You write “The score is written not to provide some platonic ideal of The Music, but as instruction for a performer about how to move their body.”

This already assumes that the score represents material that has some musical worth. But in my opinion, Ferneyhough’s score has no musical worth whatsoever. Or put another way: whatever ideas he has, he’s incapable of HONESTLY creating SINCERE artistic expression from it. There’s a nice quote which shows this… displaying that Ferneyhough may have interesting thoughts, which he likes to articulate (see his talking and writing – which is often incoherent rubbish, but mildly interesting), yet the moment he wants to put it into music, it fails, since he does not understand the art of music.

Quote:
“[...] Ferneyhough’s risks may have seemed too great at times, his compositional solutions failing to live up to his stimulating, endlessly questing diagnosis of the problems as a highly engaging public speaker, self-confident and articulate.”

Perhaps he should stick to speaking his incoherent (but perhaps mildly interesting, yet definitely engaging and self-confident!) garbage, or put it into words; rather than try put it into music.

It’s missing the point to say something like “this piece is non-musical because it doesn’t allow for complete fidelity to the written score.” The score is written not to provide some platonic ideal of The Music, but as instruction for a performer about how to move their body. How those very complicated instructions play out in performance — in this case as a series of gestures with a flickering sense of pulse — is interesting, regardless of whether or not it’s completely by-the-book. When Ferneyhough says “the impulse-structure and its audibility are clearly variably perceptible in concrete compositional situations,” I think this is a part of what he’s getting at.

Also, reducing music and deforming it is a part of any sane, tractable learning process.

…take a look at this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTvzfP23zwk
where you can see Ferneyhough himself, reducing and deforming his own music to simple elementary beats.

Will anyone ever need any more proof that he has no MUSICAL understanding whatsoever?

It’d be great if you could talk Steven Schick into posting his work. I think lots of folk who would never otherwise get the chance would love to see it.

Thank you for linking to my YouTube posts. Sorry for disabling embedding. The ridiculous discourse and frivolity of comments and embedding often become so detached from my intentions in this piece that I decided to remove it. I do appreciate you taking the time to make a well-written post and comment about the piece. This rarely happens on YouTube. Lately I am finding more and more people taking the time to use YouTube as the impetus for serious study and discussion. Steven Schick is my teacher and mentor and hopefully he will also note the improvement in internet-based discussions about these video-documented performances. Perhaps he will endorse a posting of his own live recordings of Bone Alphabet onto YouTube. It’s a discussion I have had with him in the past.

I also have a hi-quality audio file of my studio recording of Bone Alphabet on my website. Please visit! rosskarre.synchronismproject.com

thanks again!

[below are some other interesting sites that use YouTube as a resource:]
http://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com/2006/06/12/contemporary-classical-music-on-youtube/
http://www.youtube.com/user/mondayeveningconcert