Brian Ferneyhough's Lemma Icon Epigram

Brian Ferneyhough's Lemma-Icon-Epigram Author(s): Richard Toop Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 52-100 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833008 . Accessed: 03/06/2011 03:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pnm. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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].

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BRIANFERNEYHOUGH'S M MMA-ICON-EPIGRA

RICHARD TOOP forCecilie,Michael,and Paul

ASK why it is that one decides to analysea particular contemporary work, and what one hopes to prove in the process of doing so. Although there are certain general answers one can give that cover the majority of cases, I personally tend to attach more value to particularmotivations, which may vary from one analysisto the next. As faras Brian Ferneyhough'sLemma-Icon-Epigram was concerned, I suppose I could list three principalmotivating factors:

PEOPLE SOMETIMES

1. My initial excitement on hearing the work in a performance by MassimilianoDamerini (a recording from the 1981 Venice Biennale),

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

53

reinforcedby hearing an even more impressivestudio performanceby James Avery, and my growing (and now, I think, unshakeable)conviction that this is one of the few great solo piano works of the second half of the twentieth century; 2. The discovery that my excitement was shared by many other people: by friends, performers, and composers (not mutually exclusive categories!); 3. The fact that the composer was kind enough to give me copies of extensive sketches for the work. The last consideration was frankly crucial. My own primary interest in analysisis as a means of reconstructing the creativeprocess: of showing not just how a thing is done, but why. With composers like Boulez or Stockhausen it is often possible-though not really desirable-to do this without recourse to sketches; with Ferneyhough, for reasons that will become apparent, I believe this not to be the case. For him the creative process is not a predetermined path, but a labyrinth, and the completed work is, in a sense, an arbitraryby-product of that labyrinth, to the extent that there is nothing predestined or predeterminedabout the outcome of any particular moment in it: each moment is, rather, the inspired momentary response to a given set of constraints-in each case, other solutions, equally compelling, would have been thinkable. And yet, of course, there is a final outcome, a "definitive score"-however superficialthat "definitiveness" may be-and it is with that published score that this analysisis ultimately concerned: with giving some idea of what it is, and what lies behind and around it. Another, less creditable motivation should also be admitted to: for the analyst, as for the performer, Ferneyhough's work is a sort of Himalayan peak inviting and resistingconquest. Inevitably,a certain Narcissism, and a certain desire to be seen, accompaniesany projected assault on this peak. The mitigating ethical factor is the certainty of failure (more acute for the analyst than the performer):one knows-even if no one else perceives ithow often what is said is merely a coverup for what one was unable to say. A final caution is due. In view of the fascinationwhich Ferneyhough's music holds for many young composers, it should be emphasized that, even at its most precise, there is no respect in which this analysiswill teach the reader "how to compose like Ferneyhough." It will have achieved some modest success if it demonstrates that the only way to compose like Ferneyhough is to be Ferneyhough. What it offers is, perhaps, an ethical model ratherthan a compositional one. For the rest, since the score of Lemma-Icon-Epigram is headed by a quotation from Baudelaire-"Tout est hieroglyphique"-I shall appropriate four more lines from that poet to denote, in advance, the limitations of what follows:

of NewMusic Perspectives

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Et l'harmonie est trop exquise, Qui gouverne tout son beau corps, Pour que l'impuissante analyse En note les nombreux accords. Nevertheless, I shall try.

a fourteen-minute work for solo piano, was comLemma-Icon-Epigram, in 1981. June pleted Astonishingly, MassimilianoDamerini was able to give the first performance later that month, at the La Rochelle Festival. In a brief preface to the published score,1 Ferneyhough explains the tripartite form as follows: The title of this work refersto a poetic form, the Emblema,developed most notably by the Italian poet Alciati during the first half of the sixteenth century. In general usage, the term is taken to mean an epigram which describes something so that it signifies something else. Later developments distinguish three components: a superscription (or adage), an image, and a concluding epigramin which the preceding elements are commented upon or explained. In a note for the Venice Biennale, he continues this preface: The tripartite structure of this baroque concetto has been reflected in the present composition, and serves as a vehicle for my present concern with the concept of musical "explication" in musical terms. The first section, essentiallylinearin character,separatesout surfacegesture and subcutaneous generationalstrategy almost entirely, resulting in a vertiginous flight away from the centre, a de-condensation of material, which constitutes itself in the act of attempting to prevent its elements from disappearing over the edge of discourse. The second section imposes an "aesthetics of will" upon essentiallystatic chordal material which makes several attempts, in vain, to escape its given frame. It reacts as a brittle carapace,reflecting back to its constituents through the mirror of themselves. The concluding part begins during the final decay of the second (polymetrics) and begins to assemble a practiceof theory around the isolated positions of previous sections: the compositional/transformationaltechniques of Part I (themselves the "material") and the sonic identities of Part II are forced to confront one another in a short explosionof reconstitution,thereafter fading into silence, or turning back obsessively into themselves, perhaps suggesting the ultimately tautological nature of resolution.2

