Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Ferneyhough at Miller Theater

There is something deeply extravagant about the hyper-complex music of Brian Ferneyhough: he is not the sort of composer who writes five notes when five hundred will do the same thing. Last Friday Ferneyhough�s most extravagant work, the Piranesi-inspired cycle "Carceri d�Invenzione" ("Dungeons of Invention"), received its US premiere at Miller Theater. On stage and off, people were working hard: musicians struggled to weave their way through a barrage of notes while the audience did its best to be patient and appreciative. Were the results worth all the effort?

In a genial pre-concert discussion, Ferneyhough expressed his fascination with art that pushes "beyond its frames." This is a good phrase to keep in mind while experiencing his music. Without careful listening, it amounts to little more than relentless cacophony: one piece after another presents prolonged, overstuffed, polyphonic thickets of sound. The rhythms keep changing, the techniques keep changing, the colors keep changing � nothing holds still. During the concert, different similes for listening to Ferneyhough kept coming to mind: it�s like trying to stay on a bucking bronco, or being stuck in a room with birds flying around you, an occasional wing slapping your face. Ferneyhough is famous for stuffing more music into his measures than musicians can play, and, for the audience, he stuffs his works with more sound than one can intelligently listen to. His is music that pushes well beyond the frames of the medium.

I can�t think of another living composer so taxing to listen to. Yet if you can stick with him, you realize Ferneyhough is a more sensitive composer than at first he might seem. The overarching structure of "Carceri d�Invenzione" is very satisfying. The seven movement work, which is scored for various large and small combinations of instruments, opens with a hysterical, screaming solo movement for piccolo and concludes with a more reflective solo for bass flute playing against a ghostly chorus of pre-recorded bass flutes. This last movement, entitled "Mnemosyne," comes as a wonderful resolution to the penultimate movement, "Carceri d��Invenzione III," which is one of the cycle�s most riotous and bruising. The fourth and fifth movements, "Carceri d�Invenzione II" and "Etudes Transcendantales/Intermedio II" respectively, conclude with flittering gestures separated by long silences. These silences were absolutely precious and among the most beautiful things I�ve heard all year. Elsewhere, particularly in the second movement "Carceri d�Invenzione I," Ferneyhough pits faster and slower textures against one another, and the terrific effect is like hearing a cadenza and a chorale played simultaneously. He also has a sharp sense of when to vary the size of the ensemble: within movements, he can be big and small.

I came away with enormous respect for Ferneyhough, but, as with "Decasia" last fall, I had to admit to myself that, despite all the hullabaloo, I hadn�t felt much. Sure "Carceri d�Invenzione" has spectacular moments, but, at almost two hours, my ears grew extremely fatigued, and whole passages devolved into monotony. My ears grew tired of fighting for a thread to hold on to. I began to yearn for such old fashioned essentials as harmony and melody. Ferneyhough�s experimentalism began to feel more absurd and sadistic as the evening wore on. One of the performers confessed to me at intermission that he would never chose to play this music himself.

Was it worth the effort? Probably not. But Ferneyhough intrigues me nonetheless, and I�ll be there at the Lincoln Center Festival this summer for the premiere of his opera "Shadowtime." Meanwhile, though, I�m not sure how much Ferneyhough I�ll be listening to: a little goes a long, long way.

posted by David Salvage 4/24/2005