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7/23/2019 Brian Ferneyhough and the 'Avant-Garde Experience' - Benjamin Tropes in 'Funerailles'
1/39
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Brian Ferneyhough and the "Avant-Garde Experience": Benjaminian Tropes in "Funrailles"Author(s): Peter RosserSource: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 48, No. 2 (SUMMER 2010), pp. 114-151Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23076968
Accessed: 20-10-2015 01:48 UTC
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2/39
Brian Ferneyhough and the
"Avant-Garde
Experience":
Beniaminian
Tropes
in Funrailles
Peter Rosser
We
have
long forgotten
the ritual
by
which
the house of our life was erected. But
when it is under assault
and
enemy
bombs are
already taking
their
toll,
what ener
vated
perverse
antiquities
do
they
not
lay
bare in the foundations. What
things
were
interred and sacrificed amid
magic
incantations,
what horrible cabinet of
curiosities lies there
below,
where the
deepest
shafts are reserved for what is most
commonplace.
Walter
Benjamin, One-Way
Street1
THE
impression of Walter Benjamin's thought on the continuing
artistic career of
Brian
Ferneyhough
is both
easily
defined
and
ambiguous.
The
composer
has
signalled
his indebtedness
in overt
ways,
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Benjaminian
Tropes
in
Funrailles
I 15
in work
titles and in the
explication
of
pre-compositional and opera
tional
concepts,
and his immersion in
Benjamin's writings
has been
productive,
most
notably
in
the
full-length
"thought-opera"2
Shadow
time
produced
with
librettist Charles Bernstein and
premiered
in
2004.
This is a work that creates
a
musico-literary
commentary
on
the
thoughts
of
Benjamin
and a
quasi-narrative
compaction
of
biographical
detail
relating
to
the writer's final
days
and
suicide on the Franco
Spanish
border in
1940. The
ambiguity,
however,
resides in
the
depth
of this
impression
on
the
deeper-level
structural decisions the
com
poser
has made
over the course of more than four
decades of
writing
music, and on how far this impression can explain long-standing philo
sophical,
intellectual and
compositional
practices.
It
is,
of
course,
common
for
composers
to
invoke
comparison
with non-musical
expression
as a means of
providing
intellectual context for their
pieces.
In the
treatment or
setting
of
primary
source
or
adapted
text,
as in
Shadowtime,
the
method is at its most
transparent
and
parallels
between words and music are
easily
understood;
symbolism
and
affec
tive
word-setting
are
ways
in which the
composer
can
emerge
from the
confines of the
discipline
in
hand. But the
retrospective
projection
of
literary
and
philosophical
influences onto
earlier,
more
protean periods
of a composer's artistic activity, and onto pieces that are less clearly
associative,
often
yields greater
results.
Over the
period
1969-80 Brian
Ferneyhough
wrote
Funrailles,
a
twofold structure that
remains
unique
in
the
composer's output.
The
piece
consists of
the
representation
of a
ritual,
in
the first
instance,
and
then a further
presentation,
a rewritten version of
this
ritual,
to be
performed
in the
same concert as the
first,
but
under no circumstances
immediately
following
it. Neither version is
to be
played indepen
dently.
The
writing
of
Funrailles, therefore,
was undertaken twice in
Ferneyhough's
career.
This
stutter,
this double
take,
is in
itself
incentive
enough
to take a closer look at the
piece.
It also occurs at a
defining
moment
for
the
composer
when the
beginnings
of a
rapprochement
with tradition can be detected. What is often
forgotten
is that
many
of the
defining
characteristics of the
Ferneyhough style
as
commonly
understood
todaythe
microscopic
attention to
detail,
the
idiosyncratic
notation,
the
multiple layers
of
material,
and the
proliferation
of
nested irrationalsall
emerge
at a time
when
Ferneyhough
was both
experimenting
with
the conventions of the
score and
re-engaging
with ideas of
musical structure and
gesture
that
come from the nineteenth
century
and earlier.
Funrailles comes
in
the
wake of the
psychological
torture
chambers
of the
Time and Motion
Studies
(1971-77),
and the
expansive Webern-inspired
textural
essay
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I I 6
Perspectives
of
New Music
Sonatas for String Quartet (1967). At this time the large-scale
symbolist
works such as Transit
(1972-75)
and La terre est un homme
(1976-79) give way
to a more
refined,
formally
rhetorical
model,
first
seen in the
Second
String
Quartet
(1980).3
The soi-disant
Benjamin
pieces, Lemma-Icon-Epigram
(1981)
and Kurze Shatten II
(1985-88),
appear
soon afterwards.
Funrailles,
with its double
exposure,
its
sudden
change
of
tack,
represents
the
only
time in
Ferneyhough's
career when a
retreading
was deemed
necessary
and unavoidable. It is
also
in
Funrailles
that we see the introduction of several
distinctly
Benjaminian tropes
that would come to individuate
Ferneyhough
philosophically, stylistically, and intellectually within (or against) the
established
and,
arguably, already
ageing
central
European
musical
avant-garde
that
emerged
out of Darmstadt
during
the 1950s.
In
1979,
Susan
Sontag,
in her introduction to the
Verso
edition of
Walter
Benjamin's One-Way
Street and other
writings,
was
dealing
with
an imminent
subject:
a
saturnine,
marginal,
melancholic
figure, yet
to
be absorbed
by
the
intellectual
world. At this
date
Benjamin's
biographical
reminiscences,
Berliner Kindheit um
neunzehnhundert,
and the
essay
on Goethe's Elective
Affinities
had
yet
to be translated
into
English
and
publication
in Frankfurt
of Gesammelte
Schriften
(seven
volumes,
1972-1989)
was still in
progress.
The influence of
these
writings
was therefore limited and can be considered
negligible
in
the case of
the immediate
post-war generation
of
composers.
The
true
impact
of
Benjamin
was reserved for
Ferneyhough's generation,
active
after
1968,
the
year
the
young composer
moved to central
Europe.
This
generation
was saddled with an
altogether
more
problematic avant-garde
as the
high-modernist
tabula rasa of 1945
gave way
to the
political
activism of the late
1960s and
early
1970s.
For
Ferneyhough,
the
Coventry-born migr
who
had no formal
training
in
(nor
even
exposure
to)
contemporary
music before he was
eighteen years
of
age,
there was an
early understanding
of the
need for
a route around the
radically Utopian
and
progressivist thinking
of the
musical
avant-garde
as he then saw it.
Stockhausen's "intra
spection
... his move
away
from the
responsibility
of
reifying
the
continuumsuch as remains of itof western
consciousness"4 was
anathema
to
Ferneyhough,
and in
staying
behind to attend to the ruins
of western cultural
society
he had
demarcated his
project's
boundaries.
