Confined walls of unity: The reciprocal relation between notation and methodological analysis in Brian Ferneyhough’s oeuvre for solo flute
Brian Ferneyhough wrote six challenging and complex pieces for flute solo: Cassandra’s Dream Song (1970), Unity Capsule (1975-1976), Superscriptio (1981), Carceri d’Invenzione IIb (1985-1986), Mnemosyne (1986) and Sisyphus Redux (2011). Besides understanding Ferneyhough’s compositional vocabulary, every piece also requires a different practicing method. This dissertation is a musical, interpretational, analytical and motivating guide for flutists who desire playing Ferneyhough’s oeuvre. After many years of practicing and researching these six pieces, I developed a performance practice method that may help aspiring flutists in the future while discovering this rich oeuvre.
Where Cassandra’s Dream Song is a modern and complex transcription of an ancient myth, Superscriptio is a mathematically complex fight against the nature of the piccolo. Sisyphus Redux holds a real risk of experiencing Camus’ ‘philosophy of the absurd’, while Carceri d’Invenzione IIb confronts both the performer and the audience with the limits of unbearably high and loud registers. Unity Capsule puts the performer to proof because of the extreme length of such a complex piece, while Mnemosyne transcends the limits of information in notated music.
This performance practice method includes mythological, philosophical, mathematical and musical analyses, as well as a technical explanation and instrumental tricks that will enlarge the performer’s creativity and freedom in interpreting this complex oeuvre.
Cassandra’s Dream Song – Let’s (not) talk about gender
In this lecture I’m describing a non-gender related interpretation of Cassandra’s Dream Song. This ground-breaking piece by Brian Ferneyhough has been an interesting discussion topic for decades now. In the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, the contemporary music scene was dominated by male performers. This trend is also obvious in the early interpretations of the piece: a mathematical and analytically ‘correct’ interpretation was to be aimed for.
In the 90’s, female performers claimed their own voice and the piece became the subject of a feminist movement.
Anno 2015, I think it is time for a more contemporary approach of the piece and music in general. I like to think of the Cassandra Complex as an ever changing global concept, adapted in many research fields.
Tomorrow’s music in practice today
As a researcher at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp – AP University College, it is my ambition to develop and document a general performance practice method for contemporary music, in order to make contemporary music scores accessible and understandable for every student at the conservatory in a pragmatic way.
The results of my doctoral research from 2016 at the University of California, San Diego, where I developed a specific performance practice method for the solo works for flute by ‘New Complexity’-composer Brian Ferneyhough, function as a starting point for this method. By re-analysing, collecting and explaining the different strategies, methods and tools I developed to decipher Ferneyhough’s music – but now specifically customised for performers without any or not much experience with contemporary music – I want to improve student’s independency regarding practicing and critically performing contemporary music on stage – whether it is for an exam in an academic context or for a public performance in a larger concert hall.
#DramaQueen
Composer Jason Eckardt wrote his first mono drama for flutist, The Silenced, in 2015.
The score is not only a musical challenge – it also requires a profound emotional narrative, dramatic elements, a basic choreography and scenography.
In the process of researching the original dramatic monologues – literary texts, often written by women under a pseudonym in the 18th century, that deal with different emotional point of views, seen from within one protagonist – a rather substantial question arose.
The abstract level of communicating concepts through music leaves the audience with a personal, but rather one-dimensional, interpretation, while the original dramatic monologues take the readers by hand and guide them through a purposefully critical and multi-dimensional journey. The same process can be seen in the performed mono dramas by Samuel Beckett, where the visuals guide the audience over a well-designed path.
Adding text, subtitles or straight forward explanatory program notes to the music undermines the strength and powerful qualities of the abstract score.
While researching interdisciplinary tools and methodologies, I started to establish a structural collaboration between my institution, the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, and Un-Label, an international, interdisciplinary collective that works towards inclusive and accessible performances.
Un- Label uses different inclusive tools in their performances, such as sign language or audio-description, which automatically strengthen the interdisciplinary qualities and emotional affects in a non-literal way. These communication tools are artistically imbedded in the performance, which means they are not a mere technical add-on, but rather a crucial part of the artistic process.
Together with composer Jason Eckardt and Max Greyson, spoken word performer and writer within Un-Label, I am developing an extra emotional narrative to The Silenced, by artistically imbedding audio-description.
The audio-description will emphasize an extra point of view within the mono drama, like in the original dramatic monologues, but without destroying the abstract and powerful qualities of the main parameter: the music.
Even more importantly, it will make the musical mono drama accessible for a specific group of people that now misses out on the whole concept because of their visual impairment.
Next steps in the research are the development of a new, accessible monodrama with composer Anahita Abbasi (2020) and the development of interdisciplinary tools for students.
