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I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.'

Brian Ferneyhough

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Brian Ferneyhough
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: January 16
Composer
Pedagogue
Coventry
England
UK
Structure
Frequently
Undergoes
Materials
Concrete
Metric
Revolution
Length
Gmos
Pieces
Measure
Lengths
Form
Material
Metrics
Much
Musical
Modified
Piece
Compose
Entire
Variation
Cyclic

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Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.
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What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?
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In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.
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Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of its stylistic 'family' in the world outside.
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This was possible only by dint of extended periods of frequently quite painful reflection and digestion.
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The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.
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The idea of 'machine assemblage' is, especially, very alien to my sensibility, since it suggests a relative indifference of the strata to one another during the process of construction.
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I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go.
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So: we're all tired. Now what? Manuscripts written in Club Med?
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If nothing is at risk, nothing is established.
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Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.
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Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.
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When I speak of cycles, I am referring to lengthy intervals of relative homogeneity, if not in the resolving of problems, than at least with respect to the consistency of their capacity to productively irritate.
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In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really about.
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There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation.
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