Sontag's
Benjamin
is
equally preoccupied by
ruins. The critic
philosopher,
afflicted with "Saturnine
acedia,"
moves
slowly through
a
world not of personal relationships (he is always a lonely figure) but of
burdensome
things.
He is doomed to bear witness to the debris of
history laying
around him in the
shockingly
real "now-time" or
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Benjaminian Tropes
in Funrailles
I 17
Jetztzeit:
If
this
melancholy temperament
is faithless to
people,
it has
good
reason to be
faithful to
things. Fidelity
lies
in
accumulating things
which
appear, mostly,
in
the form of
fragments
or ruins. . . .
Both the
baroque
and
Surrealism,
sensibilities with which Ben
jamin
profoundly
identified,
see
reality
as
things. Benjamin
describes
the
baroque
as a
world of
things
(emblems, ruins)
and
spatialized
ideas .... The
genius
of Surrealism was to
generalize
with ebullient
candour the
baroque
cult of
ruins;
to
perceive
that
the nihilistic energies of the modern era make everything a ruin or
fragmentand
therefore
collectible.
A
world whose
past
has
become
(by definition)
obsolete,
and whose
present
churns out
instant
antiques,
invites
custodians,
decoders,
and collectors.5
Benjamin's temperament
dictated his life's
work. His studies of
German
baroque
drama,
Surrealism and the commercial arcades of
the
nineteenth
century
were fuelled
by personal
traits that
pushed
him
always
outside of the
neo-Kantian school of
thought
that
pre
dominated in
his time. The
obscure,
the
microscopic,
the
lost,
and
the
incidental nourished his
thinking.
He loved
marginalia,
kitsch
souvenirs,
secret
languages,
codes,
emblem
books,
and
anagrams.
And
the
combination of these traits and
attitudes offers a
potent
mix of
competing
forces: the
slow-moving,
the
ponderous,
the
wide-eyed
shock of a
never-ending martyrdom
(witnessing)
is shot
through
with
the
incessant,
teeming
energy
of
infinite small
particles
and
details.
Despondency
and
fetishism;
these
coupled
contradictions
spark
atomic
(dialectical)
energies.
How
closely
does this weave of
incompatible impulses correspond
to
Ferneyhough's
music? On the
surface,
at
least,
the similarities are real.
The
music at the close of
Funrailles Version 2
(Example 1)
exists in a
liminal
state,
on the
border between
audibility
and
inaudibility,
of
pitch
and
noise and of sure and
fragile
timbre. The
gestures
extend
to
the limits of the
instruments'
ranges
and
force
questions
on the
sustainability
of controlled execution.
Time,
variously disguised,
is
also
pushed
towards extreme states. The
global (conducted)
tempo
in
this
excerpt
is
pulled gradually
downwards
from,
previously,
^>=36
(marked
desolato in
measure
126)
to "less than
JW30"
at the end of measure
132,
moving uniformly
by way
of a
decrescendo
(al niente),
and
the
marking quasi al asenza movimento," to a long 9/8 general pause final
bar. The last
measure is a
mapping
of
empty
time
(empty
at least of
markings by
the
instrumentalists),
and uncovers at the end of the
piece
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6/39
I I 8
Perspectives
of
New Music
a view
of
the durational
apparatus upon
which the
gestural activity
has
taken
place.
The fact that the measure commands a time
signature,
but
is nonetheless marked
with a fermata
pause-marking,
creates
the
necessary
moment
of
ambiguity
as measured time dissolves into
motionlessness,
thereby detaching
itself from clock-time.
Temporal
flow has
effectively
been
wiped
over
by
the
slowly fluctuating
and
ponderous
tempi operating
through
the
previous
132 measures. The
ending,
in other
words,
is
a double
leaf;
page upon page
the
closing
of
a book. Gesture is followed
by
measured
time,
then
by
stasis and then
ultimately,
when the
piece
is
complete, by
the reintroduction of
normalised,
societal
time.
Overlaying
the last four
slowly petrifying
durational units
(measures)
is an active surface of
microscopically
detailed movement
in
the
top
three
staves,
picked
out on artificial
harmonics,
projecting
beyond
the
auditory scope
of the
piece
and
effectively
smeared,
in an
intrusive and tactile
way, by glissando
and
tremolo.
The
harp
and the
accompanying
tutti
string quartet
are in the
process
of
playing
out
distantly
related durational
processes
with a
close concentration on nuanced timbrai transformation.
In the last measures of Funrailles Version
1
(Example 2)
the
structures and materials are identical, but the execution is very
different. The final measure of
simultaneously
metered and held time
does not exist
(interestingly,
a clock-time measured "nine seconds of
motionlessness,"
initiates Version
1
while Version
2
begins
suddenly,
sfap),
and
although rapid
movement takes
place
with the
tremolo
figures
of
the
upper
lines,
these remain textural and
do
not
compare
with the
rhythmical
detail
impressed upon
the
closing
bars of Version
2.
In
performance,
the sonic results
yielded
by
the two versions are not
of a
materially
different
order,
but the neurotic need for a further
layer
of
generated impulses
in Version 2 transforms the
music's
gestural
weight. Version 1 tails off gradually towards its final double barline;
Version 2 creates a state of
energised
activity
that needs to be
dispelled
in
order that measured
musical time
and,
subsequently,
real time
can
be
brought
into
sharper
relief.
Contiguity
of
temperament
between writer and
composer
is
usefully
underlined
by comparing
the
profile
of the
above extracts from
Funrailles
(especially
of
Version
2)
with
Benjamin's
letter of
May
29,
1926
to his friend Gershom Scholem:
I couldn't build a
Lilliputian
state with
this,
as it
were,
Marxist let
ter. But let me tell you that in the Jewish section of the Muse
Cluny
I
have discovered
the Book
of
Esther written on a
page
a
little more than
half
the
size of this one. That should
perhaps
speed your
visit to Paris.6
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Benjaminian Tropes
in Funrailles
I 19
EXAMPLE 1 :
FERNEYHOUGH,
FUNRAILLES,
VERSION
2,
CLOSING MEASURES
Reprinted y
kind
permission
f Peters ditionLimited
Scholem's telling of the subsequent visit, where "Benjamin dragged
him to . . . the Muse
Cluny
to show
him
'two
grains
of wheat on
which a kindred soul had
inscribed the
complete
Shema
Israel,'"7
is
equally
fantastical.
Why
the need for this
compression
of
materials and
gestures
into
small
spaces?
For
Sontag,
this
process
of
miniaturisation has a number
of
motives. For
one,
it is borne of
necessity
for the wanderer or the
refugee
because
it makes
things portable.
And
portable things
can
be
dislocated,
concealed,
and
ultimately
made useless:
For what is so
grotesquely
reduced
is,
in a
sense,
liberated from
meaningits
tininess
being
the
outstanding thing
about it. It is
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8/39
I
20
Perspectives
of
New Music
EXAMPLE 2:
FERNEYHOUGH, FUNRAILLES,
VERSION
1,
CLOSING MEASURES
Reprinted ykindpermissionf Peters ditionLimited
both whole
(that
is,
complete)
and a
fragment (so tiny,
the
wrong
scale).8
This underlines two tendencies
shared
by Ferneyhough
and
Benjamin:
the first is towards
micronisation,
the
breaking up
of a material into
very
fine
particles;
the second
belongs
to what
Sontag
refers to as
the
micro-logical, the understanding and utilisation of structural relation
ships
between
the smallest of
things.
Both tendencies are
ways through
and
beyond process.
Processual
philosophies
(and
musical
forms)
elevate the
practice
of
pattern-making
on
increasingly large
and
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9/39
Benjaminian
Tropes
in
Funrailles 121
increasingly global scales and make the smallest details ultimately
immaterial.
Benjamin
and
Ferneyhough
elevate the
microgesture
at the
expense
of
larger
formal
devices. This
belongs
to the
type
of
revolutionary
ethics that both
artists inhabit and that
Benjamin
detailed most
directly
in his
"Theses on the
Philosophy
of
History."
The
intensity
of concentration on the
smallest detail slows the
perception
of
the flow of time down to such an extent that
concrete,
physical
extractions of the
otherwise unseen are
given
a new
permanence
outside
of their
temporal
environs:
Thinking
involves not
only
the flow of
thoughts,
but their arrest
as well. Where
thinking suddenly stops
in
a
configuration preg
nant with
tensions,
it
gives
that
configuration
a
shock,
by
which it
crystallizes
into a monad.9
The
predilection
for the
thing-like,
the
protean, free-floating
monad
will
hold
major implications
for the
comprehension
of time and for its
political interpretation.
Ideas become
decoupled
from
time,
they
become
contingent
rather than
consequential;
but this
only
enhances
their historical immanence. A
radical,
indeed
revolutionary, linguistic
methodology
is needed to enable the
replacement
of transference of
meaning (metaphor)
with
"the world of universal and
integral
actualities."10
In
this materialist
historiography,
outlined
in
Benjamin's
early
work The
Origin of
German
Tragic
Drama,
image
{Bild)
takes
precedence
over
metaphor,
action over
contemplation,
and
body
over
intellect.11
Ferneyhough's
continuous
referencing
of
Benjamin
throughout
his
career marks his commitment to
philosophical
concerns inherent in the
writer's
"struggle
to maintain the advent of the modern."12 This is a
struggle
that saw
Benjamin
advance a
type
of
thinking
that formulated
an
explosive, dynamic
and dialectical model out of the tensions that
existed between
progressivist
or
teleological
historicisms and the
destructive
and self-destructive modern life to which he was witness.
Central
to
Benjamin's project
was a
critique
of
Enlightenment philo
sophies
of time in which the
actuality
of
time,
its affective
presence,
was denied.
The
passage
of a
preordained progression
towards
perfect
ibility
and
through
a
neutral,
or
uniform,
historical time-line was
roundly rejected by Benjamin.
Replacing
"past
and
present"
with
"then and
now"
he
was able to
fragment
the illusion of
continuity
and
progress to powerful effect and thus, importantly, to create
opportunities
for
intervention.
Out of this destructive
topos
came a
number of radical notions:
in
particular,
that
retardation,
interruption
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I 22
Perspectives of
New Music
and fragmentation were powerful and useful philosophical agents, and
that
tradition,
anachronism and the idea of
the outmoded were as
powerful
in the
exchanges
within
modernity (and
as vectors of
change
therein)
as the
utopianism
of
teleological
historicisms was
reactionary.
As Andrew
Benjamin
says:
"with
historicism,
time
becomes natural
ized. To denature time is a further
part
of a
project
marked
by
inter
ruption."13
And this
project
would be detailed
through
a move
away
from institutionalized
philosophy
and towards a
thinking
that came
"'directly'
out of the
objects
of cultural
experience"14a
materialist
historiography,
in other
words,
which is
variously
described in
Benjamin studies as the "Surrealist" or the "avant-garde experience."15
The
proximity
of
Ferneyhough
and
Benjamin
becomes, therefore,
a
matter of both
temperament
and
philosophy.
For the close
observer,
it
places
the
composer's operative
interests
within the
experimentations
of
late nineteenth and
early twentieth-century
modernism at its most
revolutionary
and destructive. This
proximity
to
Benjamin
also
highlights
how the
superficial reading
of
Ferneyhough
that
positioned
him
during
the 1980s and 1990s as the
figurehead
of a loose
grouping
of
(mostly
British)
composers
under the banner The
New
Complexity,
failed to
incorporate
his
antique European
sensibilities.
Looking
back
from the vantage point of the twenty-first century the incompatibility
of
Ferneyhough
with
these other individuals is
suddenly
more
pronounced.
Composers
such as Richard
Barrett,
Michael
Finnissy
and
James
Dillon became
increasingly
inclined towards the
prevalent post
modernistic
tropes
of the 1980s
and 1990s: Barrett
through
a
dys
topian (and
Beckettian)
politically negotiable
theatre of the
absurd
(he
was
subsequently propelled through
the
technological/improvisatory
route);
Finnissy through
a
type
of
poly-stylistic,
critical
cosmopolitan
ism;
and Dillon
through spectralist
thinking
that found sustenance in
the
extrapolation
of
large-scale
formal
designs
from the
physical
properties of sound itself.16 Reading Ferneyhough's works of the late
1970s and
early
1980s
through
the
(then)
emerging light
of
Benjamin's
thought,
however,
is
not
only
to
provide
for
a
readjustment
in the
composer's place
in
a
stylistic
tradition,
but also an
attempt
to
re-imagine
the
distracting,
often
dazzling
techniques
on
offer in the scores and to
redirect their
significance
away
from
post
serial
apotheosis,
or
narratological
and authorial
subversion,
and
towards an esoteric tradition
that emanates from
the nineteenth
century
of Baudelaire
(as
seen
through
the
eyes
of
Benjamin)
and from
the revolutionism
(Marxist
and
Surrealist)
of
the first
quarter
of the
twentieth
century. Ultimately,
the
objective
is to
re-engage
with the
origins
of the emotional
energies
of the
music,17
and to offer a number
of
questions
that seems
prerequisite,
especially
when
dealing,
however
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Benjaminian Tropes
in Funrailles
obliquely, with Benjaminian thought. If Walter Benjamin's writings
cannot be
fully
understood without recourse to the consideration of
moral
imperatives, historiographical aporia
and
consequently
to
politics,
do we have a
responsibility
to examine
Ferneyhough's
music
in the same
way?
How
do
the local
concerns
of
BenjaminSurrealism,
the
revolutionary politics
of the 1920s and
1930s,
film,
the
reading
of
nineteenth
century
Paris,
even hashish
eating
and
graphology,
the
natural
subjects
of his
writingfind
expression
beyond
cultural
criticism and
philosophy
and
contribute
to an
analysis
of
Ferneyhough's
music?
FunraillesPreliminary Remarks
The
progress
of
Funrailles
through
its two versions is one of
metaphor giving way
to
(Benjaminian) image.
The
original concept
is
one
centred
on ritual. The title refers to
obsequies:
solemn,
ritualistic
celebrations of
mourning. Ferneyhough's original
intention was to
recreate the modes of ritual
in
a non-ironic
way,
to channel
the "entire
associative
complex
into an
imaginarya mythicdimension.
A rite
taking place
behind a
curtain,
or in the far distance."18
However,
it
seems
that
very quickly
the music
began
to work
against
these con
cepts:
"The
seeming incongruity obtaining
between the associations
prompted by
the title and the actual emotional world of the
composi
tion itself
might
be seen as
bordering
on
the
deliberately perverse,"19
Ferneyhough
concedes. And it is this
perversity,
the
incongruity per
taining
in the
relationship
between the
pre-compositional conceptual
spur
and
the
progress
of the music itself that
prompted
the
composer
to return to
radically
rewrite his material.
The
primary
and most
obviously apparent
distinction between the
two versions is one of architecture. Both versions are
antiphonal,
pitting
a solo trio
(violin,
viola,
cello) against
a tutti
quartet
(violin,
viola,
cello,
double
bass).
The two
groups
are mediated
by
a
harp.
The
difference
in the
deployment
of forces over the two
versions, however,
is
striking
(see
Example
3).
Version
1
is accretional:
the solo trio
material,
as
a basic
building
block,
is constant
(excepting
the
general
pause bar),
the tutti
quartet
shapes
three sections
(or
four
if
the
general pause
is considered
as
structurally defining),
and the
harp
provides
mediation and
heralds the tutti sections in each case. As a
construct, Version 1 is predictable, progressive and teleological. The
progress
of the formal
design
is more
powerful
than the
individual
detail;
it fulfils its
objective
of
presenting
a ritual. Version
2
is
opposed
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124
Perspectives
of
New Music
to the structural assumptions of its predecessor. This is a more complex
terrain in which the basic solo
material
sparks
disparate
communi
cations
(and simultaneities)
with the
harp
and the tutti
quartet.
The
plan permits
a
greater degree
of freedom in the
deployment
of forces
and of the characterisation of
protagonists.
The
harp
has been elevated
onto a
different
level,
removed
from its
purely mediatory
role
in
Version 1. It has a
major
solo
passage
at the centre of the
piece
(measures 54-62)
and
it takes
part
in two duos with the lowest
instrument of
each
group:
cello
(measures 21-27)
and double
bass
(measures 63-67).
The more nebulous
relationships
that
pertain
between the various
groupings
in this second version is underlined
by
the manner in which the tutti
quartet
can
step
outside of the timbrai
set-up
towards the end
of the
piece,
transforming
itself into a
percussion
ensemble
by taking up
stones, maracas,
claves and wood
block
(measures 114-121).
The
harp
also leaves its normalised
space
with the use
of
two
crotales from measure 107. Effective
in
delimiting
sections
as the
deployment
of forces
undoubtedly
is,
it nevertheless
forms
only
one view
of this more
sophisticated
Version 2. The
composer
makes
clear in his score that the transformation
of
dry,
"natural" sounds
to
pitched
"artificial" sounds
be
effected
as
smoothly
and
organically
as
possible.
Also in Version
2,
the
composer
uses
rehearsal
letters in an unconventional
way, highlighting
structural
layers
of
independent
material to be used as an
interpretational
aid
by
the conductor rather
than as reference
points by
the instrumentalists.
The music of Version
2,
therefore,
is borne of
competing
tendencies.
On the one
hand,
it is the result of
a
destructive
act,
a
pulling apart
of
existing
material,
with
disjunction given
structural
import.
On the
other,
the
organicism
of the
original
is recreated
through
instructions
to the
performers.
This
is
Ferneyhough's
own
description
of his
methods:
I
constructed
a
grid
which
I
then overlaid
on the score of
Version
One,
already completed.
This
grid separated
the material into
small,
independent
frames,
completely decontextualising
it,
in
effect. ... I then took each isolated
frame and
investigated
its
autonomous
properties
very carefully, trying
to
establish what
seemed to
me to be the most
significant
characteristics of that
fragment
andequally importantmy
own current attitude
towards them. I was fascinated to discover that some
fragments
imposed themselves on me in quite unexpected fashions, that is to
say,
in
ways
unconnected
with the
original
intention or means of
composition.
It was
like,
shall we
say,
a form of creative archaeol
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Benjaminian
Tropes
in Funrailles
ogy, but before the fact in the sense of utilizing the information
gleaned
to create
a
new
context
rather than
recreate a
previous
one.
Working
with
givens
possessing
an
amazing
will of their own
led to the
production
of an
uncharacteristically unprestructured
discourse;
I was
compelled
to invent moment-to-moment strate
gies
to accommodate what I was in the
process
of
discovering.
I
don't want to
imply
the absence of strict
processes;
rather,
that
these
processes
arose out of the
specific
nature of the material situ
ation "discovered" in
every
frame. The
priorities
were often
wildly
different from
frame
to frame.20
The rehearsal marks
give
the
key
to
the
structuring
in Version 2.
They
demarcate
passages
that are
physically
extracted from their
origins, developed independently
of the wider narrative strictures of
Version 1 and
replanted
into the foundational duration scheme. The
two enactments remain
essentially
the same
piece.
Any
transformation
of
pitch
or
rhythm
in Version 2 does not destabilize the content of
Funraillesit is
significant
that
despite
the violent
pulling apart
of
Version
1
its
doppelganger
remains
just
that:
separate
(and
therefore
separately
constructed)
but
intrinsically
identifiable as the same.
Funrailles Version
2,
therefore,
doesn't
supersede
Funrailles Version
1.