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

55

Le style est l'homme: Ferneyhough's telegraphically condensed literary matter is the natural counterpart of his compositional style. The specific details of his introduction will be discussed below in the context of those to which they refer. But the mere word parts of Lemma-Icon-Epigram "literary" gives rise to immediate reflection: in passagessuch as the above, not only the notion of "discourse," but the entire approachto formal and aesthetic considerations may seem strange to the conventionally trained musician (for whom the convention is that he trains onlyas a musician ...). Yet such an exposition would be entirely natural within the framework of the nouveauroman, from Butor and Robbe-Grillet onwards. One should resist drawing from this the conclusion that Ferneyhough is a "literary" composer (as distinct from a literate one, which is certainly the case). For on the contrary, it is precisely the nouveauromancierswho have acknowledged the analogies between their ideals and those of the post-war European serialists. A particularlystriking parallel with aspects, at least, of Ferneyhough's work is provided by a novel like Robbe-Grillet'sDans le labyrinthe,of which the author has written: ... quand un livre commence, il n'y a rien. Puis quelque chose commence a etre, et puis des choses sont, et puis les choses se defont et, de nouveau, il n'y a plus rien.... Pour le Labyrinthe,c'est une cellule generatrice qu'il y a un depart... (et) qui m'apparaitd'autant plus comme generatrice que j'ai ecrit cette phrase sans avoir aucun projet de ce viendraitensuite de point de vue diegetique.3 A similar "generative cell" opens Lemma-Icon-Epigram; Ferneyhough says of it merely: "The piece has to start with somematerial, but it could have started with others; I simply wrote down a set of notes without thinking about them at all, and said, I will work with these. That's how the piece begins."4 Many other comparisonswith Robbe-Grilletspring to mind: the transformationof given materialby systematically"wiping it out" (a "coup de chiffon"); the dizzying succession of perspectiveson the same material, which Robbe-Grillet callsglissements,and which Ferneyhough accounts for as follows "... whereas in most variation techniques you keep the same basic structure while changing the surface, the variation techniques which interest me are those where you keep the same basic surface, but you change the techniques to produce it. I'm interested in the idea of variation of technique ratherthan of object."5 A final point of comparison also leads to a parting of ways: in later writings, Robbe-Grillet emphasizes the idea of the ludicnovel-the novel as game, as "play"; similarly,Ferneyhough says: "I'm very interested in the idea of ingenio,the idea of intellectual, playfulconstructivity-homo ludensconfronting head-on, with a massive crash, a great intensity of creative

56

of NewMusic Perspectives

drive."6 It is this head-on confrontation, the reassertion of the transcendental aims of art, that leads Ferneyhough back to something more like a surrealistaesthetic, even to Andre Breton's dictum: "La beaute sera convulsive, ou ne sera pas." And indeed, going back a little further, a passage from one of Tristan Tzara's Dada manifestos reads almost like a playdoyer for Ferneyhough (though, arguably, there is scarcely a single important living composer further removed from Dada or neo-Dada): Every page should explode, either because of its profound gravity, or its vortex, vertigo, newness, eternity, or because of its staggering absurdity,the enthusiasm of its principles, or its typography.7 For me, every page of Lemma-Icon-Epigram does indeed "explode": for what reasons, and by what means, I shall now try to demonstrate.

