Is this OUR Ferneyhough ?

[Bryn]

"Failure exists in relation to goals. Nature has no goals and so can´t fail. Humans have goals, and so they have to fail. Often the wonderful configurations produced by failure reveal the pettiness of the goals. Of course we have to go on striving for success, otherwise we could not genuinely fail. If Buster Keaton wasn't genuinely trying to put up his house it wouldn't be funny when it falls down on him.

"But enough! It´s not my place to write the definitive "ode to failure"."

[From a programme note by Cornelius Cardew.]

[Bryn]

I think in my rather literal mind, "according to what is intended" is the same as "accurately"

If one writes a crotchet rest, that is what one intended to happen

Hmm. So no room for ornamentation or rubato in say, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, etc. unless specifically notated, eh? And as dynamic markings were often omitted from works by, say, J. S. Bach, such works are to be played at a constant neutral dynamic level too, I suppose.

[Bryn]

yes, I can see I'm rapidly digging a hole for myself here! Looking at the example kindly provided for us by Mr Grew above, Ferneyhough is incredibly detailed and specific about what he wants, there doesn't seem much room for interpretation. I'm full of admiration for the fact that he could have had all of that in his head before writing it down. I think that perhaps my initial remark was just my shallow view of some contemporary music where if an F sharp is accidentally played instead of an F natural, is anyone any the wiser?

Well. if Beethoven's instrument has gone just that semitone higher ...

[MrGongGong]

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.

Just because YOU can't imagine how anyone would play (or want to play) this music DOESN'T make it "pointless"
I know several performers who are skilled (and dedicated enough) to learn and play this music
whether one notices every precise pitch is a bit of a red herring
Fernyhough's music is the natural inheritor of much 19th and 20th Century music
played well (see comments on another thread re; fragility) its great stuff , played badly it looses its character completely
so 3.234541654 cheers for Irvine Arditti

[Roehre]

Just because YOU can't imagine how anyone would play (or want to play) this music DOESN'T make it "pointless"
I know several performers who are skilled (and dedicated enough) to learn and play this music
whether one notices every precise pitch is a bit of a red herring
Fernyhough's music is the natural inheritor of much 19th and 20th Century music
played well (see comments on another thread re; fragility) its great stuff , played badly it looses its character completely
so 3.234541654 cheers for Irvine Arditti

wholeheartedly seconded

[MrGongGong]

in what ways would or could it be played badly?

in this context ........ not playing all the rhythms correctly or making a distinction between ppppp and ppp etc

[Bryn]

i'm glad you said "correctly" rather than "accurately"

so rhythm and dynamic are important, but pitch less so? (sorry to be a bit thick)

Pitch, (and associated timbre), is, in essence, speeded up rhythm. My guess is that MRGG was taken correctness of pitch as read.

[MrGongGong]

i'm glad you said "correctly" rather than "accurately"

so rhythm and dynamic are important, but pitch less so? (sorry to be a bit thick)

not at all
in THIS music its all important
(and I would take it as read that the pitch would be accurate though i don't entirely agree with the pitch is speeded up rhythm argument as advocated by Stockhausen ......... but thats another esoteric discussion all together )

[Sydney Grew]

Oh! This interesting thread has abruptly died, as is often the regrettable way of these things. But there remains one remark we must make.

Fernyhough's music is the natural inheritor of much 19th and 20th Century music . . . played badly it looses its character . . .

We would rather say that it is the natural inheritor of just one quite particular and altogether unique piece of Edwardian music: a germ that came in 1909 - just after Tunguska - with this experimental passage from Schönberg's opus 16.

The whole snatch lasts hardly more than a second - which is not really long enough to enable listeners adequately to absorb the implications of all the complexity.

Evidently the experiment was not a success, since Schönberg never did anything remotely like it again; but - and this is really most unfortunate - whole generations of over-impressionable over-earnest under-inventive twentieth-century men took the ephemeral passage seriously, and erected elaborate contrivances upon its decidedly shaky foundation. A really really bad influence what!

Webern's reduction of the work for four hands at the piano-forte is interesting though with its imposed simplification; here is what he made of that passage:

[And while we have the opportunity, an instructive note - of which the need is regrettably evident in to-day's rude and semi-barbarous world - about the modern distinction between "lose" and "loose":

lose (transitive verb) - to come to be without
he loses
he lost
it was lost

loose (adjective) - not firmly fixed; not exact
a loose cannon

loosen (transitive verb) - to make less firm, fixed, tight, etc.
he loosens
he loosened
it was loosened]

[Quarky]

This thread should be in Hear and Now Section

This has developed into a very interesting thread, but I missed it when making a post on H&N section, and there was in any case a thread started by French Frank in that section.

So just a very minor complaint - would it be possible to put discussions of new music in the new music section? There is little enough discussion of New Music, and it seems a shame to dilute it.

[french frank]

This thread should be in Hear and Now Section

I agree (in fact, I was under the impression I had moved another Ferneyhough discussion to H&N). I won't merge the two, as that might end up being more confusing ...

[3rd Viennese School]

I thought this was the Hear and Now section!

Must say this. That music must take ages to work out and write down. How do they do that? Takes me days to write out one line of a 12 note pop tune!
3VS

[Bryn]

I thought this was the Hear and Now section!

It is, here and now, but was not, there and then.

[3rd Viennese School]

yes, I see now that it was moved.

Wot a relief. I thought I was going have to get French Frank to beat some people up.
3VS