The two
remain
co-dependent
in
performance despite
the
necessity
of the "Non attacca "
signalled
in the
score
after the final measure of
Version 1.
The
rewriting,
and indeed the
re-performing,
is the essential
modus
operandi
of the cumulative Funrailles
experience
and the
instruction
in
the score to effect transitions as
smoothly
as
possible
indicates the need for Version 2 to
appear
as a
whole,
despite
the
destructive conditions of its
conception
and the
seemingly
discontinuous
assembly
of its
fragments.
Walter
Benjamin
and the "Avant-Garde Experience"
For
Benjamin,
destruction was a
prerequisite
of construction.
It is
important
for the materialist
historian,
in the most
rigorous
way possible,
to differentiate the construction
of a historical state
of affairs from
what one
customarily
calls its "reconstruction." The
"reconstruction"
in
empathy
is one-dimensional. "Construction"
presupposes "destruction."21
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126
Perspectives
of
New Music
Destruction is always meant as "the destruction of some false or decep
tive form of
experience
as the
productive
condition of the construction
of a new relation to the
object."22 Again,
object
takes
precedence
over
experience,
and the
perception
of these
objects
takes
precedence
over
the search for clear
process.
Thus,
as Andrew
Benjamin
and Peter
Osborne
note,
. . .
allegory
is seen to
destroy
the
deceptive totality
of the
symbol,
wrenching
it out of context and
placing
it in
new,
transparently
constructed,
configurations
of
meaning.
. . .
Similarly,
photogra
phy
is seen to
destroy
the aura of the
object,
opening up
the
possi
bility
of a
radically
new
knowledge (the
optical
unconscious).23
The site of destruction affords
opportunities
for
intervention;
and
with this
opportunity
comes
the
necessity
of
choice,
and therefore of
political
action. Destruction does not come with
preordained
consequences,
of
course,
it remains a site of contention
and
of a
force
that needs to be won over. This is
at the heart of
Benjamin's thinking
on
modernity,
and it is a
thinking
that
demands much of the artist.
The
danger
of
Fascism,
to take one
powerful example
from "The
Work
of Art in the
Age
of Mechanical
Reproduction,"
resides in its
utilisation of destruction for the
purpose
of the restoration
of
ideology
and tradition. The task of
Benjamin's writings,
on the other
hand,
is to
introduce
concepts
to
the
theory
of art that are
"completely
useless
for
the
purposes
of Fascism." These
concepts
"brush aside . . .
creativity
and
genius,
eternal value and
mystery"24
and confront the
crisis of
representation
in
art.
This
is also the site of the most
deeply
involved
consideration
in
Benjamin
studies: that of
aura,
a
subject
that needs to
be
traced
through
considerations of twentieth
century
technological
media,
but one that will also
provide guidelines
for the
beginnings
of
an
analysis
of
(the
non-technological)
Funrailles.
Assembled around the idea of the
single
authentic
artwork,
the
theory
of aura
in
the hands of
Benjamin
emanates from
the
perception
of a
"strange
weave of
space
and time: the
unique
appearance
or
semblance of
distance,
no matter
how close it
may
be."25 The
modern
era
of
instant
reproducibility,
of
film
and of
photography,
sees the
"withering"
of
aura,
but
also the emotional
re-enactment of its
memory through
artificial,
technological
means.
The
amalgam
of the
desire to recreate
aura,
and the
knowledge
of the self-delusion inherent
in
this
misguided exercise, epitomises
the
experience
of
modernity
for
the human
subject.
There is a connective line drawn between the
supposition
of aura and the
knowledge
of its demise
that leads from
dislocation
and
melancholy
towards
a
position
that is
irrefutably,
and
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15/39
Benjaminian Tropes
in Funrailles
unavoidably, political. This is a consequence of the destruction
wrought by photography
and other
technological
means on
the
mythic
status of the artwork
and its
perceptual
apparatus.
Photography
and
film do this
through
their
power
of
uncovering
and
disassembling:
"Photographic reproduction,
with
the aid of certain
processes,
such as
enlargement
or slow
motion,
can
capture
images
which
escape
natural
vision."26
In
so
doing,
the
relationships pertaining
between
time,
space,
and
gesture
are
reconfigured:
With
the
close-up, space expands;
with slow
motion,
movement is
extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render
more
precise
what
in
any
case
was
visible,
though
unclear: it
reveals
entirely
new structural
formations of the
subject.27
The
thinking subject's
relationship
with the material
world
suddenly
becomes
disentangled
from traditional
mediation because
"for the first
time
in world
history,
mechanical
reproduction
emancipates
the work
of art
from its
parasitical
dependence
on ritual."28
In the absence of a
ritualistic
mediating presence
the
materiality,
the
thin[-ness,
of
the
object
of
perception
will
increase, and,
in
its
turn,
magnify
the
strength
of the
perceptive gaze
directed towards it. Fetishism
subsequently
becomes a
major
character trait of
the modern mind:
"every day
the
urge grows stronger
to
get
hold of an
object
at
very
close
range
by way
of its
likeness,
its
reproduction."29
Art has
always
been
politicalthat
is to
say,
it has contained
political
messages;
it
generates political
response;
it has
always
been
subject
to
repression
or
appropriation
by
state,
monarch or church. But
the
artwork's basis
in ritual
ultimately protected
its
independence,
because
it
remained,
essentially,
functional.
Ritual was where the
original
use
value of art was to
be found. With
the advent of
photography
("the
first
truly revolutionary
means of
reproduction"30)
art faced a crisis. If
the
authenticity
of
the
original
artwork,
along
with its ritual
function,
had been diluted to
the
point
of
having
no societal traction at
all,
then
it follows that
the need for artistic
practice
would come
under
scrutiny.
Benjamin
outlines the
reactions
with which the artistic
community
met
this
challenge:
l'art
pour
l'art,
for
example,
attempted
a
theology
of art
itself and
"this
gave
rise to
what
might
be called a
negative theology
in
the form
of the idea of
'pure'
art,
which not
only
denied
any
social
function
of art but also
any
categorizing by subject
matter."31 There
follows a
polarization regarding
the
reception
of art. Art is seen either
to
rely
on its
inherent cult value
or on its exhibition
value: "with the
emancipation
of the
various art
practices
from
ritual
go
increasing
opportunities
for the exhibition
of their
products."32
But,
of
course,
as
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I 28
Perspectives
of
New Music
the means of reproduction change, the nature of the artwork changes
accordingly:
"its fitness
for exhibition"
resulted in a
"qualitative
trans
formation
of its nature."33
As a
result,
the traditional
artistic functions
of the artwork
may
even come
to be
recognized
as incidental.
