Brian Ferneyhough Quotes & Sayings

“I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go.”

“As a necessary prerequisite to the creation of new forms of expression one might, I suppose, argue that current sensibilities respond uniquely to the notion of exhaustion as exhaustion, although that does de facto seem rather limiting.”

“What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?”

“By reason of weird translation, many such sets of instructions read like poems anyhow.”

“Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view.”

“I'm perplexed, though, by your application of the term 'negative' to my figural imagery.”

“The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning.”

“Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.”

“Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.”

“This was possible only by dint of extended periods of frequently quite painful reflection and digestion.”