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 Copy Share Image
I frequently compose out the entire metric structure of a piece in modified cyclic form, where each cyclic revolution undergoes some form of 'variation' much as if measure lengths were concrete musical 'material.' — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view. — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries. — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
I don't see 'lines of force' as being destructive, except to the extent that they are exclusively traceable through observance of the path of… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning. — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain… — Brian Ferneyhough Copy Share Image