In looking at the first bars of the work, one should at least try to minimize the role of hindsight. In the event, the opening burst of eleven notes will have an enormous influence on the subsequent course of the piece; but as the sketches show, at the moment they were written down the composer had only a vague idea of their ultimate import. They were simply "material," or even "anti-material": The first part of the piece is this whirlwind of the not-yet-become, the idea of processes, not material, forming the thematic content of the work. So apart from the quite banal initial material, which we don't even know is "initial material," the whole thing is in a whirlwind of dissolution even before it has been created.8 But what does "banal" mean in this context? Not that one has heard such materialalreadya thousand times, and in so many contexts that its potential is immediately perceived as exhausted. On the contrary,its "banality," such as it is, lies only in the fact that, being a putative "initial material,"it is as yet uninterpreted: it has to stand as a proposition in its own right, without the secondary significanceof being a transformationof something which existed earlierin the piece. And even this is only selectively true: for arguably, the opening line bears the entire weight of Ferneyhough's previous compositional experience. He says, "I simply wrote down a set of notes without thinking about them at all"; but given the inner logic of the opening sequence (Example 1), that's a little hard to believe. Whether by design or not, the materialcould scarcelybe more concise: it involves only two motivic patterns, the second of which (B) is simply the reduction if the first (A) to scalar form (Example 2). Ferneyhough at least admits to the

57

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

A

A'

i#1

h 3

B

;-

1

2

1

3

#e '

1

B

2

1

3

A EXAMPLE 1

." w.4. 6__- )4

l.

6.

(A)

(B) EXAMPLE 2

intentional "discursiveness" of this opening flourish: its actual exposition in the first line of the piece is a miniature glossary of the composer's "discursive" processes (see Example 3). -/- -/--

pitch:----

(--)

X

Xe

f3

fe

JcaCL.so J

e l J) kwi2

t

A

-

register:---

I

I

O.

A_b4' =

If0-

E~

re

(1O mak ------'- (q):0-

(f )

-

-

/-I - /-- T/i-(-) II T-lI/ I - /- t

f o--

#&

X

#1-#,===

-=tr

I

/b. t/(--)

- -

EXAMPLE 3

Complex as this opening passage is, it sits well under strong fingers. Ferneyhough says, "I don't normally write for keyboard very happily," which is one reason for his "using techniques of gestural definition generally accepted as being pianistic in one sense or another"; another is that, wishing to set in motion a "discursive dynamism of action," he saw the necessity of "not limiting myself to strict generational procedures." In other words, the complexities of this opening bar are not the result of an a priori system, but of Ferneyhough's systematic instincts flexing their muscles at the first opportunity.

of NewMusic Perspectives

58

So what concrete form do these instincts towards systematization take? In effect, transformationhad begun well before the end of the first phrase. A simple transformationtable (Example4) is applied initially only to octave registers: certain notes are placed visibly and audibly above or below the "reference octave." In the third group of the first bar, it is also used to modify the pitch structure-initially by a semitone (the first interval of the basic pitch sequence), and soon after by a minor third (the second interval of the series).

~- -

(no alteration)

-I

-

(1 down)

-

t

(1 up)

l -

_

(1 down)

-

T

T

(2 up)

l

-

(2 down)

-

I

(1 up, 1 down) etc.

t

t

EXAMPLE 4

The rhythmic structure, though "unsystematic," is very characteristic. The opening figure of eleven notes is curtailedto ten in the two subsequent phrases (omission of the last note), with a reduction of 12:11:10 in the subdivision of the basic P units (the additional ) in the 7/16 bar is a sixteenth-note rest after the first phrase). The initial phrase consists 12 s; the two of regular remaining phrases are classic examples of of notions "figural enhancement" and "axiality" (see Ferneyhough's Example 5). 12

-I-3-IJ

pp

fffef

mpisft

i---6---

p -=

10

1

11

i

5

mp >ppp

sub.

bsp

EXAMPLE 5

Figuralenhancementis the process by which (in the simplest instance) a periodic figure gains "profile" by breakingup its periodicity-by momen-

59

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

tary accelerations,retardationsor pauses. Thus the ten attacksin the second 3 + 1 , + 4 ,. . The related notion phrase consist of 2 , + 3 , of axiality divides the latter two groups into parts: the second phrase 3 ) and five that decelerate consists of five notes which accelerate( ( , -,+ . ), while the third phrase not only moves from , 5 to J6 , but marks the midpoint by rests. At the same time, this axiality is broken up by the dynamics and articulation. The first phrase has a single legato articulation and a single dynamic process (crescendo); the second phrase has two legato phrases and two dynamic envelopes, both of which stray across into the third phrase, where the alternation of dynamic level and articulationtypes (staccato, martellato, legato) becomes faster still. This kind of detailed description may seem excessive, but it's simply a chronicle of the way the composer thinks about his material:even before a system as such exists, material is shaped in an enormously conscious manner, and in the idealistic hope that a listener will follow, overtly or subliminally,every nuance: "I did indeed begin ratherplatitudinouslyhere, with this deliberate octave redisposition of material to make very clear to the listener the sort of thing I'm trying to do, and to establish a spectral field, which gives a certain plausibility to the concept of coherence which will later be destroyed."9 The opening bar introduces three types of transformation: the octave displacement of notes, the displacement of those displacements (in the second phrase), and the displacementof pitches. The following bars (Example 6) bring more transformations:minor-third displacementsformed into chords, and a kind of "filtering" effected by means which will be described below. .,,)

tn)

I

#i-

e

N5

1t6

ffm' ^*J

sAs \?

C-f-+ 8

T

X

P

2

f-

s==rr inf

z= ~

1.

J II

sf ffI-f

LW', , bra

EC. ora*

w

#

., ^E?T

e

. '

ffl EXAMPLE 6

In bar 2, the T I pitch alteration system is now applied to the second interval of the initial series: the minor third. The process begins with the fourth line of the table, with the results shown in Example 7. Note that in

Perspectivesof New Music

60

the actual score, the top note at the beginning of bar 2 is not an Al (as prescribed by the system, and written in the sketches) but a CO;this is presumably not a misprint, but a correction to ensure that every transformation starts on Ct, just as in the next set of transformationseach will start on C4. (the pitches at the end of bar 1) modified by: produce: i

I

t?t

-

-/-

'

/

T T/T '

I -/? #^

, -

(bar2)

EXAMPLE 7

The third bar, despite its relativesimplicity, is achieved by more obscure means. In the sketches, Ferneyhough refersto it as "transposing all pitches by the intervals of the original series in retrograde," and the process involved appears to be this: The interval sequence of the opening figure (Example 8) is modified by the interval sequence 1-2-1-2-1 semitones, from the end of the fourteen-note sequence. (Although the opening pitch sequence is of only eleven notes, Ferneyhough works from the start with an interval series of fourteen notes, which is the same as the eleven-note one but with 1-2-1 added.) There is a complicating factor: each new step is taken not in terms of the original pitch sequence, but in terms of whatever pitch has been reached at the end of the previous step. This is shown schematicallyin Example9.

1

?

-4"

WE

(1-3-1-2-1)

EXAMPLE 8

14

modified by 1Tyields

& 1T

T '

3cJ e

0

1

' *' . I Q,i.i. tt*h.

* ^ t

#*

modified by 2T yields modified by It yields etc. EXAMPLE 9

iQ

i. i.t

1h b

-4

61

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

A simpler application of the original series in retrograde occurs at the beginning of bar 5, where the entire interval sequence is run backwards starting on C (see Example 10). Here, clearly,we have returned to both the figuration and the proceduresof the opening. In fact, the first phraseof the piece is, in a sense, completed at the end of bar 3, when the initial five transformationtypes have been introduced. It is at this stage that the first real formal decision is made. Ferneyhough decides to keep five types in play at a time, continually permutatingtheir order. At the same time, he needs a pretext to introduce new transformation types (the early sketches soon reach a total of eight or nine). The means by which this is achieved relates back, once again, to the opening pitch sequence. 3 12131

intervals: (12)12131

pi

sf

(?^

^~

(ITIT3~)

~~_

^

-P

IL

^

^ m

.).

^ AAA

,,

* ,

_ 4> g, f

!lt I

^w

r~nt ?n~C~rc~~P

*

-.

m.

fff

-x-l

~C|

>

v

J

_

6

m ?Pnf

I

I

Sf

-

,?.'

f

C

1z

EXAMPLE 10

Given five basic types 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, one takes each interval (in semitones) from the series, and applies it as places moving backwards(Example 11). When, as inevitably happens after a couple of lines, the same number recurs in the same line (e.g. 5 41 3 4), the element associatedwith that number is replaced by a new element; by the end of the Lemma section, twelve different types of material-transformationhave been brought into play. Types:

1

[2

[3

4 [] I]

