Joyce Cutler-Shaw - Alphabet of Bones
E. Muybridge - Woman Jumping a Hurdle
Brian Ferneyhough - Bone Alphabet
|
Brian FERNEYHOUGH (b. 1943, England): Bone Alphabet (1992)
When one sees a program note to Brian Ferneyhough’s Bone Alphabet, the first sentence often reads: “this piece is the most difficult work ever written for solo percussionist.” Though I admit that such a bold statement was precisely what originally enticed me to approach this work, I have found this statement to be quite deceptive in practice. Ferneyhough poses a riddle disguised as a liberty to the performer, asking him/her to find ‘seven instruments from high to low, sharing the qualities of short attacks and similar dynamic envelopes.’ The catch is that no two instruments adjacent to one another in the chosen scale may be of the same material type (i.e. wood, metal, skin, glass). In addition, the physical properties of the instruments must allow for the performer to realize the intricacies of the techniques demanded by the composer. Following this initial challenge, one must confront the notation, which can only be described as a type of dense, fastidious forest of layers of abstract rhythmic ideas superimposed upon one another, each demanding its portion of the performer’s mental space (think of an astronaut being pulled by four different fields of gravity simultaneously). Perhaps an easier way to understand this is to think of each measure of the piece as a puzzle, which needs to be deconstructed by the performer and subsequently reassembled. There are 156 measures in the piece and each measure demanded between 2 and 20 hours to learn. So after all of this crystalline and poetic travail, why does the piece sound more like a garbage truck driving down a bumpy road than Bach’s Goldberg Variations? To me, this is truly the difficulty of the piece; at a certain point, one realizes that the typical pursuit of virtuosity is a cul-de-sac from which there is no return. Instead of the virtuosity of the hands and fingers (i.e. Liszt), one must possess a virtuosity of finding creative or interpretational solutions for an utterly non-idiomatic score, as well as the patience and discipline simply to stay with the piece until it is learned (this took about nine months of constant attention for me), all the while knowing that the payoff will certainly not come in the form of a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Of course, this is exactly when the piece starts to become interesting. “If you don’t like what is being said, then change the conversation.” Perhaps the piece isn’t about rhythm at all. Perhaps it is not even about sound. Perhaps it concerns the eye and not the ear. Perhaps it is about the way energy is always in a state of becoming something new. How does a musical idea in the mind ofa composer turn into the jagged dance of a percussionist? It is this translation of idea into unexpected art form that I love. The piece is full of paradoxes, shifts of paradigms, shattered expectations and ultimately, failures. In the end, though, it is a marvelous journey, and as Werner Herzog said of his film Fitzcarraldo, “It is a great metaphor. For what? I don’t know – but it is a great metaphor.” Jonathan Hepfer, 2011 |