Quotes by Brian Ferneyhough

About Brian Ferneyhough:

Brian John Peter Ferneyhough is an English composer, who has resided in California, United States since 1987. His work characterized by highly complex notation and the extensive use of irregular nested rhythmic tuplets, Ferneyhough is typically considered to be the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and the University of California at San Diego, and currently, Stanford University, and is a regular lecturer in the summer courses at Darmstädter Ferienkurse.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

If the work of art is to continue pursuing the vision of both being in and of the world but nevertheless in some fashion being more than just one more object to the mounting clutter, this is the specific point, I think, where this must be assured.

Brian Ferneyhough

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.

Brian Ferneyhough

Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply.

Brian Ferneyhough

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.

Brian Ferneyhough

When I left Europe in 1987 I did so with the thought that my relevance as a composition teacher would benefit from a certain cool distance to certain tendencies I had been observing for several years with increasing disquiet.

Brian Ferneyhough

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.

Brian Ferneyhough

Actually, most things I say in public lead more or less directly to my own compositional practice, so I should be careful about generalizing lest they come back to haunt me.

Brian Ferneyhough

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

Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view.

Brian Ferneyhough

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.

Brian Ferneyhough

This was possible only by dint of extended periods of frequently quite painful reflection and digestion.

Brian Ferneyhough

The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning.

Brian Ferneyhough

Why, in such a case, should the performer essay any sort of considered approach at all?

Brian Ferneyhough

What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?

Brian Ferneyhough

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.

Brian Ferneyhough

If nothing is at risk, nothing is established.

Brian Ferneyhough

I'm perplexed, though, by your application of the term 'negative' to my figural imagery.

Brian Ferneyhough

I don't see 'lines of force' as being destructive, except to the extent that they are exclusively traceable through observance of the path of distorted material left in their wake.

Brian Ferneyhough

Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

Brian Ferneyhough

As a necessary prerequisite to the creation of new forms of expression one might, I suppose, argue that current sensibilities respond uniquely to the notion of exhaustion as exhaustion, although that does de facto seem rather limiting.

Brian Ferneyhough

Author Bio

  • NameBrian Ferneyhough
  • Descriptioncomposer from England
  • BornJanuary 16, 1943
  • CountryEngland
  • ProfessionComposer
  • Works
  • AwardsChevalier Des Arts Et Des Lettres?