Is this OUR Ferneyhough ?

[Guest]

Total Immersion: Brian Ferneyhough
with the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Saturday 26 February 2011, 11am

Brian Ferneyhough leads this season's Total Immersion pack into action. Although the breathtaking energy and spontaneity of his music defy conventional description, one critic came close to the mark by styling the thrilling complexities of one of Ferneyhough's chamber works as being like 'a mosh pit for the mind'. Fellow composer Julian Anderson and BBC Radio 3's Tom Service will serve as Ferneyhough guides for the day, introducing Total Immersion listeners to both concerts and their beguiling contents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/events/299

[Bryn]

Only if it was a case of self love.

[Roehre]

A whole 1 1/2 hours of this Total Immersion is even broadcast coming Saturday in Hear & Now.
Looking forward to that, even though it is only a snippet....

[ardcarp]

Ferneyhough...or self...lovers may be interested in:

http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/ferneyhough-gets-the-today-treatment/

[Bax-of-Delights]

I agree with the author of that link, ardcarp. It was a disgraceful piece of journalism which only reinforces what many people perceive is the sound of "modern" music. The fact that it came out of Broadcasting House would lead one to believe that there are forces within its walls that think that music must have a good tune to be of any worth or understandable. I must surely be mistaken, must I not?

[Sydney Grew]

. . . that think that music must have a good tune to be of any worth or understandable. I must surely be mistaken, must I not?

That was Mozart's idea I think; and his music is preferable to that of this Ferneyhough. According to the most balanced and sober critic of to-day, Mr. Lebrecht, "Ferneyhough's music is plainly designed for a coterie of confirmed believers - music for the new music ghetto." After inspecting some of his scores we find ourself in agreement; they are we would say written much more for show than for sound. The traditional attributes of melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and even formal structure, which we look for in any music worthy of the name, are conspicuous only by their absence.

Mozart - whose best music has never been surpassed - does indeed point the way to some future century when daring iconoclasts will at last take up his baton of melody again and carry it to new heights.

[french frank]

I agree with the author of that link, ardcarp. It was a disgraceful piece of journalism which only reinforces what many people perceive is the sound of "modern" music. The fact that it came out of Broadcasting House would lead one to believe that there are forces within its walls that think that music must have a good tune to be of any worth or understandable. I must surely be mistaken, must I not?

Hmmm, I think it was the phrase "Let’s assume [...] the BBC has a commitment to broadening access to high culture" that I have difficulty with. If that's true, why do they choose people (not just the hapless journalists but the programme producers) who haven't a clue about 'high culture' to promote that commitment?

[StephenO]

Mozart - whose best music has never been surpassed - does indeed point the way to some future century when daring iconoclasts will at last take up his baton of melody again and carry it to new heights.

Agree about Mozart's music never being surpassed. Surely, though, we don't have to wait until some future century before the "baton of melody" is taken up again (if it was ever put down). There are pleanty of composers today who are writing music which is not only highly melodic but which also includes harmony, rhythm, etc. Think of John Adams, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Thomas Ades or Judith Weir.

[Roehre]

....[Classical Music]is plainly designed for a coterie of confirmed believers - music for the [classical music] ghetto.".

That is how I look at the "problem": there is no fundamental difference between people who dislike classical music in general because "they don't like it"/"they don't understand it"/"that's for insiders and therefore very elitist" and people who like classical music, but dislike 20th and 21st C music because "they don't like it"/"they don't understand it"/"that's for insiders, too difficult for me".

[Bryn]

Mozart - whose best music has never been surpassed - does indeed point the way to some future century when daring iconoclasts will at last take up his baton of melody again and carry it to new heights.

Agree about Mozart's music never being surpassed. Surely, though, we don't have to wait until some future century before the "baton of melody" is taken up again (if it was ever put down). There are pleanty of composers today who are writing music which is not only highly melodic but which also includes harmony, rhythm, etc. Think of John Adams, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Thomas Ades or Judith Weir.

