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Quote by Brian Ferneyhough

“If nothing is at risk, nothing is established.”

Quote by Brian Ferneyhough

Author

Brian Ferneyhough

Brian Ferneyhough, born on January 16, 1943, is a renowned composer. His works are known for their complex structures and innovative use of modern musical technology, having a profound impact on the contemporary music scene. more

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“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.”

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“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.”

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“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.”

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“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.”

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

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“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.”

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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.”

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“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.”

Doe Seems Might Form Creation Expression Notion Currents Arguing Sensibility Exhaustion Prerequisites

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“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.”

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“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.”

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