Ferneyhough: String Quartet No 5 (2006) with score - 1/2

Brian Ferneyhough's Fifth String Quartet, composed in 2006, with accompanying sheet music for your viewing pleasure. The performance here is a live recording of the Arditti Quartet giving the piece its world première in Witten on May 7, 2006.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ferneyhough
• new
• complexity
• modern
• music
• arditti
• string
• quartet
• sheet

[twooffour]

@egapnala65

It sounds absolutely midblowingly awesome, though - very glad music like this exists! :)

[egapnala65]

@twooffour The rhythms that are notated here are IMPOSSIBLE to play accurately at the tempo expected. Ferneyhough knows this but believes he is challenging performers by writing in such a ridiculous fashion.

The Arditti have to break every bar down into percentages of beat in order to make it countable and we are talking percentages of 1/20th of a given note value as the barlines and time signatures are also irrelevant. This is also complicated by the fact that the score also changes meter.../

[ddrvnn7]

This is a really long flame-fest below me. Bottom line: on paper, this is complex/badass/awesome/whateve­r, but when you listen to it, it sounds like shit.

[egapnala65]

@AfroDeezeeYak It all stems from the works done in electronic studios during the 60's where the focus shifted from tonality to pitch frequencies.

[egapnala65]

@AfroDeezeeYak Suggest you look into Segerstam them.

[egapnala65]

@twooffour But you'd get the same result through jamming though. That's the point.

[AfroDeezeeYak]

@egapnala65 But yes: I agree with your saying that some sort of controlled-aleatory would be a far more practical approach to accomplishing the same effect of aperiodicity (something I am exploring myself i.e. spatial notation within regular beats).

[AfroDeezeeYak]

@egapnala65 The very essence of having coherent atonality, is the lack of regular pulse or pattern which may emphasize a single pitch.

This being said, how often do you think people who cannot read music, may stumble upon a Ferneyhough score? ;)

Just to be clear: I'm not an avid Ferneyhough fan (though I do like the aesthetic quality of some of his pieces, especially his orchestral stuff). Though flawed notational justification: this is not the only aspect of his music worthy of discussion.

[valter8530]

It really is time for someone to publicly say that the emperor is naked. Egapnala65 was undressed fraud, and in so ingenious way. To the core and in the smallest detail. Respect...

[egapnala65]

@egapnala65 every couple of beats so there is no regular pattern that performers can actually latch onto. It is as if somebody has deliberately sat down and made it a ideal to write scores which nobody can play and which, in olden times, would simply have been laughed out of the academies as being totally opposed to both musical grammar and instrumental capabilities.

It works well though because people who can't read music will be impressed by the LOOK of the scores which creates a fan base.

[twooffour]

@egapnala65

Although, why do the performers "improvise"? Haven't they studied the piece before? It's not like they were sight reading this...

just curious.