(b Coventry, 16 Jan 1943). English composer. He studied at the RAM (1966-7), in Amsterdam with de Leeuw (1968) and in Basle with Klaus Huber (1969-71). Since 1973 he has taught at the Freiburg Musikhochschule and at Darmstadt. His works, notated with fearsome complexity, extend from the avant-garde tradition of the 1950s; they incorporate philosophical and cultural ideas. Among the best known are Transit for amplified voices and orchestra (1975), Time and Motion Study I-III (1974-7) and the Carceri d′invenzione cycle (1981-6).
Genres: Chamber Music, Miscellaneous Music, Vocal Music
Biography
Within a generation of highly influential, progressively modernist English composers, Brian Ferneyhough (born in 1941 in Coventry) maintains perhaps the highest profile and most distinctive voice. Most of Ferneyhough's early training in music came from playing in, and conducting a brass band. He began formal training at the Birmingham School of Music, although the school provided no courses in composition. He went on to study composition with Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music. After traveling to the Netherlands for the 1968 Gaudeamus Week, he decided to move to Europe, where he worked with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam and with Klaus Huber in Switzerland.
In addition to his influence as a composer, Ferneyhough has established an important legacy as a teacher. From 1973 to 1986 he taught at the Musickhochschule Freiburg, and from 1976 has been a frequent instructor at the Darmstadt Summer courses. From 1987 to 2000 he was Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, and in 2000 he became affiliated with Stanford University. Renowned former pupils include the Finns Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg. Ferneyhough's interest in the classical music of the twentieth century was piqued when he heard a recording of Varèse's Octandre while in his mid-teens. Further exposure to the music of Webern, Schoenberg, Boulez and other "modernists" came through scores found at the libraries of Coventry and the Birmingham school. Ferneyhough followed these leads to writings about the Second Viennese School by René Leibowitz and articles on current music in such publications as Die Reihe, which provided him with information on the background and techniques of serialism. Ferneyhough's first acknowledged composition is the Four miniatures for flute and piano (1965). Other important early works include the mixed ensemble piece Prometheus and the Sonatas for String Quartet, both pieces of substantial length and complexity completed in 1967.
By the 1980s, Ferneyhough's dense, highly structured, post-serial compositional approach came to be known as the "New Complexity." This term, to some degree a reaction to "New Romanticism," also describes the music of fellow countrymen Michael Finnissy and James Dillon, and is considered a musical analog to literary and architectural Deconstructivism. Ferneyhough's major 1970s work includes the three Time and Motion Studies: I for bass clarinet, II for solo cello with electronics, and III for 16 solo voices with electronics and percussion. Other works include Transit for six solo voices and chamber orchestra and the orchestral La Terre est un homme (1976-1979). Part of the composer's philosophy involved the dynamics of notation versus interpretation, leading him to write works whose performance, as notated, was unattainable by the instrumentalist. This is particularly true of the solo works of the period, especially Unity Capsule for solo flute, in which the notation of this evidently monophonic work required up to four staves at once.
In the early 1980s Ferneyhough worked at IRCAM, researching the possibilities of instrument-computer interactivity, with few concrete compositional results. His concern for confronting the history of notational and performance praxis continued in the 1980s in scores such as Lemma-Icon-Epigram for solo piano (1981), the Carceri d'invenzione series (through 1987), La chute d'Icare, and String Quartets 2-4. Important pieces in the 1990s include On Stellar Magnitudes for mezzo-soprano and five instruments (1994), Allgebrah for oboe and nine solo strings (1990-1996), Masons noires (1992-1998), and a Carnegie Hall commission for pianist Maurizio Pollini, The Doctrine of Similarity, premiered in March 2000. ~ Robert Kirzinger, All Music Guide
Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (pronounced /ˈfɜr.nihoʊ/[1][2], born 16 January 1943 in Coventry) is an Englishcomposer of contemporary classical music. His complex, multi-layered music is distinctive and his output spans many genres of contemporary music, from chamber works to orchestral pieces.
