Talk:Brian Ferneyhough

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[edit] Acceptable Sources

Despite the fact that some excerpts from "The Collected Writings of Brian Ferneyhough" and "Ferneyhough on Ferneyhough" are available online (as they are assigned readings in most schools of composition), I hesitate to include direct links as the publications are most certainly "not free" as sources.

If any senior members of Wikipedia could possibly shed light on whether or not links to "technically illegal but widespread enough in academia for anyone to actually sue" pdfs of such publications ought to be avoided, as the current Wikipedia:SOURCES#Reliable_sources article does very little to remedy my confusion. If, perchance, I have missed the source of such information, I humbly apologize in advance. (Naturally, I only ask as I believe that some of this reading could benefit any visitor to this page.) MarioColbert (talk) 17:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Open questions for Brian Ferneyhough (also applicable to other composers of our day)

(The aim of these questions is to cause the reader to think critically about the various aspects of Ferneyhough's (and other composer's) music. Hopefully Ferneyhough will not take offense.)

  • 1) When composing, do you know what your music will sound like? (To what extent?)
    • Yes. Completely.
  • 2) How often do you listen to recordings of your own works, esp. in the comfort of your own room/house?
    • Ten times when first recorded. Infrequently thereafter.
  • 3) Which recording have you been listening to recently? Which recording is in (next to) your CD player right now?
    • My latest recorded pieces.
  • 4) When do you listen to your own works?
    • When the recordings first arrive.


  • 5) Can you follow you scores, when hearing them performed?
    • Yes.
  • 6) Can you tell to what extent Steven Schick's video-recorded performance of Bone Alphabet is following the score (especially rhythmically)?
    • I haven't heard/seen it.
  • 7) Can you tell, if a performer makes mistakes (e.g. rhythmically) when performing your works? Do these mistakes worry you?
    • Mistakes are bad. Flexibility is good.
  • 8) Would you notice if a performer plays something different, than written on the score (especially deliberately), but in "Ferneyhough-style"?
    • Yes, even assuming that 'Ferneyhough-style' is as easy to imitate as you seem to think. .
  • 9) Would it worry you, if a performer tests you, by deliberately playing things differently than written on the score? Consider especially a pemiere of a work, where the performer starts improvising in a "Ferneyhough-style".
    • No it happens all the time that you need to prove yourself to performers intent on 'testing' you.
  • 10) Is every aspect of your music important to a performance? What if a performer plays something completely different?
    • he shouldn't be paid.


  • 11) Do you perform your own works? When last did you perform one of your own works?
    • I have not performed publicly for 30 years, since I am a clinical narcoleptic. I used to enjoy it though.
  • 12) Do you believe it is more difficult to compose the works that you do; or to compose music in a more traditional style with the aim of tradition listener's responses?
    • One writes what one can, within the realm of what one believes in.
  • 13) Would you believe that I can compose in "Ferneyhough-style", even if I admit that I would very unlikely be able to compose music in the style of say Mozart of Schubert?
    • 'Style' also includes criteria of quality. Would your imitation?
  • 14) When last have you composed in a more traditional style? Do you believe you could compose in a more tradition style?
    • About 40 years ago. Depends on the style. But: why bother?
  • 15) Do you believe you notation for rhythm, allows one to express every smallest possible nuance?
    • Who decides what a nuance is?
  • 16) Where do you get the motivation to write new works?
    • Can't seem to stop doing it.
  • 17) What are your works about?
    • Life.
  • 18) Do you want the performers and listeners of your works, to have the same understanding of the works that you have, or do you want them to make up their own mind completely?
    • Some aspects of listening are communal, some individual.
  • 19) Are your works calculated or do they occur to you naturally?
    • The question is so far from my experience, I can't answer it.
  • 20a) Have you ever composed a work where a note has a duration, which is not a rational factor of the duration of another note?
    • Yes.
  • 20b) Why, why not? Did this question cause you to think about, or alter an answer to a previous question?
    • Notation is an important aspect of composition. The choice of notation automatically guides the mind to certain sorts of solutions. Not all notations are adequate representations of all sorts of imagined musical contexts. As to the last point: no.
  • 21) Are your works an experiment? (When does the experiment succeed/fail? Has it succeeded/failed?)
    • Is your life an experiment? If so, who runs the laboratory?
  • 22) Which or your works is your favorite?
    • The most recent.


