Brian Ferneyhough's String Quartets
- Submitting institution
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Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 2540943
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1080/07494467.2014.975545
- Title of journal
- Contemporary Music Review
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 290
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 3
- ISSN
- 1477-2256
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The string quartet has a rich history as a genre, as one of the most expressive and intellectually refined forms of musical discourse. This article explores Brian Ferneyhough’s approach to the quartet, drawing on his sketch materials to inform an appraisal of the development of his quartet style over several decades. The quartets are contextualised both in relation to historical exemplars (e.g. Beethoven, Schoenberg) and contemporaneous music (Carter, Ligeti), as well as to wider stylistic trends in Ferneyhough’s output. I also draw on theoretical perspectives important to the composer, including the relationship between his Fourth Quartet, language, music and Arnold Schoenberg’s own quartet with soprano.
Ferneyhough’s approach to the notion of musical gesture, and expression in the medium of the quartet are central to the article. I also explore the ways in which the composer plays with the very particular interrelationship between the four instruments in the ensemble - how he variously explores soloistic textures and, elsewhere, a ‘superinstrument’ in four parts.
One of the significant contributions of this research is to examine the complex pre-compositional work and the multiplex processes that sit beneath the musical surface in Ferneyhough’s music. My analysis refers to Ferneyhough’s unpublished sketch materials, which I spent time examining at the Sacher Stiftung in Basel, and such source study is often the only way to reveal underlying processes in the music that are so deeply embedded, obscured and filtered as to be impossible to ascertain from score analysis alone.
It seems that the more Ferneyhough became confident in the genre, the greater the distinction between the directness of gestural expression and the complex processes locked deep in the recesses of the pre-compositional material. In this respect, the quartets represent, in microcosm, wider trends observable in Ferneyhough’s oeuvre.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -