I began the final section, the first movement, on 17 Dec 2020.
I hadn’t decided on a structure when I started–which is often the case–and it wasn’t until a week ago that I had the tentative idea of using the classical sonata form. I haven’t looked at that personally since college and usually try to make the form evolve out of the music. This plan may be abandoned as I move forward, but here we are.
The movement starts with an atonal polyphonic A section, repeated and modified significantly but not enough to deform it beyond recognition (see the coincidental parallel in Ferneyhough’s “damaged structures” below). It wasn’t until I got to where I am now, nearly done with the A repeat, that I arrived at the satisfying lack-of-hate stage for the music. Only after I fleshed out the full orchestration did I hear my plan and feel it hit the mood I intended. Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes not.
More research on the “process heavy” approach to composition. Samuel Andreyev has an excellent exegesis of the grammar behind Ferneyhough’s String Trio from 1995. I have over-emphasized new complexity in my posts on composition over the last year, but I’ve realized I’ve done that because the style, along with sonorism and post-modernism, matches my ambitions even if it is magnitudes more accomplished than what I produce.
Notes:
When developing his compositional style, Ferneyhough mimicked the surface structure of composers he loved because there was no formal analysis available.
His compositions consist of discrete threads laid upon each other. This is not the stochastic music of John Cage because multiple interpretations are still bound to the written notes. The performer must analyze the structures that the score is built upon. Not immediately apparent. Built up layer by layer: metrical, rhythms, pitches, timbre/dynamics.
(Note on a similar concept in pop music: I can’t find the video, but I remember seeing an old clip of David Gilmour from Pink Floyd showing how they created the sequencer programming for On the Run from DSotM. Not unusual for electronic groups, but his technique was very process-heavy where the mechanical construction is opaque from the result.)
Andreyev emphasizes Ferneyhough’s “damaged structures”. The String Trio uses short sections called Interventions: interludes that destructively interrupt until the process itself is destroyed. (Surprisingly, I’ve been using a similar technique in the A sections above.)
Patchwork by IRCAM’s OpenMusic programming environment.
