Pre-Hear: Ferneyhough's "Sonatas for String Quartet"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For me, the "breakthrough piece" in which the full potential of this astonishing composer was first revealed. At the very least, it is the first significant work in the medium by a composer coming from the post-War "modernist" traditions - Maxwell Davies and Boulez notwithstanding - and opened new expressive possibilties for the String Quartet, possibilities followed up by subsequent works both by Ferneyhough himself and by later composers.

The work has been recorded twice; first by the Berne Quartet on RCA back in the early '80s and by the Ardittis a decade or so later. The Ardittis performance is the more accurate and they realize Ferneyhough's astonishing spectra of timbral and rhythmic subtleties with breathtaking fidelity, but the Berne performance has an "edge-of-seat" excitement of its own as the players slalom down the Cresta Run of the notes. The broadcast this Saturday is given by the Diotima Quartet, the French ensemble who have taken up the mantle of the Ardittis both in their programming, and in their totally Musical performances of "complex" modern scores. They have their own way with this Music: generally "warmer", more "lyrical" (wrong words, suggesting a lack of warmth and lyricism from the Arditti performances, which ain't the case!) and they were recorded at February's magnificent "Total Immersion" weekend.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01755p2

[John Skelton]

Agree, it's magnificent music and shouldn't be missed. The Berne Quartet recording can be found on YouTube, by the way http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v1MN...D7A5E5B5145623 & subsequent links. And also here http://highponytail.blogspot.com/200...or-string.html (FLAC).

[Chris Newman]

Agree, it's magnificent music and shouldn't be missed. The Berne Quartet recording can be found on YouTube, by the way http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v1MN...D7A5E5B5145623 & subsequent links. And also here http://highponytail.blogspot.com/200...or-string.html (FLAC).

Thanks for that, John. I had a listen today. Some beautiful effects, I thought, and rather soothing.

[John Skelton]

Glad you enjoyed it Chris! Always worth reading on contemporary music is Tim Rutherford-Johnson's The Rambler. Here he is on the Ferneyhough 'Total Immersion'

http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/total-immersion-brian-ferneyhough/

[Quarky]

.......and see Waxy Maxy in Late night Junction last night:

00:29
Nieuw Ensemble / Ed Spanjaard — Brian Ferneyhough: Mnemosyne
Nieuw Ensemble, Etcetera Records KTC170

A very H&N version of LNJ

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

.......and see Waxy Maxy in Late night Junction last night:

00:29
Nieuw Ensemble / Ed Spanjaard — Brian Ferneyhough: Mnemosyne
Nieuw Ensemble, Etcetera Records KTC170

A very H&N version of LNJ

Thanks for that "reminder", Oddy.

(See what I did there? Pathetic, isn't it?)

[hackneyvi]

For me, the "breakthrough piece" in which the full potential of this astonishing composer was first revealed.

I find it difficult to describe my experience of hearing the Sonatas because I came to feel I was listening to a series of constantly reconfigured effects which could not be created without using tones but in which the tones themselves seemed to be incidental.

I could generally detect the breaks between the sonatas and had some sense that there were intentional contrasts between the first 3. But thereafter, I found it difficult to differentiate the component parts, either the individual sonatas themselves or the moments within them. I found myself hearing zooms and plucks, shivers and scribbles, whistles and creaks, hopscotches, stumbles, staunched rockets of rhythms but ... though it wasn't disagreeable music or an unpleasant experience, I couldn't find - in the sound itself - any real pattern or intention nor was I distracted in any sustained way. The music lacked whatever is necessary for my consciousness to become attached to and led by it.

I might describe it as being a little like having someone wave a sparkler in the dark for 40 minutes. Any pattern presented faded quickly to be overwritten by others that were insufficiently memorable in themselves to make any two of them comparable.

I think the instrumentation meant that whatever music was being made was made clearly (and wasn't without warmth) but the objective was absolutely obscure to me. I don't feel this is music I'm likely to fathom.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

One of the most eloquent, intelligent and "positive" negative reactions I've encountered, Phil - and one that needs merits response than I can put together just now. Watch this space: I'll get back to you.

Best Wishes.

[Serial_Apologist]

My reaction is much the same as Phil's to this very early work, preferring the later Ferneyhough

[Quarky]

Well, I'm a latch on to the affirmative and eeliminate the negative type of person.

