Lemma-Icon-Epigram

Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943) is the leading representative of the so-called "new complexity," a movement defined as "a complex, multi-layered interplay of evolutionary processes occurring simultaneously within every dimension of the musical material" (see this interesting Wikipedia entry).

In many ways, this is an extreme take on serialism, even though seriality has now been abandoned in favor of an evolutionary perspective on the musical material. Nonetheless, the score's graphic complexity remains high, in the form of widespread hyper-coding. As a result, Ferneyhough's music often requires enormous technical effort from the performers (sometimes, as in the case of the piece Unity Capsule for solo flute, his scores are so detailed and complex that a complete realization of what is written is almost impossible). In his personal compositional philosophy, the aim of this is to free the performer's creativity, who must decide which details to focus on and which others to leave out (here is a page from the score of Unity Capsule, click it).

The piece we present is "Lemma-Icon-Epigram," from 1981, a three-part piece for solo piano, dedicated to its performer, Massimiliano Damerini. Here you can also see the first page of the score (clickable, as usual).

About this piece, the author says:

Over the years, the detritus of images associated with my alchemical and metaphysical studies, or Renaissance studies, began to accumulate round a core, and this core was, as I said, the idea of Denkbilder: pictures to help you think or “thinking pictures”. So the first part of the piece is the whirlwind of the not-yet-become: the idea of processes, not material, forming the thematic content of the work.

So this is the Lemma, the superscription. The second part, the Icon, is the description of the possible picture put into actual pictorial form. I’m dealing here with the expansion and contraction of rhythmic and chordal cycles. There are only seven chordal identities, and this middle part is the same thing seen from many perspectival standpoints. I have what I call a “time-sun”. That is, I imagine a framework within which these chords are then disposed on several levels, like objects. Then there is a sun passing over them: the shadows thrown by the sun are of different lengths, different intensities, impinging in different ways upon different objects, themselves also moving upon the space defined by this frame. The third part is the Epigram. This is the attempt to unite these two elements that have appeared previously.

Massimiliano Damerini, piano.

Back