He received formal musical training at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music from 1966–67 where his teachers included Lennox Berkeley, a respected teacher though a conservative figure who preferred the works of French impressionism to the internationalist avant garde.[3] Ferneyhough was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1968 and moved to mainland Europe to study with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam, and later with Klaus Huber in Basel. Between 1973 and 1986 he taught composition at the Staatliche Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany.
His profile rose in the middle of the 1970s, as the Royan Festival of 1974 saw the premiere of Cassandra's Dream Song, the first of several pieces for solo flute, as well as Missa Brevis, written for 12 singers. In 1975, performances of his opera Transit and Time and Motion Study III were given; the former piece being awarded a Koussevitzky prize, the latter performed at the prestigious Donaueschingen festival. In many of these events he was twinned with fellow British composer, Michael Finnissy, whom he became friends with during his student days.[4] In 1984 he was given the title Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[5]
Between 1987 and 1999 he was Professor of Music at the University of California at San Diego. As of 1999, he is William H. Bonsall Professor in Music at Stanford University. For the 2007–08 academic year, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Harvard University Department of Music. Between 1978 and 1994 Ferneyhough was a composition lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and, since 1990, has directed an annual mastercourse at the Fondation Royaumont in France.
Coincidentally, he was born on the same day as another prominent English composer, Gavin Bryars.
Works
Ferneyhough's initial forays into composition were met with little sympathy in England. His submission of Coloratura to the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) in 1966 was returned, with a suggestion that the oboe part should be scored for clarinet. However, whilst Ferneyhough did find it hard, one source of support came from Hans Swarsenski who saw the same thing happen to Cornelius Cardew; Cardew enjoyed a prestigious continental reputation, but a poor one in his homeland. Swarsenski said of Ferneyhough: 'I've taken on an English composer who is I think is enormously talented. If this doesn't work, this is the last time'. Ferneyhough continued to struggle, but the aforementioned Royan festival marked a breakthrough for Ferneyhough's career.[6]
From here, Ferneyhough became closely associated with the so-called New Complexity (indeed, he is often referred to as the "Father of New Complexity") school of composition, characterized by its extension of the modernist tendency towards formalization (particularly as in integral serialism)[citation needed]. Ferneyhough's actual compositional approach, however, rejects serialism and other "generative" methods of composing; he prefers instead to use systems only to create material and formal constraints, while their realisation appears to be more spontaneous[7]. Unlike many more formally-inclined composers, Ferneyhough often speaks of his music as being about creating energy and excitement rather than embodying an abstract schema. His pieces rarely use 12-note rows, but do include microtones and frequent use of glissando.
His scores make huge technical demands on performers; sometimes, as in the case of Unity Capsule for solo flute, creating parts that are so detailed they are likely impossible to realize completely. As he acknowledges,[citation needed] numerous performers[weasel words] have refused to take his works into their repertoire because of the great commitment required to learn them and a perception that similar effects can be achieved through improvisation. The compositions have, however, attracted a number of advocates, among them the Arditti Quartet, ELISION Ensemble, Nicolas Hodges, the members of the Nieuw Ensemble, and EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble.
Recently, he has started writing works which allude to past composers; his Dum transisset are based on Elizabethan composer Christopher Tye's works for viol. In addition, the fourth string quartet references Schönberg. One of his latest works, an opera, Shadowtime, with a libretto by Charles Bernstein, and based on the life of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, was premiered in Munich on 25 May 2004, and recorded in 2005 for CD release in 2006.
Carceri d'Invenzione I for fl,ob,2cl,bn, hn,tpt,trb,euphonium, 1perc, pf, 2vn,va,vc,db [1121, 1111.2111] (1982) (score sample)
(inspired by the "Carceri d'Invenzione by Giambattista Piranesi).
