The 29+ Brian Ferneyhough Quotes

I Dont See Lines Of Force As Being Destructive, Except To The Extent That They Are Exclusively Traceable Through Observance Of The Path Of Distorted Material Left In Their Wake.

In My Own Recent String Trio I Attempt To Superimpose Two Quite Different Sets Of Formal Strategies, Both Of Which, Ultimately, Refer Back To Historical Precedent.

Actually, Most Things I Say In Public Lead More Or Less Directly To My Own Compositional Practice, So I Should Be Careful About Generalizing Lest They Come Back To Haunt Me.

It Is Still True That It Is Easier To Compose A Poem In The Form Of A Manual For Adjusting A Vcr Than It Is To Write A Piece Using Just Tuning As A Symphony.

This Was Possible Only By Dint Of Extended Periods Of Frequently Quite Painful Reflection And Digestion.

So: We're All Tired. Now What? Manuscripts Written In Club Med?

The Idea Of 'machine Assemblage' Is, Especially, Very Alien To My Sensibility, Since It Suggests A Relative Indifference Of The Strata To One Another During The Process Of Construction.

Hence My Obstinate Emphasis On Stylistic Continuity From Work To Work Rather Than Specific Sibling Relationships Between The Individual Work And Other Members Of Its Stylistic 'family' In The World Outside.

I Frequently Compose Out The Entire Metric Structure Of A Piece In Modified Cyclic Form, Where Each Cyclic Revolution Undergoes Some Form Of 'variation' Much As If Measure Lengths Were Concrete Musical 'material.'

The Past Nine Years In San Diego Have Represented Such A Period Of Questioning.

I Suppose That The Scope And Implications Of Such Forces Have Rendered My Personal Accounting Ritual Pretty Much Obsolete. That's How Things Sometimes Go.

Certainly Being In California Has Encouraged A Sustained Commitment To Rethinking The Nature, Purposes, And Relevance Of The Contemporary Arts, Specifically Music, For A Society Which By And Large Seems To Manage Quite Well Without Them.