4/11/20

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Brian Ferneyhough (1943- )

Today’s selection just might be the weirdest sounding piece I have selected so far. British composer Brian Ferneyhough composed today’s piece, Mnemosyne, in 1986, which comes at the end of his time teaching composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany and just before he would move to California. The piece, which is written for bass flute and prerecorded tape (and is about 10-11 minutes long), is not one of Ferneyhough’s most famous works, but I find it to be a staple piece in showcasing his style of composition. This style is often referred to as “New Complexity” and it started to develop among composers in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Listening to even just a single minute of Mnemosyne could probably give you a good picture of why the style is called “New Complexity,” but I’d like to go further than that and explore what it is and why composers write music in this style.

New complexity is a style of composition where the music is meant to explore just how complex and technically demanding a piece can be. This is not inherently connected to serialism, which is a style developed primarily by Arnold Schoenberg where all aspects of the music (dynamics, pitch content, rhythm, etc.) are controlled by mathematical patterns and procedures in an effort to give structure to atonal music. Brian Ferneyhough did compose serialist music for some time, which likely acted as a starting point for his style to morph into what would eventually be called new complexity. So to define some characteristics of new complexity, let’s look at Mnemosyne - the pitch content includes equal tempered microtones as well as pitch bends, the extended techniques include flutter tonguing, slap tonguing, and key clicks, and the rhythms are so complicated they often have to be noted on three different staves (for just one performer). Even in a single page, there are a seemingly countless amount of things to unpack from that list (or in the constantly changing time signature, or the dynamics over most notes, etc.) before you understand everything that is going on. Even visually, there is something to be said about how ornate and complex the score of this piece is, with some of it resembling the hand-drawn scores of composers like George Crumb. Sure, some of it may just be ‘random,’ but that chaos is part of the aesthetic of new complexity composers.

This brings us to the question of why this exists at all. In music, I often think it is helpful to consider the three parties involved in any composition (and while this over-simplifies the situation quite a bit, it can often be a logical place to start): the composer, the performer, and the audience. Any and all music written exists (usually) to satisfy at least one of those three parties. With new complexity pieces, there is certainly some fun being had on the part of the composer, as Ferneyhough pushes the limit of what is even legible. Plus, it would be hard to find someone doing something similar and not being invested in the time it takes to create it (as evident by his scores being written very neatly by hand). Secondly, we must consider the performer of such a piece. While there are certainly a number of flutists who upon trying to learn this piece will end up shouting numerous obscenities and cursing their instrument, professor, Ferneyhough himself, and even their line of work completely, we must also consider those flutists who crave a challenge unlike anything J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, or Francis Poulenc can offer them. This likely plays into the same performers of Luciano Berio’s Sequenzas, who are probably contemporary musicians looking for a piece that will challenge them and showcase their own unique and modern virtuosity. Finally, this brings us to the audience. This group is perhaps the least important to consider - not because I would say that people listening to music (like this piece) is unimportant, but instead because an audience will find the piece. Be it incredibly skilled flutists, professors of flute or composition, anyone with a taste for strange and unique contemporary music, or goofy young composers from Milwaukee, those people exist and those people (for whatever reason they may have) will find such music and perpetuate it by performing it, sharing it, and commissioning composers for it.

In one final thought, I would like to continue the conversation which I started in my posts about Olivier Messiaen and Krzysztof Penderecki. In those posts I mentioned that there are no expectations on you as a listener and that it can be helpful to consider that a composer (Ferneyhough in this case) thought it was worthwhile and had the resolve to bring this piece into existence. Those two points are ideas which I think are important to remember in approaching music that seems foreign and beyond appreciation because of their place in the academic world of music. Essentially, I mean to say that you do not have to know anything as a listener to enjoy this music, as enjoyment is internal and organic. Furthermore, if you are struggling to enjoy the music but you want to give it a chance, consider why composers like Ferneyhough write music that sounds like Mnemosyne. Then, if you like a piece, consider taking the time to learn more about the composer and explore other music that might be similar. After all, I fell in love with this piece not just because the score is visually stunning or that the technical aspects are so precise, but also because I can step back and enjoy the otherworldly, hauntingly beautiful sound of the piece. Below I have linked a score video of Mnemosyne, performed by Matteo Cesari. Even to the musicians reading this, I wish you the best of luck following the score.