The cult
value,
however,
does
not
evaporate,
not
immediately
and
not
completely,
it retires onto
other levels.
In
early photography,
according
to
Benjamin,
the
human face is the
sole
subject;
a
vestige
of
a cult of
mysticism
and
melancholy
as absent or dead
loved-ones take
up
a
new,
and
imminently reproducible,
permanence.
Later,
as the
human
countenance itself
recedes from
view,
the deserted
streets of
Paris
("like
scenes of
crime"34)
stir the viewer out of free-floating
contemplation
and towards
a more
intense,
and
intensely uneasy,
relationship
with the
subject
matter.
Photographs
become moments
(note
the
importance
of
time)
of
undecidibility, ready
to
be filled with
political charge.
Benjamin
observes that
images
now
require captions
(rather
than
titles),
as the decentred
content
sparks
connections,
social
and
political,
with forces
outside
of itself. The
single
frame,
the
momentary snapshot,
becomes
energised;
the
monad,
or
single
gesture,
is a
potentially explosive
bundle of
conflicting,
radical and
destructive
energies;
and its inherent
charge
makes its
position
in time
contingent.
As
photography
gives
birth
to
film,
as the illusion
of a naturalised
time
passing
is
artificially
reconstructed
in the
editing
suite,
"the
meaning
of each
single picture
appears
to
be
prescribed by
the
sequence
of all
preceding
ones."35
The
"integral
whole" is
no
longer.
Instead,
the
sequence
of
positional
views
which the editor
composes
from
the material
supplied
him constitutes the
completed
film. It com
prises
certain factors
of movement
which are in
reality
those
of the
camera,
not
to mention
special
camera
angles, close-ups
etc.
Hence the
performance
of the actor
is
subjected
to a series of
optical
tests.36
Testing
is
important
here because
the audience is
obliged
to take the
position
of the
camera,
in its
critical, forensic,
fetishistic close
concentration
on detail.
For the screen actor
his
performance
is no
longer
"all of a
piece
. . . there are
elementary
necessities of
equipment
that
split
the actor's
work into a series of
mountable
episodes."37
Thus,
the actor is required to engage in a series of mini-performances, non
sequentially,
and isolated
in
the
moment of creation
from the intended
audience.
But the destructive
nature of
film-making goes
further,
and
narrative
is not the
only
victim in this series
of destructive
acts;
the
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Benjaminian Tropes
in Funrailles
actor, too, is bodily thrust apart and the separate considerations, in the
form of isolated
close-ups
of
head,
face,
torso,
gait,
take on
special
significance.
The idea of
physical integrity
becomes
just
that,
an
idea,
supposed
but not
actualised;
it is the
supposition
of the authentic
through
inauthentic
means.
Thus,
as film
attempts
to reconstruct the
supposition
of aura it does so
for its own
purposes,
not
those of the
subject
under consideration. This simulation
of aura has a number
of
consequences.
The
armoury
of
techniques
at the film-maker's
disposal
make-up, lighting, close-up,
retouching,
shutter
speed,
etc.
conspire
in the creation
for the
object
(human
or
otherwise)
a
"special
intensity, beauty and authority."38 It becomes fetishised, inordinately
detailed,
unavoidably
vital,
overwhelmingly
seductive.
The mundane
becomes
extraordinary,
and
intoxicating.
The
supposition
of the
integrity
of the
thinking subject
and,
indeed,
of
time,
is
forcibly
impressed upon
the narrative creation
without
regard
for
its
truth
value.
Here the
challenge
of
Benjamin's
thinking
reveals itself at
its
most
urgent:
if
we succumb
to the attractions of
fabricated aura
available to
us
through
modern
technologies,
do we then lose
the
experience
of truth?
Film,
even in its
revolutionary
birth
pangs,
has
already
become for
Benjamin
the site of the
struggle
between
Fascism
(destruction for tradition) and revolution (destruction towards
redemption).
Benjamin's
studies of
photography
and film take their
places
in the
wider
region
of
thought
referred to above as the "Surrealist"
or the
"avant-garde experience."
This is
important
for the
musicologist
because it releases
the technical considerations of
reproducibility
and
the theoretical
implications
of aura from
film and
photography
studies
and makes
the
philosophical
off-shoots
useful outside of those
disciplines.
This is as
it should
be,
of
course,
considering Benjamin's
"desire for the
philosophical
articulation of an
expanded
or 'total'
concept
of
experience (Erfahrung)
. . . which would exclude no
domain,
however
marginal,
bizarre or
esoteric,
from its
compass."39
And this "total"
concept,
in essence a
counterpoise
to
neo-Kantianism,
would
incorporate
for the future
development
of
epistemology
the
vitality
and
vagaries
of the
subjective
mind: "to determine the
true
criteria for
differentiating
between the values of
the various
types
of
consciousness
will be one of the
highest
tasks of the future
philosophy."40
If the instance of the fabrication
of aura in film is seen
as the site of a
dangerous
battle
between the forces of
repression
and the forces of
revolution,
an
important question
needs
to be articulated: can
we
hope
to
find other routes to the consideration
of the
problematics
of aura
that do not overwhelm
the
necessity
of
living
in
society?
In other
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18/39
Perspectives
of
New Music
words,
can an aesthetic model be
developed
to make useful the
energies
of not
only
active revolutionism but also latent
redemption?
Benjamin
may
have said that Surrealism's "most
particular
task" was "to
win
the
energies
of intoxication
for the
revolution,"41
but he also
allowed for
a
"revolutionary experience,
if not action."42
Two themes now
emerge
for consideration: mimetic
perception
and
the free association
of
disparate
ideas
and
images
that
finds
its
most
important
aesthetic
expression
within Proust's
concept
of mmoire
involuntaire.
Both
enable
a
widened
application
of
the
principles
of
auratic
experience
and both find
expression
in
Surrealism,
especially
in
its
ability
to make
possible
a
philosophical enquiry
that
opens
modern
subjectivity
to
the
pressures
of intoxication.
This
was
explored through
a number of
phenomena,
including
the
consumption
of
opium
and
hashish in a
never-completed
book that
was,
as
Benjamin
claimed,
to
"mark off the real site of ruin
or
catastrophe."43
Benjamin
undertook a
number of controlled
experiments
with hashish
("a
divided,
contradictory experience,"44
he
reported)
and
found the common
effects"heighted perceptual acuity,
the
experience
of an
expansion
of
space,
the
'derangement
of one's sense of time
[Zeitsinn\,'
a return to
the
infantile,
the
frequent
activation of
memory"45to
resonate with
his
thinking
on
Surrealism.
