Ferneyhough: String Quartet No 3 w/ score -- Movement 1/2

Audio + score of Brian Ferneyhough's third string quartet, written in 1987 and played here by the indefatigable Arditti Quartet. This is the first of two movements.

The composer explains the work thus in an interview:

"As far as I am aware, the things I have been doing follow directly out of what I had concerned myself with immediately before leaving Europe, in particular the matter of the musical object and its processural manifestation.

"... [discussion of La Chute D'Icare and Kurze Schatten II]...

"My Third String Quartet addresses this object/process dichotomy perhaps even more extremely, in that the two movements stand starkly opposed, unmediated, one of them essentially composed of a series of more or less well-defined objects continually being recombined, the other a totally linear, process-oriented mirror image of the first in which transformation comes much more clearly to the fore. Despite the vast gulf which separates them, both movements have their origin in one and the same pre-compositional dispositions of periodic, metric and rhythmic patterns."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• brian
• ferneyhough
• string
• quartet
• three
• third
• arditti
• british
• english
• new
• complexity
• twentieth
• century
• modern
• classical
• music
• chamber

[TheProgThinker]

@ShanyyHUN Why don't you consider this music?? It seems like every time someone hears something they don't like or don't understand they say its not music. Why? Why is it so hard to accept the notion that you can dislike something but that doesn't mean its not music? By saying you don't consider it music, you are making a declaratory statement about the piece, the composer, and, in effect, those of us who do listen to it and enjoy it, that we are listening to something that isn't music...why?

[vicktrimethylene]

Thumbs up if you want all the pissed of people to know that these people giving negative comments are doing it only to get a reaction out of you and they create these accounts to go around YouTube doing this everywhere. They are called Trolls and you can Google it if you must.

[tietjen666]

This is great! Thank you.

[EmptyKingdoms]

@egapnala65 Their view of the world does not affect me, I want their music, not much more than this. I didn't find Nordgren as appealing to me as Stockhausen, for example, mainly his two Studies for Sine Waves. They sound so... Colorful and rich and... Beautifil, in my ears. I don't know you, by I sincerely like dissonance, weirdness, exploration and also minimalism, so I am not excluding Nordgren from my list by any means.

Peace Out

[egapnala65]

@EmptyKingdoms And the composers I mentioned have a far less narrow view of the world. Nordgren uses minimalist techniques and elements of tonality and has a breadth and range of expression which knocks this into a bucket. Same with Segerstam. They have moved beyond this sterile tripe from the 1970's with its roots in the 1950's.

[egapnala65]

@EmptyKingdoms Well I suggest you read up on a little history then, both Stockhausen and Nono are on record as saying their acoustic, orchestral works were based on the same kinds of acoustical explorations as they were making in the electronic studios. Nono even called works like "Per Bastiana" electronic works for orchestra.This is all the same school of thinking.

[EmptyKingdoms]

@egapnala65 Seriously? No, I can't hear imitation of Stockhausen's hot shit with acoustic instruments. Mainly because it was firstly done with sine wave manipulation, thus I don't relate it to acoustic instruments. Also I don't feel Ferneyhough as imitating, probably because it is acoustic, he has a decent explanation for this and it really sounds different. Plus, my comment included your recommendations, so they are "an out of date aesthetic clung to by anal retentives".

Peace Out

[egapnala65]

@EmptyKingdoms There is nothing about this that is genuinely "elitist" though, its just imitating acoustically the contents of a 1960's sound laboratory. Anybody familiar with the electronic works of the 50's and 60's would see that straight away.

Don't confuse ignorance with boredom. To me this is an out of date aesthetic clung to by anal retentives.

[EmptyKingdoms]

@egapnala65 Seriously? I prefer elitisized music, or whatever you may call it (english is no my mother tongue, forgive any mistakes beforehand). I prefer music this way, for the few selected ones that have "ears to listen", the few ones that can really listen, understand and feel it. "Not everyone is ready for many things", and so this applies to some genres and styles of music.

Peace Out

[egapnala65]

@EmptyKingdoms But neither of them have made a virtue out of being incomprehensible elitists playing for a select band of polysyllabic posers.