2

3 []

t(p

tI (

to t?

to

Result: 41 5 3 2 EXAMPLE 11

5 Intervalsequence 13 121 etc.

appliedrightto left

62

of NewMusic Perspectives

A broader formal strategy for Lemmais provided by what Ferneyhough calls "a bar period variationalscheme"; in previous works he had usually worked with conscious bar lengths, but Lemma-Icon-Epigram is his first work to use what is, in effect, a sequence of systematicallyvaried metric cycles. In this case, there is a basic "period" or "cycle" of sixteen bars, subjected in each new cycle to retrogradingand augmentation. The structure of these cycles is shown in Example 12. Since, by the fourth cycle, the distinction between bar lengths has been somewhat ironed out by the augmentation process, Ferneyhough decides to subdivide most of the bars (always in unequal proportions), as in Example 13 (the final score adds two "echo bars" and makes various other modifications at the end). A fifth cycle begins halfway through page 12 of the printed score, broken into after a few bars by a "Tower of Babel" section, in which all twelve types of transformationused in the piece thus far tumble over one another in a furious quasi-cadenza. But what, let's ask for a moment, is the function of these cycles, since as Ferneyhough says, they are "over and beyond any variationof the material, or relation of sections to one another"? It's a question that goes to the very heart of his compositional method. Refuting the widespreadnotion that he is an "ultra-systematiccomposer," he says: I think the use of any structure is ... to enable one to have a framework within which one can meaningfully work at any given moment ... it is a state of affairsat any given moment, and if you have worked the systems properly, then you have left yourself enough freedom to be able to react in a totally individual, and spontaneously significant fashion. Structures for me are not there to produce material; they're there to restrict the situation in which I have to compose. 0 This in itself does not go much beyond a conventional view (Stravinsky's, for example) of the interdependence of freedom and restriction in the creation of art. But Ferneyhough extends such notions to transcendentalist extremes, and does so as the logical outcome of his whole view of the creativeact: I believe very much that one has an unformed mass of creative volition. On the other hand, in order to realise the creative potential of this volition one needs to have something for it to react against. And therefore I try to set up one or more (usually many more) grids, or sieves, a system of continually moving sieves.... This fundamental, undifferentiatedmass of volition, of creativity,is necessarilyforced to subdivide itself in order to pass.11

lst cycle

7 16

5 16

reversed lus 15 Pl1 2nd C Cycle

8

16

9 16

4 8

16

2 8

3 8

4

2 8

16

7 16

3 8

4 8

7

5 8

3 8

8

9 16

3 8

5 16

4 8

2 8

3 16

16

5

2 8

16

8

16

8

16

11 16

4 8

7 16

5 8

5 16

3 8

9 16

4 8

5 16

9 16

5 8

7 16

3 8

11 16

4 8

9 16

6 8

9 16

11 16

4 8

9

7

5

reversed pI plus

=

3rd cycle reversed plus 1

4th cycle

3 16

8

4

3

3 8

7 16

7

_

*(Echo bars) EXAMPLE 12

4 8

becomes

7 16

A 323251

5 8

3 8

9 16

A A

161616 88

16

5 8

7 16

A

,

332

168 EXAMPLE 13

3 8

A A 5

3

168 16

5

3

1 1616

of NewMusic Perspectives

64

In earlierworks, the surfacestructure of the work more or less coincided with the compositional structures that had generated them. But starting with the Second String Quartet, written immediately before Lemma-IconEpigram,the generatingprocesses start to move underground: In the works I have been writing recently ... the main object of the music has [been] ... to get into the real interstices of linguistic formulability.What is the space in which the work reallyexists?There is a vacuum that exists between the surface presentation ... and the subsurface generative structures. Now the extent to which these two things are separated allows the surface material to take on different degrees of auraticpresence.12 In the case of Lemma-Icon-Epigram, there is a particularmotivation for the separation of surface and substructure:it is basic to the conception of the Lemma section, in particular, that the constantly changing quasimotivic discourse should have an illusory quality: "it has a pseudodevelopmentalcharacter, whilst being in fact, non-developmental." It is precisely the accumulation of different ways of reformulating the same material, a sort of piling-up of sublime tautologies, that necessitates the final Towerof Babelsection, in which, as Ferneyhough notes in his sketches: The unity of the whole edifice collapses under the weight of the DIVERSIFICATION of grammars.At the same time, the vocabulary remains based upon the original "language," even if several steps removed. The gestures moreover remain constant, as does the continuity of surfacematerial. "Die Furie des Verschwindens": the form explodes into over-definition....