Benjamin's
task was to draw from
Proust,
Baudelaire,
the Surrealists and from their
perceptual realignment
vis-
vis cultural artefacts and
everyday living,
a
type
of
experience
that
could
rejuvenate
the
capacity
and the influence of the
imagination.
This is
only possible (in agreement
with
Freud) by initiating
a
close
"encounter with the unconscious."46 The
faculty
of
imagination,
Benjamin
says
in
One-Way
Street,
is
. . . the
gift
of
interpolating
into the
infinitely
small,
of
inventing,
for
every intensity,
an extensiveness to contain its
new,
com
pressed
fullness,
in
short,
of
receiving
each
image
as if it were that
of the folded
fan,
which
only
in
spreading
draws breath and
flour
ishes,
in its new
expanse,
the beloved features within it.47
The
heightened
awareness common with intoxication is
revelatory.
It
promotes
an
"image space"
within which
phenomena
make
themselves
available for the
purpose
of
defining
an aesthetic
modality through
which the
Surrealists and others could find a
"profane
illumination;"
an illumination that would exist
beyond
the strictures
(political
and
theocentric) of established society. "Experiences are lived similar
ities"48
Benjamin
says,
and this
opens up
the
possibility
of a
type
of
perception
that
challenges
received notions of
time,
history
and mem
ory.
The
living
through
of
contiguities
and similarities across time
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Benjaminian
Tropes
in Funrailles
131
means that the experience of the
past
in the
present
is suddenly vital,
not
languid:
The
appearances
of
superposition,
of
overlap,
which come with
hashish
may
be
grasped through
the
concept
of similitude. When
we
say
that one face is similar
to
another,
we mean that certain
features of this second face
appear
to us in the
first,
without the
latter's
ceasing
to be what it has been.
Nevertheless,
the
possibili
ties
of
entering
into
appearance
in this
way
are not
subject
to
any
criterion and are therefore boundless. The
category
of
similarity,
which for the
waking
consciousness has
only
minimal
relevance,
attains
unlimited relevance
in
the world of hashish.
There,
we
may
say, everything
is
face:
each
thing
has the
degree
of
bodily pres
ence that allows it to be searchedas one
searches
a
facefor
such traits as
appear.
Under these conditions even a sentence
(to
say nothing
of the
word)
puts
on a
face,
and
this face
resembles
that of the sentence
standing opposed
to it. In this
way every
truth
points manifestly
to its
opposite,
and
this state of affairs
explains
the existence of doubt. Truth becomes
something living;
it lives
solely
in the
rhythm by
which statement and counterstate
ment
displace
each other in order to think each other.49
This is Proust's
"thoroughly
alive and creative
sleep
of the uncon
scious."50
"A
sort of
productive
disorder is the canon of the mmoire
in.volunta.iresays
Benjamin,
before
quoting
from Le
Temps
retrouv.
"And I had
already
lived
long enough
so
that,
for
more than one of
the
human
beings
with
whom I had
come in
contact,
I
found
in
antipodal regions
of
my past
memories another
being
to
complete
the
picture."51
The "avant-garde experience", then, can be summarized as a
political
renegotiation
of the
perception
of
time and
history
that
incorporates
the
possibilities opened up by
the
vagaries
of the
conscious
and
unconscious
minds. In
dealing
with
the
music of
Ferneyhough,
as seen
in his
early piece
Funrailles,
the aim will
be to
extract
positive
conclusions in the
acceptance
of intoxicationin its
Surrealist
expressionon
the
aesthetic
perception
of the
workings
of
art. In
particular,
this
will include the
derangement
of the sense of
time,
the
heightened perception
of
objects
and the
imagination's
ability
to
find
non-consequential
similarities
through
the
workings
of
memory, the increased micronisation of structural decision-making and
the
acceptance
of destruction as a
presupposition
before
the
conceptualisation
of construction.
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I 32
Perspectives
of
New Music
Brian Ferneyhough and the "Avant-Garde Experience"
Ferneyhough
had dealt
directly
with the collision of man and
machine,
of
human,
subjective
time and
society-induced
mechanistic time in his
Time and Motion
Studies. But these studies drew
existential,
psychopathetic
and nihilistic conclusions.
Funrailles,
on the other
hand,
represents
a
deep
well in
which the initial return
to material
doesn't obviate the
potential
of further
versions,
ad infinitum if
necessary.
The
concept
of
reproducibilty
in
Benjamin's
"Work of Art"
essay
focuses attention on the
ongoing process.
As in
the case of
Funrailles there is no hierarchy of original and copy, both are equal
and indeed remain
ready
to be
joined by
further
equals.
It seems clear
that the
very
nature of
Funrailles as a
unity
of two
aspects,
with
its
own
combinatorial
fecundity,
and its
readiness and
aptness
to be
reproduced,
is the
point
of the
piece.
And the
Benjaminian argument
that contends that the
unique
existence of an
artwork is
compromised,
or at
least
fundamentally
altered,
by
the
creation
of
a
copy
further
strengthens
the
concept
that
emerged
out of Funrailles. The
signifi
cance of Funrailles Version 1 becomes
heightened (without
it
being
subjected
to material
change)
when it is
impelled
to
project
outside of
its own
workings
and towards the
relationship
it is now forced to live
vis--vis
its
double.
In
Proustian
terms,
this is
the other
being,
drawn
from
antipodal regions
of the
memory
"to
complete
the
picture."
Benjamin's
interest is
replication
or
regeneration
in
exact detail but
with a
confused source and a decimated
origin;
Ferneyhough's
Version
2 is
rearranged
and
rewritten,
effectively
a re-enactment
of its
predecessor.
Yet,
despite
the absence of
mechanical
reproduction,
Ferneyhough
has created a
commentary
on
the various
possibilities
surrounding
the
concept
of
reproducibility,
and on the
problems
it
causes for the
understanding
of the
workings
of the modern
mind,
whether it is actively engaged with technological processes or not. The
effort in this
case, however,
is
retained
by
the
composer,
and not taken
over
by
machine or
computer.
There
are
parallels
in film
and the visual
arts;
for
example
Gus Van Sant's tribute to
(and
reconstruction
of)
Hitchcock,
in
Psycho
(1998),
or the
Chapman
Brothers'
re-imagining
of
Goya,
Insult to
Injury
(2003).
Works such
as these seek
to
exploit
the dramatic ironies of late
capitalism
within which
the authorial
presence
is
subsumed
by
market
forces;
where
distribution,
rather than
production,
is
given
pre-eminence.
