I don't see 'lines of force' as being destructive, except to the extent that they are exclusively traceable through observance of the path of distorted material left in their wake.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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The idea of 'machine assemblage' is, especially, very alien to my sensibility, since it suggests a relative indifference of the strata to one another during the process of construction.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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I am certainly not arguing for the de facto autonomy of the individual work, even though there is much to be said for making the attempt to see it in that light as one facet of the reception process.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of its stylistic 'family' in the world outside.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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My own position is, that it is largely up to the work itself to suggest the nature of these referential points without dimensions in and through the processes by which the distance between them is maintained.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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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.'
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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When I speak of ""cycles,"" I am referring to lengthy intervals of relative homogeneity, if not in the resolving of problems, than at least with respect to the consistency of their capacity to productively irritate.
quote by Brian Ferneyhough
Added by Lucian Velea
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