Brian Ferneyhough

Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (Template:Pron-en, born 16 January 1943 in Coventry) is an English composer of contemporary classical music. His complex, layered music spans many genres of contemporary music, from chamber works to orchestral pieces.

Life

Ferneyhough received formal musical training at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music from 1966–67. His teachers there included Lennox Berkeley, a respected teacher though a conservative figure who preferred the works of French impressionism to the internationalist avant garde. Ferneyhough was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1968 and moved to mainland Europe to study with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam, and later with Klaus Huber in Basel. Between 1973 and 1986 he taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany.

His profile rose in the middle of the 1970s, as the Royan Festival of 1974 saw the premiere of Cassandra's Dream Song, the first of several pieces for solo flute, as well as Missa Brevis, written for 12 singers. In 1975, performances of his opera Transit and Time and Motion Study III were given; the former piece being awarded a Koussevitzky prize, the latter performed at the prestigious Donaueschingen festival. In many of these events he was twinned with fellow British composer, Michael Finnissy, whom he became friends with during his student days. In 1984 he was given the title Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Between 1987 and 1999 he was Professor of Music at the University of California at San Diego. As of 1999, he is William H. Bonsall Professor in Music at Stanford University. For the 2007–08 academic year, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Harvard University Department of Music. Between 1978 and 1994 Ferneyhough was a composition lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and, since 1990, has directed an annual mastercourse at the Fondation Royaumont in France.

In 2007, Ferneyhough received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement.

Coincidentally, he was born on the same day as another prominent English composer, Gavin Bryars.

Works

Ferneyhough's initial forays into composition were met with little sympathy in England. His submission of Coloratura to the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) in 1966 was returned, with a suggestion that the oboe part should be scored for clarinet. However, whilst Ferneyhough did find it hard, one source of support came from Hans Swarsenski who saw the same thing happen to Cornelius Cardew; Cardew enjoyed a prestigious continental reputation, but a poor one in his homeland. Swarsenski said of Ferneyhough: 'I've taken on an English composer who is I think is enormously talented. If this doesn't work, this is the last time'. Ferneyhough continued to struggle, but the aforementioned Royan festival marked a breakthrough for Ferneyhough's career.

From here, Ferneyhough became closely associated with the so-called New Complexity school of composition (indeed, he is often referred to as the "Father of New Complexity"), characterized by its extension of the modernist tendency towards formalization (particularly as in integral serialism). Ferneyhough's actual compositional approach, however, rejects serialism and other "generative" methods of composing; he prefers instead to use systems only to create material and formal constraints, while their realisation appears to be more spontaneous. Unlike many more formally-inclined composers, Ferneyhough often speaks of his music as being about creating energy and excitement rather than embodying an abstract schema. His pieces rarely use 12-note rows, but do include microtones and frequent use of glissando.

His scores make huge technical demands on performers; sometimes, as in the case of Unity Capsule for solo flute, creating parts that are so detailed they are likely impossible to realize completely. As he acknowledges, numerous performers have refused to take his works into their repertoire because of the great commitment required to learn them and a perception that similar effects can be achieved through improvisation. The compositions have, however, attracted a number of advocates, among them the Arditti Quartet, ELISION Ensemble, the members of the Nieuw Ensemble, Ensemble Contrechamps, Ensemble Exposé, Armand Angster, James Avery, Massimiliano Damerini, Arne DeForce, Friedrich Gauwerky, Nicolas Hodges, Mark Knoop, Geoffrey Morris, Ian Pace, Carl Rosman, Harry Spaarnay, and EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble.

Recently, he has started writing works which allude to past composers; his Dum transisset are based on Elizabethan composer Christopher Tye's works for viol. In addition, the fourth string quartet references Schönberg. One of his latest works, an opera, Shadowtime, with a libretto by Charles Bernstein, and based on the life of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, was premiered in Munich on 25 May 2004, and recorded in 2005 for CD release in 2006.

Selected works (some with score samples)

Some works at Sound and Music include score samples

• Carceri d'Invenzione I for fl,ob,2cl,bn, hn,tpt,trb,euphonium, 1perc, pf, 2vn,va,vc,db [1121, 1111.2111] (1982) (score sample)
  (inspired by the "Carceri d'Invenzione by Giambattista Piranesi).
• Kurze Schatten II for solo guitar (1989) (essay, analysis, score sample)
• Bone Alphabet for solo percussion (1991) (score sample)
• Allgebrah for oboe and 9 solo strings (1996) (score sample)
• Incipits for solo viola, obbligato percussion and six instruments (1996)
• Unsichtbare Farben for violin (1999) (score sample)
• The Doctrine of Similarity for Chorus (SATB), 3 Clarinets, Violin, Piano and Percussion (2000) (score sample)
• Etudes Transcendantales (1985)
• "Shadowtime" (1999–2004) (web site with synopsis/)
• "5th String Quartet" (2006)
• "Plötzlichkeit" for large orchestra (2006)
• "Chronos-Aion" for large ensemble (2007–8)
• "Dum transisset I–IV" for string quartet (2007)
• "Exordium" for string quartet (2008)
• "Renvoi/Shards" for quarter-tone guitar and vibraphone (2008)

Quotations

Ferneyhough's obsession with "model"-making itself results, inevitably, in the erection of a surrogate-metaphysics, a substitute universe of the artist's own making, and reflecting primarily his own arbitrary flights of ego-whim. (Fanfare, Volume 3 (1980), Issues 4-6, p. 86)

Bibliography

• Boros, James, and Richard Toop (eds.). The Collected Writings of Brian Ferneyhough. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995.
• Ferneyhough, Brian. Brian Ferneyhough by Brian Ferneyhough. Paris: L'Age d'homme OCLC 21274317 (French)
• Tadday, Ulrich (ed.). "Brian Ferneyhough". Munich: Edition Text+Kritik in Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2008. (German)
• Williams, Alastair. "Adorno and the Semantics of Modernism". Perspectives of New Music 37, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 1–22.
• Bortz, Graziela. Rhythm in the music of Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, and Arthur Kampela : a guide for performers. Ph.D. Thesis, City University of New York, 2003.
• Developing an interpretive context: learning Brian Ferneyhough's 'Bone Alphabet.' (Complexity Forum) (alt.) by Steven Schick (published in Perspectives of New Music)

External links

Biographical

• Info at Brian Ferneyhough's publisher, Edition Peters — includes biography, works and selected discography
• Info at Stanford University Department of Music
• Living Composers Project

Interviews

• Interview (SOSPESO)
• Open questions for Brian Ferneyhough (also applicable to other composers of our day) — turned into an interview, since Ferneyhough replied (Stanford IP address...)
• NewMusicBox cover: Brian Ferneyhough in conversation with Molly Sheridan, July 22, 2005 (video excerpts from NewMusicBox)
• An Interview with Brian Ferneyhough by Felipe Ribeiro, James Correa, Catarina Domenici (Search Journal for New Music and Culture; Summer 2009)

Articles

• The Experience of Complexity by Larson Powell (Search Journal for New Music and Culture; Summer 2010)

Other

• Brian Ferneyhough wins 2007 Siemens Prize for Music

• "Brian Ferneyhough (biography, works, resources)" (in French and English). IRCAM.
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