If Van Sant and
the
Chapmans
can
be seen as
subverting
or
undermining
the
idea
(the myth)
of
originality,
Ferneyhough
is more
convincingly
seen as a custodian of
Sontag's
instant
antiques,
where lost
originality
becomes a more
compelling
vehicle
through
which
contemporary expression
can be
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21/39
Benjaminian Tropes
in Funrailles
explored. What is clear, nevertheless, is that Benjaminian tropes
abound
in
all of these works. With
relation to Funrailles we can see a
complex
web of associations
and
suppositions
that deals
directly
and
indirectly
with aura and its
problematic
appearance/disappearance
and
more
particularly
with its
manifestation
(real
or
fabricated)
through
the
treatment of
extant,
concrete materials.
Benjaminian
tropes
in
Funrailles
Both versions of Funrailles play "at a distance" for the majority of
their
durations;
the "rite
taking place
behind a
curtain,
or in the far
distance"52 is effected in
performance through
the use of mutes in the
strings
or
by
the
use of "restrained harmonics." The
physically
shocking
moment of
breaking through
this barrier occurs in
measure
94 of Version
1,
measure 97 of Version
2,
where the
string players
remove their
mutes: "the listener feels that he has been
bodily
thrust
across the
intervening space right
into the sounds
themselves;
there is
the sensation of
outraged
violation."53 The allusions to
opticity
and
tactility
are
important
and
serve as useful
engagers throughout
the
composer's subsequent output.
The
"practised
hand"54
(which
was
once the
artist's,
and now
holds the film-maker's
scalpel)
is
highlighted
by Femeyhough's disassembly
and
reassembly
of Version
1;
the
severing
of units from their contexts
and their
remounting
in
locally
defined surface contexts is the main
point
of the
piece.
Fundamental to
an
understanding
of
Funrailles
is the
story given
in the
original
score
(since
removed in the current Peters
Edition)
in which
the
composer
pictures
"a
Martian
landing
on
top
of
a
large
hill and
looking
down at
a
parade ground, watching
these
creatures
wandering
backwards and
forwards in
various
patterns,
and
wondering precisely
what he would
feel
about it."55 This double
gaze,
of
looking
at,
and of
looking
at
oneself
looking
at,
heightens
the
bodily presence
of the
subject.
Distraction is now the
perceptive topos,
not
contemplation.
Here
Benjamin
addresses the distracted
experience
of the
spectator
in the
case of film: "the
distracting
element
. .
. is . . .
primarily
tactile,
being
based on
changes
of
place
and focus which
periodically
assail the
spectator
... no sooner has his
eye grasped
a scene
than it is
already
changed.
It cannot be arrested."56
Femeyhough's
Funrailles
is
such
an
experiment,
it is music
that is not
merely
composed,
but
composed
and editedits scenes, its re-contextualised frames, its shifting of
perspective,
its
bodily comportment,
and
its
denial of
immediacy,
make
it
very
much a filmic
experience.
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22/39
I 34
Perspectives of
New Music
The
following
is a number of
distinctly Benjaminian tropes
that can
usefully
be
mapped
onto the structure of Funrailles. The
aim is to
offer
types
of
approaches
through
which a more detailed
analysis
could
be directed.
The focus is the
assembly,
within
Funrailles,
of notational
and
strategic techniques
that
engage
with facets of
Benjamin's
"avant
garde"
or "Surrealist
experience," namely:
a sense of
derange-ment
in
the
perception
of
time;
the
coupling
of destruction and
construction;
the establishment of
sequential, positional
views;
the
value of
exhibition over
ritual;
the
promotion
of distinct
micronised
performances;
the creation of immanent
profiling;
and the
adoption
of
the filmmaker's
inauthentic
techniques
in
the face of
a
disappearing
aura.
ZEITSINN
Funrailles Version 1 establishes
its
expressive
ambit
clearly
from the
outset. The texture from measure
1
is
comparatively simple, consisting
of held
notes,
coloured
by
use of timbrai transformations
(
non
vibrato
to vibrato ordinare, for example, in violin one, measure 1) and
dynamic
swells.
This linear material
progresses
on the
whole
by
semitones
and is treated to microtonal
variation;
the microtones are
used here as ornaments
and without structural
import.
Isolated
notes,
alla
punta
harmonics,
short-lived trills and
pizzicato punctuate
this
texture.
Declamatory
annunciation is of
great
importance
to this
opening passage.
The first action is marked "sudden and
unexpected"
and comes out of a
nine second
period
of
motionlessness;
elsewhere
the held notes
are introduced
percussively by
a
left hand
pizzicato.
Like
many
of
Ferneyhough's openings
this is
simply
the
unfolding
through space (register) and time (duration) of crude material. What
activates this
material,
and enables it to
uphold
a narrative
impulse,
is
the
subsequent
decollement
that sees
duration,
gesture, pulse, pitch
cycles (and
other
secondary
parameters)
become
decoupled
from their
supporting
mechanisms.
The
pull,
or
torsion,
that is
enacted
upon
the
unfolding
materials
is the
defining
feature of this music. Read in
Benjaminian
terms
in
becomes
an
expression
of
zeitsinn,
a
derange
ment in the
perception
of
time,
commonly
associated with hashish
eating
and also
of the more
generalised
"avant-garde experience."
Example
4 shows a
typical passage
where the
original
material is found
in a more highly developed state.
Held notes are now
more
likely
to be double
stops,
executed with
glissando
or with cross
string
tremolo.
The
punctuating
materials have
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23/39
Benjaminian Tropes
in
Funrailles
developed into inchoate but potential micro-gestures. Significantly,
this
passage, despite
the exactitude of
rhythmic
and durational
detail,
does not
play against
a
uniform
pulse.
The
underlying tempo
(as
distinct
from
any
internal
pulse
rates)
fluctuates
constantly:
measure 60
sees the
completion
of
a uniform deceleration
to
,h=48
(from
J^=60,
measure
59),
measures
61 and 62
accelerate,
expressively
(note
the
pi
agitato)
and
narrowly,
before
descending
to
j>=42;
this is followed
by
a
further
acceleration
towards
JV=50
at the
beginning
of measure 64.
Again,
this
tempo
is not
established,
it
is
merely
a marker within a
continuously
undulating
timeline.
Variation,
in this
context,
is
achieved not (only) as the working through of material or by the
transformation
of
pitch
contour
but,
more
importantly, by
establishing
a
tension
between the
perceptual
flow of time and the
mapping
of
gestural
vocables. Version
1 sustains itself
through
line. The held note
may
become
punctuated by
smaller
gestures
but the
dispersal
and
development
of
energy
is
univocal,
with
all
players contributing
together
as a
single
ensemble,
despite
their
antiphonal positioning.
The result is a forced
lyricism
in which th