Shattering the Vessels of Received Wisdom Author(S): Brian Ferneyhough and James Boros Reviewed Work(S): Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol
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Shattering the Vessels of Received Wisdom Author(s): Brian Ferneyhough and James Boros Reviewed work(s): Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 6-50 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833006 . Accessed: 17/01/2012 07:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectives of New Music. http://www.jstor.org SHAIT'FERINGTHE VESSELS OF RECEIVEDWISDOM LR7b BRIANFERNEYHOUGH IN CONVERSATIONWITH JAMESBOROS* Y OUR MUSIC HAS the reputationof beingextremely difficult to play; however, you'vehad a great deal of successwith a numberof individualperformers, suchas Pierre-YvesArtaud, and ensemblessuch as the Arditti StringQuartet, the ASKO Ensemble,and the EnsembleIntercontemporain. In your view, what lies behindthe astoundingachievement of theseperformers in theface of what many perceiveto be unsurmountabledifficulties? For a start, we should distinguish between musical and performatory difficulty. I take it that you mean the latter. In general, one encounters two distinct types of performer;one that might be termed the "gig" musician- *BrianFerneyhough, James Boros. Shatteringthe Vesselsof ReceivedWisdom 7 the player who, in a couple of rehearsals, is justly proud of producing a "professional" realization of just about anything. Often, such individuals are required to interpret vastly different styles in close juxtaposition and have, in consequence, developed a technique of rapid readingand standard- ized, averaged-out presentation in order to maximalize effectivity for the vast majority of works and contexts. It seems to me that there is a certain tyranny involved in frequent attempts to impose this approach on the composer as some sort of desirable aesthetic norm-a "good, healthy common sense" of music, so to speak. Inevitably, ease of rehearsal and performanceinvolves more than just a careful regardfor technical difficulty. What happens is that whole chunks of conventional wisdom in terms of musical thinking are also absorbed, since ease of realization is frequently a function of expectation or applicabilityof alreadypresent manual patterns. It seems to me no contradiction in terms to presuppose a species of interpreter for whom a lengthy and intense involvement with the artistic and technical demands and assumptions of a particularcomposer or group of composers would be an essential prerequisite for adequate performance activity. That's the performerwho's willing to spend six months or so really trying to penetrate to the roots of a style, to focus in on the mental development of the composer during the act of creation so as to be able to actively counterpoint this against his own personal learning and reproduc- tion dynamic. It's true that, over a couple of decades now, I have developed a significant relationship of this sort with a number of soloists and en- sembles. It would be a mistake, though, to concentrateoverly on the quasi- virtuoso aspect of this: the spiritual relationship is always more important. Very often, such people are disparagedas some sort of performing animal who make a living out of hawking around their manual dexterity. I imagine that such individuals exist, but I have not come across many who play my music, perhaps because the effort involved is by no means invariably associatedwith the requisite illusion of supreme control and mastery trans- mitted by "virtuoso" vehicles. For one thing, I never collaboratewith a given performerin the sense of having him give me his particular"box of tricks:" I believe that one should never start from the global effect, but ratherallow it to emerge synthetically as a result of the confluence of other compositional considerations. This seems to me the sole way to legitimize, to ground sonoric innovation; everything else is bongout. For example, there have been several quite well-known flutists who have refused to take my Unity Capsule(1975) into their repertoire with the argument that it is not worth the amount of time and effort required, since "similar" sounds can be improvised or else notated much more simply (perhapsgraphically). There is no way that I can see to persuade such individuals that the approach to learning the work is an essential polyphonic strand in the final result. Only the experience of actually attempting it can-perhaps-achieve 8 Perspectivesof NewMusic that. There is a basic, unbridgeable abyss separating the effectful "vir- tuoso" approachfrom that adopted by my regularassociates, and I am not in the business of obscuring this vital distinction, since to do so would be to trivialize the