As for the rest of your post, I wish you wouldn't give me credit for
saying things I'm not saying.
darcy, my apologies if that came across as a personal attack, it
wasn't menat that way, it was an attack on the argument itself,
because it is more often than not the only thing that people can say
about such music, and with such comments a whole range of musical
styles and interests is simply dismissed because of a problem which
may in fact have nothing to do with the composers who wrote the
music, or with the music.
i saw arditti give a master class once where he berated a violinist
playing a piece written partly in proportional notation but mostly in
non-metric rhythmic figures without barlines or recognizable
(recurrent) pulse: i don't think you have mastered the basic rhythmic
aspects of this piece to take the kind of freedom in rhythmic
interpretation you are doing at the moment.
the "audible grid" may not be an aspect of the piece the composer is
at all interested in, so if you insist on looking for it, listening
to the music with the "wrong ears" essentially, of course the
experience will be uninteresting. you don't listen to victoria for
interesting meters and great swing passages...
you can hear sloppy playing in ferneyhough's music as well, but you
have to have enough of a reference with the music to judge it
properly. but you can also hear sincere performances of it as well,
where yes maybe some of the specific hyper-notation is not played as
it is written, but this doesn't necessarily mean they aren't playing
"the piece"... what's written on a jazz chart isn't what's played on
stage either.
check out and compare different performances of ferneyhough's time
and motion study II (i think there are 3 versions recorded), and you
will immediately see what i mean about this music ALSO being one that
can be **interpreted** in different ways. in fact, one performance
that is particularly musical is one that is sometimes quite far away
from the score. but there is no doubt about the musician's talent.
and again, to continue to kill the jazz analogy, the worst
performances of jazz i have heard were when people "played the
score". the same is just as true about the performance of a late
beethoven sonata, of a late mozart string quartet, and of much new
music. some of it really does have to be played "as written" for the
piece to work at all, but there are other times where, to conclude
arditti's point, rhythmic detail definitely has to be mastered, but
then you have to do something with it to make it musical and coherent
with the piece and with your interpretation of the piece.
a friend once complained about how so many musicians play triplets
like they are notated and proceeded to play like a dozen kinds of
triplets and could explain -- and make audible -- the differences
between them.
and again, i repeat, it depends on where you've heard it and who was
playing it (and why they were playing it!). i know that there is a
core of "complexists" in the SW USA and a few people playing this
kind of stuff in the NE here and there, but the new music scene in
the US is quite limited in scope and depth in many places. using
performances in the US to pass judgement on any kind of music is just
erroneous.
if you ever get a chance, check out greg beyer, NY percussionist, has
played loads of stuff with serious rhythmical challenges (the guy
eats the shit for breakfast!), incl. a drumset piece by james dillon
(might be called ta-ri-ti-ki-da???). also steven schick teaches and
plays in NYC regularly.
Many professional classically-trained musicians -- most, I would
say, although younger generations are considerably better -- can't
play *Piazolla's* rhythms accurately or convincingly, let alone
Ferneyhough's. A great many of them cannot play a long string of
quarter notes without speeding up or slowing down, or play three
quarter-note triplets of equal length (which is kind of an important
prerequisite before attempting 5/6). Rhythmic authority is not
something that is emphasized in conservatory training. Many
established classical teachers even disdain rhythmic accuracy as
"mechanical," something to be avoided at all costs in all
situations, and heap even more disdain on music that requires a
regular, stable pulse. And god forbid you suggest that they might
want to break out the metronome on occasion.
So it's a bit galling for someone coming from a tradition where it
don't mean a thing if it ain't got that rhythmic authority to hear
players who clearly have zero emotional connection to rhythm, and
who have not spent the long hours necessary to develop a solid
internal sense of time, fake their way through the rhythmic
minefileds laid by composers like Ferneyhough (especially when you
know these are players who fall all over themselves trying to find
the "and" of three in a bar of 4/4). And then to have people
congratulate them on their uncanny ability to perform such
rhythmically challenging music!
I also find it frustrating that performers can mostly get away with
this sloppiness in this kind of music, because it so often lacks an
audible rhythmic grid, some kind of regular reference point against
which the "irrational" rhythms are juxtaposed. I find the jazz-based
and postminimalist/totalist/metametric/Downtown approach to these
rhythms much more satisfying. And in those situations, you can tell
instantly if someone is faking it. But, you know, that's just my
personal preference.
I don't like Ferneyhough's stuff -- it's not my thing. But I
certainly don't begrudge him his music or his admirers, nor
performances by musicians who take his music's considerable rhythmic
demands seriously. It's only the pikers I can't stand.
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
