensible to me, for example the effect of timbres in Brahms on the listener, quite independantly of the content of the piece. Like people who count up the number of t's in a Shakespeare Sonnet.

I was taken by surprise by your explanation that Ferneyhough's serialism was integral involving various parameters, as I had up to now thought he had taken a step out of the rigours of serialism.

I was fascinated by what you said about 'nested tuplets' and would appreciate it very much if you could explain this at somewhat greater length.

My expert friend, Francesco, lives very near me now and we are on friendly terms, so I will try asking him if he can do a Ferneyhough session with me. I'm not sure he knows about Ferneyhough, as he looked a bit mystified when I mentioned him in a street conversation, but this may be due to problems of pronunciation. Even if he knows little, it would suffice to invite him to listen to F. in my flat. He has an absolutely perfect ear and would hear everything. He has even explained my own compositions to me.

In the meanwhile it will have to suffice that I enjoy listening to F's music, especially my first favourite, the first version of Funerailles. Trying too hard to hear the tuplets could spoil my enjoyment of the pieces as a whole.

In his "Sociology of Music," Adorno defines a musical person - provocatively - as someone who can understand the form of Webern's Trio op. 20 at a first hearing. I had the CD and the score and was absolutely helpless. After a passage of time I can now hear the form of that piece.

Best wishes

[Mambo]

Originally Posted by Felix

Mambo, I have just hear some portons of Havergal - Thanks for the suggestion - and I was taken completely by surprise by Havergal, what a rich, fervent, turbulent imagination. He seems to have contained a Pandora's box of musical spirits ready to blast the world and which he could open at will to produce one Symphony after the other
I admire him more than the other still basically tonal composers that reached into our century (except for Mahler, of course). That wonderful opening of the 14th Symphony with the basson solo! I am not in a position to form anything except snap judgements and I would have to hear more, whole Symphonies. I wonder if, despite the indubital riches, hearing the same sort of thing going on and on might not become monotonous. And he truned out Symphonies as Haydn did. Alban Berg also had I think even more of a Pandora's box in him but in his orchestral pieces there is a greater crystallisation of an essential form.

Havergal is prolix, the other Brian is more essentialist.

Havergal sounds like Hope and Glory turned inside out; Ferneyhough - seems to me to have found a last corner of the brain that can still speak musically, free of traditional bagage.

I need hardly explain to people on this thread that the one composer is still tonal while the other isn't.

I was going to say, I dreaded the Te Deum that is 'threatened' in the notes for the Gothick Symphony, but I have just found a piece of it on youtube and was quite impressed, especially by the chromatic harmonies and lines after the first entry of the choir, but it also seems like a perfect piece on the stage while a Hitchcock drama is going on in and behind the scenes.

What a composer in the extracts I have heard! But it's the other Brian for me.

Best wishes

thanks for the update, Felix. My listening of Ferneyhough so far
is about nil, but i'm going to check him out some more.
My Havergal listening is limited right now, i just got the 14th symphony and will give it several hearings with comments later.
It sounds like Brian is kind of the opposite of Berg and Webern - who sometimes are too brief - i wish they would do more elaborating with their themes; and add more orchestration.

Brian must like to sprawl all over the place - which is ok with me.

Interesting note by Herzeleide - how Ferneyhough starts with
rhythm first, before adding other considerations.
Of all the musical elements, i think many forget how rhythm may
be the most important ingredient.
And for this tuplet business, a good example i would suggest,
is the opening part of Shostakovich's Second symphony - it
has all the strings doing different tuplets at once, and the sound is quite
imposing - if you have not heard it, or can find a score of it, it's really a unique opening to a symphony.

So here, Shostakovich was using tuplets 16 years before (in 1927)
Ferneyhough's birth.

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Felix

I was taken by surprise by your explanation that Ferneyhough's serialism was integral involving various parameters, as I had up to now thought he had taken a step out of the rigours of serialism.

Serialism is very flexible and can accommodate a wide range of musical personalities and aesthetic aims, which is something Arnold Whittall set out to demonstrate in his book The Cambridge Introduction to Serialism - which I highly recommend. So, although in a way it's not entirely possible to ascertain whether a composer uses serial techniques just from listening, someone listening to Ferneyhough for the first time who is familiar with early Boulez and Stockhausen might reason that his music might use related techniques.

Ferneyhough's music might not seem 'rigorous' in the manner (possibly) of late Webern or Schoenberg because it has a kind of plurality - something achieved from (and this is half-remembered at best) the superimposition of more than one layer of structure. Part of the transcendental nature of Ferneyhough's music is that it seems to deny dualities/opposites, or fight against them - e.g. the principal violin part of Terrain is written on two staves with often mutually incompatible rhythms. In practice this creates the plurality but I think the idea behind it comes across too.

Uh, well I just looked up Ferneyhough's wikipedia entry and found this:

Ferneyhough's actual compositional approach, however, rejects serialism and other "generative" methods of composing; he prefers instead to use systems only to create material and formal constraints, while their realisation appears to be more spontaneous.

Using systems (which are serial, from what I know) to create material is a 'generative' method of composing - even if realised more spontaneously.

So, who knows?!

Originally Posted by Felix

I was fascinated by what you said about 'nested tuplets' and would appreciate it very much if you could explain this at somewhat greater length.

No great length needed - a nested tuplet is a tuplet within a tuplet.

[Felix]

Herzleide , thank you so much for replying to my questions. They certainly do help my insight. I have other problems in my life at the moment, but will certainly come back to Ferneyhough.

Best wishes

[haydnguy]

Ok, I'll say it..."If only this guy sold as many CD's as this thread has views!