Since the materialof Lemmais constantly diversifying, constantly splitting itself up and regrouping into formations whose origins are often indecipherable, any summary of its procedures is bound to be arbitrary.In the following pages, I shall consider just a few of the more rudimentarypitch procedures found in the first three bar-cycles, and then look in slightly more detail at the fourth, which in some respects is the most obviously

"structured."

As far as pitch is concerned, some of the principal techniques-pitch displacementsby 1 to 3 semitones, transposition of an intervalsequence by its retrograde, and chord formation-have already been touched upon in relation to the first page of the piece. By the beginning of the second barcycle (the 3/8 bar in the third line of page 3), the initial interval sequence has already given rise to any number of new figures. Along with simple

65

Lemma-Icon-Epigram

transformationslike the inversion which opens the second cycle (Example 14) come new figures obtained by scalar arrangement of pitches, and wholesale use of interval expansion (Example 15, from the third bar of the second bar-cycle). 13121

EXAMPLE 14

3 2 3 2 4 2 (i.e. 212131,

moren=do

7I

with ladded

to each)

7

pOCO poco

":PA................-.--

J

EXAMPLE 15

By the end of the second bar-cycle (end of page 5 of the printed score), some of the methods of pitch derivation have become very complex. The reasonably innocent-looking passage in Example 16 is fairly typical. The (()o r';-8-" (

--'.

__

-

(.)

____

5>" .

_,

.tbentoI

(jn

r

)Sflj

EX^AMPLE 16

opening interval sequence, 1 3 1 2 1 3 1 and so forth, is irregularlymodified by the sequence itself, as shown in Example 17. The complete resulting sequence is given in Example 18. The numbers of the intervalsequence (2 3

66

of NewMusic Perspectives

t

-IIr

<

t

- .

-

-

"

-4

-K

4

5 6

2

E D

65 4 1 2 3 3 514 2

III1 V1

c

E D

c b

(

VI2 I2

C B

a c

together

5 1 2 3 4 2 4 5 1 6 3 5 2 1 4 3 6

V3 III2

D

ogether

II1

A

c d Ot( b

5 4 3 2 1 4 5 1 2 3 34512 2 3 4 5

IV2

B A E D

c c d c

4 independent

3 4 5

o" 10 11l

9 +

3

59

,12

,413

'14 15 8 16

II2

VII3 VI

- - - - -- - -- -- - - - - -

1,

24

4

10

1 3 5 1

21 22

654321 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6

23 >

+.4 .9+

2

2 1 4 2

3 5 3 3

4 2 2 4

C

- - - - - - - - - - -

17 .x + .x 18 . +' 5 19 20

5

VII V2

3 2 5 4 1 4 5 2 1 3

'4x

ogether

e d

I

x

8

a b

B A

x,-.x

819

12

VI IV1

12

3

Strand Type

123456 4 3 2 1 5 6

6 5 4 3 2 1

>6

7

Order of durations Chord

5 4 1 5

- - - -

VI2 V4 II II4

A B C D

d e d d

I3

E B A

c b c

V3 14

EXAMPLE 61

Dindependent

Epigwam overlap O

together

O

independent

95

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

Group 8:

fff ff

f mf

f p

9: 10: 11:

p

12:

ff.......................-----------------------

13:

15:

ff p pp

16:

pp

14:

MP

NA

f "fk mp 'MP ,f f p mp mIf ppp

-==-piuppp

f

p if, f pppp

EXAMPLE 62

Icon:

5 10

Lemma:

4 10

3 10

:7 :15 16 '16

'

2 8

1 6 32 10

: 8

.9 .16

7 10 :3 :8

:5 ... :16

EXAMPLE 63

It turns out that the entire bar-structureof Epigramis essentiallythat of the first two-bar period cycles of Lemma;the only substantialmodification is the permutation of the original order of the bars in the passagefollowing the overlap shown above (Example64: page 22 of the score). 4 Lemma:| 8 Epigram: 16

3 2 16 8 4 8

3

8

7 33 2 16 8 16 8 2

8

3

7

16 16

2

8

5 (end of first period) 16 5...

