Ferneyhough: Etudes Transcendantales IX [w/ score]

Brian Ferneyhough's 9th transcendental study. That's all, folks. Doing this was strangely enjoyable (and very rewarding).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• brian
• ferneyhough
• michael
• finnissy
• new
• complexity

[Centaurean]

I'm a fan of all kinds of music, but this... I don't get it. I don't understand it. It feels too self-consciously random as if the composer has gone out of his way to make it as unpleasing on the ear as possible. I will listen to it again to see if I 'get' it but my initial response when hearing it for the first time is that it sounds like a chaotic disordered mess.

[flammesombres]

@Centaurean The music is very carefully planned out, trust me. Ferney's a fascinating composer who has been at the game for about 50 years, and has produced an incredible body of work... he knows what he's doing. Try listening to other pieces when; you might find things like the solo flute works ("Unity Capsule", "Cassandra's Dream Song") a bit easier to digest if you're completely new to his stuff. Personally, what really did it for me was his chamber music ("Exordium" is my favourite).

[audiotheaudio]

I can't tell you how important the work you are doing will be for the survival for this kind of music. Hearing unfamiliar score is always a privilege, but seeing and hearing new score give us a better chance to understand these difficult works. Thanks!

[flammesombres]

Very pleased to hear this, thanks very much for your appreciation. If you haven't checked out her channel yet, a friend of mine on here is doing the same with Ferneyhough scores- her user name is p0lyp0nyXX.

[PhilTheEngineer]

strange, exotic, challenging, beautiful.

[martimtavares]

@Centaurean this doesn't even come close from stockhausen, or boulez, or xenakis, in terms of messing with one's ears!

[Enantiodromialist]

WOW. I have to say that, listening right now, this is the first time have really GOTTEN Ferneyhough.

The elegance, erudtion, and wit of this music are just amazing. The ending — a descent into nineteenth-century German melodrama and the Beethoven Ninth dissolving into an abyss of musicological catalogues of incipits and ultrapostmodern quark-gluon plasma — is beyond genius.

This is what Pierrot Lunaire must have been like.

[TheGlassDot]

@Centaurean First you must remove from yourself the idea that music SHOULD sound pleasing and orderly.

Not that it can't, but that it doesn't always have to--especially on first listen.

[TheGlassDot]

@Centaurean First you must remove from yourself the idea that music SHOULD sound pleasing and orderly.

Not that it can't, but that it doesn't always have to--especially on first listen. :)

[EdiEllerymissing]

@alanf94 There's nothing experimental about this music. Ferneyhough have very concrete processes, and he works very carefully with his music.

[alanf94]

Are these etudes just written to be musically experimental?

[Huddiethegreat]

Where did you get the music and scores for all of the ferneyhough works you posted