extent to which the performer's personal confrontation with a richly-articulatedmusical environment can contribute to a gripping aural experience. One should also remember that these playersdo not dedicate themselves exclusively to my compositions: they do not function as regular, long-term members of a "Ferneyhough Ensemble." We are talking about a quite different situation than where a group plays one composer's music almost exclusively for an extremely lengthy period of time as in the case of, say, Stockhausen or, more recently, Steve Reich. Traditions built in that way have other dynamics. A numberofpeiformers have described experiences whereby, after having spent a periodof time workingon your music,getting beyondwhat wereinitially perceived as obstaclesto comprehension,"many problems seemed to havesolved themselves. "1 I've found that there's a kind of exponential time-saving process with my music: if you spend six months learning one piece, you'll be able to learn another in three weeks. For example (albeit an extreme case), the Arditti Quartet was able to learn my Third String Quartet (Example 1) in only a few weeks, largelywithout my active supervision, because its members are all very familiarwith my general approach. On that basis it was generally possible for them to extrapolateplausible solutions to executive or aesthetic questions. In fact, I was still composing the final pages of the score during the final period of rehearsal, sometimes sitting in the same room as the quartet and passing new materialover to be photocopied and run through, often during the same session. It was a strange experience!2 What many playersoften fail to realize is that most of the textures in my works are to a large degree relatableto gestural conventions alreadyfamiliar from other contexts. What is unfamiliaris, firstly, the unusual rapiditywith which these elements unfold and succeed one another; secondly, the high level of informationaldensity in notational terms; and, thirdly, the extreme demands made throughout on the performer's technique and powers of concentration. Most of these hurdles to acceptance are encountered pre- dominantly during the initial period of familiarizationin which the neces- sary connection between notation and expressiverealization is obscured by the welter of surfacedetail. Once this reading phase has been passed, many playershave come to accept that these factors actually make their job easier and more rewarding. Of course, in the sort of rehearsalsituation prevailing in New Music today, there is little or no opportunity to achieve this experience; as a composer one has the choice of accepting this fact and working with it, or seeking to establish performancetraditions on a gradu- alistic basis. Both views have their arguments; essentially, I think, it's less a Shatteringthe Vesselsof ReceivedWisdom 9 I) .sa o O ---I(?~~~~'J . II ~ ~,--3-'-----,----"--i--~~~~~~~e .................t " I-. Ir k a ll2 I NM 41- ~io 1 ~TliC PII <''Y- I i I "' . -: o 7f pw LI_A_ Q=2 S - A 4- aPiIw - i t i : F TSL w s 5 ;lt 'I; I (C,( IS -5, ,~8 '1"I-, - .1 -VI'___W8t @, Ia -,, -._.Tjl ff IiIS I -I:. ---,- -',,.- i , ---r -r ,^- bon * ^^al f-_9 (hsor I r =*-l 43 y f f -'fJljQ4-,iz~ 'j yi 1 1 _ t i ^ 4~~f4~T~ .J+J8J_tj -1 - - 'Trl6r.2~~~~~~~~~~---4 -_? '-. , P, L (k--- r -- -rn?T^f. r 7f- _- >XS-- at 1- T;k~i:~tf~;Z f '''-'4r~7 ril, 1 1 - --A , PM- . , 7 @ "pr F' r'iL=rff-l i .i seImp'Yre-r mw i-IC sem re sPos r ~~~~~~~~ f~~ ~ ~ ~~~~~uW w . _ _ tr -^w, & If a Mlt- Aw- A EXAMPLE 1: STRING QUARTET NO. 3 matter of professional ethics than of the relationship of one's expressive ideals to the prevailing opportunities for their public reproduction. I'm aware that many composers argue that it's somehow more honorable to 10 Perspectivesof NewMusic work within the bounds set by current socio-economic norms, to tailor their production to them: I simply beg to differ and hope that my views will also be accorded respect. Somecritics of your musicclaim that the speedof informationalpresentation is toohigh, that they,as listeners,can't keepup with it. Again, it's partly a question of familiarity.I try not to be overly influ- enced by the thought that most listeners will hear a piece only once, even if this is often the case. One simply has to ask how people listen these days- are they listening more or less statistically,passively, or does a piece cause some form of inertial resistance in the perceptual works? The more the listening mind gets tied up in powerfully structured contexts, the greateris likely to be its sense of informational overload. That's true of anything which is at once unfamiliarand immediately demanding in terms of trying to tie together partially perceived objects and processes into a provisional whole.