In the words of Mary Howitt

‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the spider to the fly,
‘ ’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy,
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve got many curious things to show when you are there.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ said the little fly, ‘to ask me is in vain,
For whoever goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.’

[MrGongGong]

Agree about Mozart's music never being surpassed. Surely, though, we don't have to wait until some future century before the "baton of melody" is taken up again (if it was ever put down). There are pleanty of composers today who are writing music which is not only highly melodic but which also includes harmony, rhythm, etc. Think of John Adams, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Thomas Ades or Judith Weir.

sorry for the pedantry
BUT
can you tell me composers who's music DOESN'T include Harmony, Rhythm etc ?
or do you really mean "Harmony that I like" etc etc
Even La Monte Young's music (which is fairly hardcore ) is concerned (sometimes almost exclusively ) with harmony and rhythm

[StephenO]

sorry for the pedantry
BUT
can you tell me composers who's music DOESN'T include Harmony, Rhythm etc ?
or do you really mean "Harmony that I like" etc etc
Even La Monte Young's music (which is fairly hardcore ) is concerned (sometimes almost exclusively ) with harmony and rhythm

Er.. no, now you come to mention it!

I think what Sydney Grew was alluding to, in the post I quoted from, was harmony and rhythm in the sense they would have been understood in Mozart's time and in the way they were used by composers during the Classical period. Naturally musical language has changed considerably over the last two hundred years or so although the basics remain.

I'm afraid I don't know any of La Monte Young's music so I'm not in a position to comment.

[JimD]

I agree with the author of that link, ardcarp. It was a disgraceful piece of journalism which only reinforces what many people perceive is the sound of "modern" music. The fact that it came out of Broadcasting House would lead one to believe that there are forces within its walls that think that music must have a good tune to be of any worth or understandable. I must surely be mistaken, must I not?

I listened to the recording of the item with interest, but didn't entirely sympathize with the impression that is being given here of its quality as journalism (if that isn't approaching an oxymoron). I agree it wasn't particularly intelligently put together. However my overall reaction was roughly thus: while I might be prepared to give the composer some of my time, I probably wouldn't do so (life's too short). And this points toward what did irritate me slightly ...the composer somehow communicating (no doubt unintentionally) the view that he has some kind of claim on my time which I am somehow failing properly to honour. But he doesn't.

[Sydney Grew]

This example - typical of Ferneyhough's production - may interest - or shock - Members unfamiliar therewith, whom we leave to draw their own conclusions:



Composition of this kind "Soon sounds pointless and not fun" writes the musician Mr. Benjamin at the JohnsonsRambler link from message 4 (which incidentally contains a good deal of disrespectful and downright bad language - never a good sign in music criticism - it was that that in the end killed the Music and Society forum). "Players really resent having to play what is literally impossible," Mr. Benjamin adds.

And Mr. Pace contributes his disparagement of the striving towards perfection as "a quasi-Platonic ideal" - forgetting perhaps that without Plato there would have come no Western civilization or culture! He reminds us of a sailor, never quite comfortable on firm solid ground, and longing to return to the wobbly life. Perhaps for that purpose Debussy with his explicit and even devout supplications to vagueness and the inchoate would be a better bet than Ferneyhough with his obsessive self-defeating pernicketiness.

[Roehre]

I would very tentatively suggest that when a work becomes this complex not many people, perhaps not even the composer, would be able to tell if it was being played accurately or not. (I expect to be shot down for that opinion)

Depends on what is defined as "accurately". If it means literally, I think I might agree. However, if it means "according to what is intended" or "in the spirit of what's written down", I must diagree.

Bartok e.g. gives exact timings of pieces and of movements. Does an interpretation which ignores these timings, or doesn't meet them otherwise (slightly too quickly or too slowly performed), mean that that performance is not up to skratch (as it is not according to what the composer has written)? Or does it mean that that performance is just an interpretation as any other, within the artistic or technical freedom which every composition, how complex it may be, offers?