  • 23) Would you ever stop composing?
    • Not if I were still mentally capable.
  • 24) Do you compose works for yourself, or for the listener, or the performer?
    • Works are themselves. They must decide on their own targets.
  • 25) What would you do, if no one would ever want to perform your works again or listen to any of them?
    • Carry on exactly as before.
  • 26) What would cause you to become unmotivated to compose new works?
    • No one can predict the future. best not to provoke it.
  • 27) What ideas generate the score -> is it the sound? or do you map something else to sound?
    • Both.
  • 28) Would you listen to computer versions of your works?
    • Not unless there were a computer-generated aspect to the work.
  • 29) Do these questions worry you?
    • Does my music worry you?

[edit] More open questions for Brian Ferneyhough (also applicable to other composers of our day)

  • 30) What music, other than your own, do you listen to?
    • It varies continually. Probably I listen to music less often than most people, since I cannot stand ambient music whilst doing something else.
  • 31) Which music, by composers since 1900, other than your own do you listen to?
    How do you decide on its quality?
    • Anything I am not familiar with. I continually scour stores and record libraries for odd things. Sometimes one is disappointed; at other times single works catch one's fancy. 'Quality' is only one word, but stands for many subcategories. One would have to refer to specific pieces and how they stand with respect to national or historical tendencies. The flow of styles across national borders in the Renaissance is fascinating, for example.
  • 32) Do you compose with a musical instrument or computer directly at your side (perhaps to get immediate feedback)?
    • I have never used an instrument while composing, other than the flute, when working on details of some of my flute compositions.
  • 33) Do you hear the sound "in your mind's ear" when composing without a musical instrument or computer at your side? Or do you work out the score first and then listen to the result? (Perhaps a bit of both? Any elaboration?) (ref. 1 above)
    • One scarcely ever listens to single sounds; much more often it will be a group of sounds already clustered in a musical context. Idea and sonic result are inextricably intertwinged in the compositional act.
  • 34) Do your works have variations of some sort (perhaps some changing of previous material)? Are they generated mathematically?
    • 'Variations' is a species of form; 'variation' is a manner of working. Surely all music deals with the latter. Likewise mathematics (except that most music probably deals with a sort of elevated arithmetic).
  • 35) Did you ever study math or science?
    • Not willingly. I did study mathematical logic for a brief period back in the 60s, but never systematically.
  • 36) Is math or science important when performing or listening to your works?
    • No, except sometimes as helpful metaphor. .
  • 37) How important do you consider it, that people listen to your works?
    • Nice when it happens.
  • 38) Whom would you like to have, listen to your works?
    • Variable sub-categories of human being.
  • 39) Are you proud of your works? (If so, what is the source of pride.)
    • I would rather hope that my works were proud of me.
  • 40) Is it important to listen to your works, within a specific context? (e.g. an understanding of something that you try to put to music.) What is the context?
    • It is helpful to have some background, even when one can of course be immediately seduced by unfamiliar sounds. It helps, for instance, to understand the different texts and their relationship in a 13th C. motet, since key words are often superposed.
  • 41) (ref. 13 above) Do your pieces have some 'style'? Do they have some quality? (if so, which criteria of quality can be identified?)
    • Yes - their own. What is 'quality'? I hope that they are interesting.
  • 42) (ref. 12 above) How important is belief for you? Do performers have to "believe" in your works? What about the audience?
    • All art requires, in some sense, suspension of disbelief. It's up to the performer to appreciate and mediate this to the listener.
  • 43) Did your music and composing change how you listen and/or respond to traditional music (baroque, etc.)? If yes, then in what way?
    • I think that increasing age brings greater tolerance and insight into the problems and rewards of specific historical styles. Early on I think that the development and occupation with one's own problems hinders or distorts this empathy in some respects.
  • 44) (Almost) All tradition musical styles have some recognizable patterns! On the one hand we recognize the style of a piece of music (e.g. baroque, classical), even if it is a piece that we have never heard before (taking into account that we have heard some "baroque" and "classical").
    On the other hand we often now what is going to happen next with some melody, or some chordal structure (resolution, etc.)

    These patterns are so inherent in the (traditional) music, that our brain is able to recognize the patterns JUST BY LISTENING (i.e. even without an analysis of the score).

    Now my questions: does your music have patterns in the sense just described (EITHER recognizable general style "Ferneyhough-stye?" OR "ability to know/predict what comes next")?
    I would say that your music does not have these features, because if some musicians require more than half a year to learn the music, there seem to be no patterns to guide the musician. Perhaps there are other patterns, that do emerge when one analyzes the score? Which would those be? Are there patterns unique to each score, or are there patterns to be found in all your pieces (which could represent style, or maby not?)?
    • Your statement about (almost) all traditional styles seems to leave out a fearful lot of music! Before the invention of the water clock time was not parsed into equal slices as it has been now for centuries. Some music works that way, some not. The perception of significant events is surely important. They might be patterns in the sense of obvious iteration or not, depending. What we need is enough 'velcro-effect' to stick things to each other in our minds. Music needs to be sticky, not necessarily repetitive.
  • 44b) Perhaps the "brains of children that are still learning" and incredibly receptive, would be able to find patterns in your music by just *listening to it*? Do you think this would be the case? Would you think it would be a positive experience for children to listen to your music? Would you recommend it?
    • Sure, lock the mites in a sensory-deprivation chamber with Bose headphones for an hour a night!
      Magic happens when it happens, otherwise not. As a child I gravitated to wind instruments partly because of the glitter of their mechanisms under the lights. Violins were dull brown, and there were too many of them for my ego to properly unfold. When music was still a serious school subject in Britain 7-year-olds were encouraged to participate in the performance of pedagogically conceived 'modern' pieces, some of them conceptually quite stimulating. A great pity that all that has gone the way of the dodo. Participation and collaboration are nine-tenths of the law.


  • 45) What is the "container" and what is the "content" in your music?
    In traditional music, the musical sound (when performed) is the "container". This stimulates our brains and creates a response, which can be seen as the "content" (or purpose, if you like). Compare with the written words on paper (container), and our response and understanding when reading it (content).

    e.g. in 4'33 by Cage, the time-span (and what happens during the timespan) can be seen as the content, while the container is everything that has an audible (...) effect during this timespan. The true content is whatever happens.
    At least, this is my version of a popular description of what 4'33 is about.
    • And the piece is only a piece because a publisher collects performing rights for it. Your question recuperates the old German distinction between 'Inhalt' and 'Gehalt'. It doesn't sound very natural in English, does it? I find your question over-simplifies the issues involved. All answers would, in effect, be wrong.

  • 45cont.) You say your works are about life. (ref. 17 above)
    Do your works describe life and aspects of life, or are your works about life in the sense that it's life, when one performs it. (compare with Cage)
    Is the piece and the sound the content, or is the struggle of the performer to play the piece the content?
    • See my answer to your earlier 'content' question. But no, seriously, what IS this 'content'? When are you, as a listener, satisfied that you have absorbed enough content to throw the CD out of the window? If I were to compose a piece according to an AMTRAK timetable, could the piece be more efficiently replaced by the timetable itself? In any case, if you were not about to plan a journey, how would the timetable (or piece) provide you with satisfactory life-enhancing information?


  • 46) I don't understand your answer 19 above. Would you like to elaborate?
    • Neither of the alternates you offer fill the bill. What does 'naturally' mean? Is calculation 'unnatural', or only unnatural when we choose to do things with it? Much calculation goes on outside the realm of our immediate consciousness - binocular vision leading to depth effect, for instance. The same is probably true for music. Art is, in part, an attempt to overcome the hoary old 'intuition/cerebration' dichotomy, so composers can hardly be faulted for avoiding questions couched in those terms.
  • 47) (ref. 24 above) Do you create your own works? Or do you mean that they are created through you? Is there a randomness aspect in your music?
    • No ectoplasm-enshrouded voices from the beyond, you mean? Sadly not, in my case. Perhaps I'll come back later to help out coming generations if the waiting list on the other side is not too long.
      As to random: all decision making (I believe) has random elements. These can be constrained in various ways. It is the constraint system which transmits a sense of order. There are computer programs which can rapidly write you a symphony in the style of Mozart: what they are patently unable to do is come up with the flashes of perverse insight which makes a piece REALLY Mozartian. The Imp of the Perverse is our true spirit guide.


  • 48) (ref. 27 above) What do you map to sound?
    Do you ever map things to sound, that have nothing (directly) to do with sound, e.g. mathematical formulas, statistical distributions, chemical characteristics of materials, transcendental numbers (pi, or golden ration, etc.), DNA, etc.?
    What would you think about mapping these things to sound?
    Would you say that such mappings could be important to music, considering the rather negative reasoning that "these things are actually unrelated to sound and music".
    • Composers are magpies. Anything that glitters is grist for their nest-building. It is not important that it be understood as a professional scientist would understand it; it is the process of sensual mediation that counts. Number series are sometimes useful, in that they afford distributions that are of compositional interest. Visual images have set pieces in motion as home oracles. You just have to be sceptical as to the predictions offered.
  • 50) Which other questions would you ask yourself, or would you like to be asked? (How would you answer?)
    • As long as someone asks something we should be grateful - it can occasionally lead to a more precise reckoning with missed cues.