Bone Alphabet - Brian Ferneyhough

Bone Alphabet
by Brian Ferneyhough
Performed by Morris Palter
at the University of Kentucky
Singletary Center for the Arts
April 11, 2007

"Bone Alphabet" (1992) is generally considered one of the most difficult works in the solo percussion repertoire. "Bone Alphabet" came about as the result of a request by Steven Schick for a solo work for a group of instruments small enough to be transportable as part of the performer's personal luggage when traveling by air. The precise instruments to be utilized are left unspecified, other than by requiring each of the seven sound sources selected to be capable of supporting a wide range of dynamics and of having closely similar attack and decay characteristics to the other instruments. An additional constraint was that no two adjacent instruments making up the gamut of possibilities were to be constructed of the same material (so that, for instance, a Chinese gong could not be located next to a cowbell).

The gestures that we hear, then, might be considered the "letters" of Ferneyhough's alphabet. Sometimes they coalesce into words or even poetic phrases. More often, they claim our attention in and of themselves for their distinctive articulation of musical time and space. Like much of Ferneyhough's output, "Bone Alphabet" is a study in the unequal or "irrational" division of the rhythmic pulse. As important as these temporal relationships are to Ferneyhough's aesthetic, the most potent ratio in "Bone Alphabet" is surely the 1:7 inherent in the solo percussionist's fearsomely balletic encounter with seven different instruments in an inevitably incredible choreography.

Mr. Palter has been published in Percussive Notes magazine and the San Diego Troubadour newspaper, and he currently has endorsement contracts with Black Swamp Percussion products, Ayotte Drums and Paiste Inc. He has received degrees from the University of Toronto, the Koninklijk Conservatorium, Den Haag and the University of California, San Diego, where he received his doctorate of musical arts in 2005 and was a lecturer in music from 2006--2007. Morris is currently assistant professor in music at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and can be heard on Mode Records, RCA/BMG, Centaur Records, New World Records and on John Zorn's label, Tzadik Records.

More info about Morris Palter at:
http://morrispalter.com/

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• Brian
• Ferneyhough
• Morris
• Palter
• Schick
• Bone
• Alphabet
• complexity
• new
• music
• concert
• recital
• percussion
• alaska
• art
• kentucky

[denvermarathon]

Tell me what's gentle about five "f's"

[fremsley001]

"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, Californian Journal of Pseudo-Intellectual Posturing, vol 54, pp1-27 (1994)

[jsanthony11]

the score may look impressive but this sounds like shit . i could take an empty score sheet and fill it full of rythmic figures that dont really exist too. beats dont divide evenly into random numbers

[mickyj300x]

I find it funny that whatever Ferneyhough writes is generally considered to be one of the most difficult pieces in it's genre. Great performance.

[CoreOgg]

Ferneyhough is "alot miss and seldom hit"? but there is so much hit in this piece, no?

[CaseyCangelosi]

totally bad-ass, y'all playing this piece are awesome

[xxxxcensoredxxx]

mmmmm, tasteful...........

[beaverteeth92]

My god. I saw two pages to the score for this, and my head nearly exploded.

[coldanke]

Aah! This is LOUD. Too loud for me! It almost sounds like an amplified Xenakis piece.

I heard Schick perform it. It sounded so gentle, that time...

[herma57]

the other recordings I've heard of this piece, works best when the piece is more subdued, more gentle, and threadbare, to me it becomes more poetic then, this is my interpretation, if you got your own OK;I've been studying the piece since it was written;