The Music of Brian Ferneyhough: Works for Ensemble

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS: Evan Hause, 3
CONGRATULATIONS TO…, 3
RECENT DEATHS <> CORRECTIONS, 4
LEGATO NOTES: 25 and Counting – More and More, 5

LIVE EVENTS
(OCTOBER-MARCH, ‘03)

Brashly Callithumpian (Cleary) <> The Met Shows Its Mettle (Kroll), 6
The Boom in Knitting (BLC, Greenfest) <> Clock Works (Kroll), 7
Voices Old and New (de Clef Piñeiro), 8
Owed to a Dream Come True (Cleary) <> Mc…ee for Two (Kroll), 9
"Spirit of Troubled Times" (Kraft) <> Hunting for a Good Venue (Anon), 10
A First on First (Kraft) <> Another Opinion (BLC) <> When Freedom Becomes an Illusion (Cleary), 12
Fiesta on Park Avenue (BLC), 13
Crossing Musical Swords (Kraft), <> A Portrait of Cool(er) (Pehrson), 16
Four Musicians from Mars? (Patella) <> Seriously Complex or Serio-Comic? (Pehrson), 17
Total Mischief/ Total Triumph (de Clef Piñeiro), 18
Cause for Celebration, centerfold, 14-15

DOTTED NOTES from …, 18

SPEAKING OUT!, 20

THE PRINTED WORD, 22

THE SCOREBOARD, 23

RECORDINGS

The Responsibility of a Text (Cleary) <> How Do You Review a Conundrum? (Cleary) <> The View from Peyton’s Place, 24

RECENT RELEASES, 25

THE PUZZLE CORNER, 26

COMPOSER INDEX, 27

BULLETIN BOARD, 27

ISSUE SUPPLEMENT

The Music of Brian Ferneyhough:
Works for Ensemble

by Joseph Pehrson

The Music of Brian Ferneyhough: Works for Ensemble. The Ensemble Sospeso, Saturday December 14, 2002, 8:30 PM, Weill Recital Hall with Lucy Shelton, soprano, Mark Menzies, violin, Anthony Burr, clarinet, conducted by composer Rand Steiger.

Brian Ferneyhough is known as the progenitor of the much maligned British "new complexity" school of contemporary music. Some composers — and, even more so, performers — feel this style has gone "over the top," creating super-complex music that is virtually impossible to play. They assume such complexity is basically a "cover-up" for a lack of clear musical ideas or focus.

Saturday evening’s concert by the Ensemble Sospeso and featured guests laid some of this criticism to rest for this listener. Ferneyhough’s music, as it comes out in performance, is hardly a gray super-serious world of intricate egotism. Instead, it’s a whimsical world, more akin to Alice in Wonderland and James Joyce – surreal, unpredictable, maybe even psychedelic. Ferneyhough, with his beard and electrostatic long hair, seemed a jovial and rather benign figure, at least at this concert.

So, why does he make his performers work so hard? Part of his reasoning was elucidated in a valuable post-intermission interview. He sets up — to paraphrase his own words — situations where the performer is thrust into an alien world, in which he/she must navigate occasional impossibilities, bringing his or her own personality into play. People who are very familiar with Ferneyhough scores say he gleefully sets up technical conditions in which it is truly impossible for the performer to play what is written on the page: for instance two different and simultaneously opposing technical demands on a given instrument. For some players, I am certain this leads to abject frustration; but those who understand the Ferneyhough intent, just go ahead and make what they can of it. In so doing they bring something of themselves into the mix. Some passages can, therefore, vary significantly from player to player and from performance to performance. Some have even called the dramatic result "ecstatic."

Ferneyhough claimed in his interview that he was more interested in what he calls "fidelity" than in "precision." Whew. That has to be good news for the players. However, after certain pieces on the Sospeso concert, some performers looked glum, as if to say "well, I couldn’t really do it…" It seems this attitude misses the point. A few of the more seasoned performers, such as new music diva mezzo-soprano Lucy Shelton and the incredible Ferneyhough specialist Mark Menzies, who played both violin and viola during the evening, got it. They seemed relaxed, even smiling before and after the performances, and I’ll bet they didn’t hit any greater percentage of Ferneyhough notes than any of the others. What they did understand is that Ferneyhough’s notation is, basically, a means to an almost theatrical end, an end in which a strange, whimsical sound (usually high) emanates in an almost John Cagean arena of variety. I have a feeling that Ferneyhough’s music really doesn’t take itself as seriously as some feel it must, given its complexity. Most of the music, at least on this particular program, had a sense of fun and was enjoyable and unpredictable.

The three large ensemble works on the program, La Chute d’Icare (1988, the fall of Icarus), On Stellar Magnitudes (1994, set to Ferneyhough’s own dada text), and Terrain (1992) used the same format, ensemble with soloist (clarinet, mezzo soprano and violin, respectively). They were all conducted enthusiastically by composer Rand Steiger, who is a Ferneyhough advocate. Steiger is a fine composer in his own right, and he gave clear and emphatic direction to these hyper-active works. These pieces used practically the entire Sospeso ensemble, although there were some "subs," Ferneyhough specialists who were brought in to participate. A mini-concerto design works well for Ferneyhough since, as mentioned, his music brings a particular personal dimension to performance that can be best illustrated in solo sections.

The larger ensemble pieces used many of the same kinds of string sounds heard in the opening String Trio: high glissandi, lots of sul ponticello and quartertones (he also uses eighthtones sometimes), but these sounds were nicely offset by longer, lower sustained passages in the winds and brass, particularly in the concluding work, Terrain, which seemed a bit more on musical "terra firma" with a substantial sustained underpinning here and there. Much of Ferneyhough’s music is in a high register, so this contrast was especially welcome.

For me, the String Trio (1995), although the most recent and possibly the most conceptually "advanced" of the pieces, got a little repetitive after a while. The startling, rapid string glissandi and attacks were mesmerizing at first, but then they seemed to be repeating themselves. I was a little disappointed with the Ensemble Sospeso program notes which, while on expensive paper, made it difficult to immediately find the names of the players of this trio. After all the work that went into it, I believe they deserved a bit more than this.

CONTENTS

LIVE EVENTS (OCTOBER-MARCH, ‘03)

RECORDINGS

ISSUE SUPPLEMENT

Contributor Bios

Live Events

Legato Notes

Events

Obituaries

Speaking Out!

The Music of Brian Ferneyhough: Works for Ensemble

LIVE EVENTS
(OCTOBER-MARCH, ‘03)

The Music of Brian Ferneyhough:
Works for Ensemble