Brian Ferneyhough Quotes

• In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really about.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Important, Individual, Arise

  9 Copy quote

• The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Musical, Accumulation, Ruling

  8 Copy quote

• When I speak of "cycles," I am referring to lengthy intervals of relative homogeneity, if not in the resolving of problems, than at least with respect to the consistency of their capacity to productively irritate.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Consistency, Irritated, Problem

  9 Copy quote

• I don't like listening to my music, not even new pieces. Generally, they sound pretty much like I expected them to sound, so it's what I wanted, and that's it.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Listening, Sound, Pieces

  4 Copy quote

• Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Space, Entering, Criteria

  8 Copy quote

• Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Views, Sometimes, Lost

  8 Copy quote

• If nothing is at risk, nothing is established.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Risk, Ifs

  5 Copy quote

• In any case, the fewer boundaries that exist hindering free movement between all forms of articulate human cognition, the better.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Cognition, Movement, Boundaries

  24 Copy quote

• If the work of art is to continue pursuing the vision of both being in and of the world but nevertheless in some fashion being more than just one more object to the mounting clutter, this is the specific point, I think, where this must be assured.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Fashion, Art, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• When I left Europe in 1987 I did so with the thought that my relevance as a composition teacher would benefit from a certain cool distance to certain tendencies I had been observing for several years with increasing disquiet.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Teacher, Distance, Years

  4 Copy quote

• I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Philosophy, Students, Youth

  6 Copy quote

• There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Art, Point Break, Limits

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• 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.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Writing, Symphony, Vcr

  8 Copy quote

• This was possible only by dint of extended periods of frequently quite painful reflection and digestion.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Pain, Reflection, Digestion

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Two, Historical, Trios

  7 Copy quote

• By reason of weird translation, many such sets of instructions read like poems anyhow.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Reason, Instruction, Translations

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Lines, Path, Force

  7 Copy quote

• What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Years, Innovation, Quality

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Practice, Should, Be Careful

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• Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Sea, Events, Enough

  66 Copy quote

• As a necessary prerequisite to the creation of new forms of expression one might, I suppose, argue that current sensibilities respond uniquely to the notion of exhaustion as exhaustion, although that does de facto seem rather limiting.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Expression, Might, Doe

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• Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Arguing, Century, Composer

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Art, Commitment, California

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Sometimes, Obsolete, Scope

  8 Copy quote

• The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning.

  Brian Ferneyhough

  Past, Years, San Diego

  52 Copy quote

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