Overall I found myself enjoying this work - liked the plinks and plonks, and thankfully no scratching sounds, which I am not fond of.

But why so long? If Webern had composed this work, it might have lasted only 4 minutes, not 40.

[John Skelton]

Well, I'm a latch on to the affirmative and eeliminate the negative type of person.

Overall I found myself enjoying this work - liked the plinks and plonks, and thankfully no scratching sounds, which I am not fond of.

But why so long? If Webern had composed this work, it might have lasted only 4 minutes, not 40.

Michael Oliver's Gramophone review of the Berne Quartet recording makes quite interesting reading: http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page...5141+%28399%29.

For me it's among the greatest chamber music of the last century*, as rich in possibility as it is intense in inward working. *As are Lachenmann's works for string quartet, Kagel's first two (both of which predate Sonatas) and Holliger's 1st (also written for the Berne Qt.).

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for that link, JS.

I shall give the work another listen. The point about Webern is understood, and in a way goes without saying: each sonata is about the length on average of Webern's works, post-1908. We know that Ferneyhough made an in-depth study of Webern's oeuvre while at college; as somebody who loved Webern, he possibly felt moved to demonstrate that the possibilities offered by Webern's methods were by no means exhausted. But Ferneyhough was British, not Austrian, and would not have been interested in reflecting that vernacular which is so easily an identifiable sign in all Webern's music, once accustomed to the idiom. So, what, then, is being identified in Ferneyhough's music that warrants a listener's attention for 40+ minutes? This is where the problem exists in the piece for me - an inaudible background - whereas in earlier music of this type, produced in continental Europe, one is gatewayed into new worlds of sound, new instrumentations, new areas of expression that by sheer surface attraction make up for any putative historical gap. In the later Ferneyhough I hear all those things that have been abandoned by so many composers who today have lost faith in modernism, cross-fertilized with earlier, re-vitalised (as opposed to re-hashed) musics.

S-A

[John Skelton]

Hmm. I'm not sure I understand why it's not possible to start from Webern and make something new and different: or why the evocation of a vernacular is so necessary. Is Niccolò Castiglioni's preoccupation with Webern similarly compromised?

I can't think of a vernacular that would have been of value to Ferneyhough in terms of achieving what he wanted to express in 1967. Britten? Vaughan Williams?

Perhaps a way of thinking of the Sonatas for String Quartet is in terms of Ferneyhough's preoccupation with cycles of works - but, again, compressed and condensed. So it needn't necessarily be seen as expansion of a model.

[Serial_Apologist]

Hmm. I'm not sure I understand why it's not possible to start from Webern and make something new and different: or why the evocation of a vernacular is so necessary. Is Niccolò Castiglioni's preoccupation with Webern similarly compromised?

I can't think of a vernacular that would have been of value to Ferneyhough in terms of achieving what he wanted to express in 1967. Britten? Vaughan Williams?

Perhaps a way of thinking of the Sonatas for String Quartet is in terms of Ferneyhough's preoccupation with cycles of works - but, again, compressed and condensed. So it needn't necessarily be seen as expansion of a model.

Nothing wrong at all John. Yet I hear no Webern in Castiglioni, whose music I love, but a lot of Italian . Ferneyhough would have had quite a strong, *independent* modernist movement in this country to springboard from by 1967 - he wouldn't have needed to refer to BB or RVW.

Anyway, take no notice; I've always thought innovation needs strong foundations, and thus write from quite a deep-ingrained conservatism in musical preferences!

[Quarky]

"Michael Oliver's Gramophone review of the Berne Quartet recording makes quite interesting reading" - thanks for that link.

Overall, I find a very simplistic or fundamental approach works for me when it comes to appreciating "new" music. For me it's a mistake to search for an overall stucture while listening to something I haven't heard before - it just becomes a frustrating experience. If I find a single plink or plonk which resonates in my mind and which I find pleasant, then that's a good start. If then there is another agreeable plink/plonk within my memory retention time period, then I'm on my way to appreciating the composition. Any overall structure will creep into my mind subliminally (if that's the right word) - but I haven't gone out searching for it.

Incidentally listening to Rebecca Saunders recently - don't know how she did it, but she produced very feminine sounding plinks. And of course John Cage was into this big-time- small islands of sound surrounded by oceans of silence.

As usual, my posts are to be regarded as off-the-cuff comments rather than deeply thought out analyses.