16

EXAMPLE 64

The 7/16 after the heavy line in the diagramis not only the only major departure from the bar-schemeof Lemma:it also marksa point of crisis in the composition of Epigram. Ferneyhough's original intention was that Epigramshould be an extended section in which the mercurialdiscourse of Lemma would be reconciled in some manner with the monolithic structuralism of Icon. A part of this program was that the pseudo-development and pseudo-imitations of the first part of the work would now become

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of NewMusic Perspectives

"real" development, and real imitations. But this situation could not be suddenly produced as a deusex machinaat the outset of Epigram:it had to be progressively"discovered." So Ferneyhough felt that "it was incumbent on me to adopt a procedure which would not allow me to find an easy answer via systems, and therefore I was working totally unsystematically here-I thought it was necessary."15After two weeks of intensive work that yielded only about six bars of music, he came to the conclusion that: my compositional desires simply didn't interlock with what I was theoreticallysetting out to do. After all this researchI had carriedout over the space of about eight months in producing the piece, I felt that this sort of motivic writing was really not a desirablething. And one reason why the Epigramturned out so short was that at a certain point the materialitselfdemandedto be redisposed in schematicallyblock-like entities. There is a convulsive 7/16 bar at the end of page 22, where so many lines of materialare crossing that I decided I simply wasn't going to carry out the scheme I had set for myself, that it was pointless to take this sort of materialany further. Becausein a way it was a personal confirmation for me of my distrust of the motivic-cellulardiversification principle.16 So from the "convulsive 7/16 bar" onwards, the actualprogramof Epigram is the progressive dissolution of its materials. Accidentally or otherwise, there are five principalmaterialsthat articulatethis dissolution: a. the Icon chords (disposed VII/VI-V/IV-III-II) b. "fantasies" on the chords c. dislocations of the chords between left and right hands d. silences/resonances e. linear/hexachordalmaterials The deployment of these materialsis allied to the bar structureas illustrated in Example65. So from that point on, I start bringing back my chords as a sort of prison-bar structure, and between the manifestations of the chords themselves I bring in little fantasieswhich present the chords in more linear fashion. Then at a certain point I begin breakingup the chords into two hands, so that the two parts of the chord move asynchronously, right in the middle of the keyboard. And this, I

2 8

5 16

2 8

5 13 15611 8 1

4

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(2)

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EXAMPLE

65

7 16

5 8

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think, builds up a tremendous power, because the hands are trying to disengage themselves from one another, and never quite make it, because they are pulled back in again.17

EXAMPLE 66

For me, this last part of the piece demonstrates quite well both the ultimate creative absurdity of the thematic-motivic foundations I was trying to investigate. ... And in fact at the end of the piece, we find that the very last three bars of the piece bring together the two complementary hexachords of what would have been basic twelvetone materialin a quite absurd manner: it reduces the whole thematic thing down to a basis.18 SecondHexachord J

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EXAMPLE 67

Wyhlen, June1981

Lemma-lcon-Epigram

99

It's a failure;I have to say this ... a failurein the sense that it does not find this via mediaof exegesis in the Epigrampart. But that for me was also a very important learning experience, which put me onto quite differenttracksof speculation that I think are bearing fruit now in this large-scalecycle [Carcerid'invenzione],where I have, right at the beginning, with a great deal of care, laid out the space within which it is meaningful to look for musical problems.19 Music needs more such failures....

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NOTES

1. Edition Peters No. 7233 (London: Hinrichsen Edition, Peters Edition, 1982). 2. Quoted from a draft in the composer's sketches. 3. Jean Ricardou, ColloqueRobbe-Grillet (Paris, 1976), vol. 2:77-78. 4. Richard Toop, "Brian Ferneyhough in Interview," Contactno. 29 (Spring 1985): 9. 5. Conversationwith the author. 6. Toop, 7. 7. Tristan Tzara, SevenDada Manifestosand Lampisteries,translated by BarbaraWright (London: Calder, 1977), 7. 8. Toop, 7. 9. Conversationwith the author. 10. Toop, 5. 11. Toop,5. 12. Toop, 13. 13. Conversationwith the author. 14. Conversationwith the author. 15. Conversationwith the author. 16. Toop, 10. 17. Toop, 10. 18. Toop, 10. 19. Toop, 10.