53 Quotes by Brian Ferneyhough

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.

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.'

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.

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

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.

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

I'm perplexed, though, by your application of the term 'negative' to my figural imagery.

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

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