On the entropy circuit: Brian Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study II

Abstract

This article discusses aspects of the relationship between the vocalising cellist and the live electronics in Brian Ferneyhough's piece Time and Motion Study II. These include: first, the suggestion that the relation, rather than being oppositional as Ferneyhough himself has suggested, is actually one of a combined cyborg identity, albeit one that will end in mutually assured destruction; and, second, the idea that the electronics act as an ‘entropy circuit’, both absorbing and preserving the piece's potential gestural energy, and simultaneously guaranteeing that the energy will be exhausted by removing its gestural element.

Keywords:

• Ferneyhough, Brian
• Haraway, Donna
• Cyborg
• Entropy
• Gesture

Notes

[1] In more recent performances by Neil Heyde (cello) and Paul Archbold (electronics), the analogue tape loops have been replaced digitally by MSP tools (tapin∼, tapout∼, record∼ and play∼), which obviates difficulties such as the use of variable playing speeds on different machines and simplifies the reliability of the electronic element. Simultaneously, though, the physical theatrical presence of two large tape machines and the cellist's multiple assistants is lost. I am grateful to John Hails for his observations regarding these issues in performance.

[2] Though I do not intend to discuss at any length the relationship between Time and Motion Study II and Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, it seems clear that various connections can be made. The combination of festivity and ritual here, e.g., appears to relate to Artaud's assertion that ‘HUMOUR AS DESTRUCTION can serve to reconcile the corrosive nature of laughter to the habits of reason’ (Artaud, 1958, p. 91).

[3] It is worth adding that the male gender is not chosen arbitrarily. The vocal parts of Time and Motion Study II specifically call (although on only two occasions) for a baritone voice. However, since the lowest given note is the A flat at the top of the bass stave, it remains entirely conceivable that the piece could be performed by a female cellist with an alto voice, with the attendant alterations this would make to the effects of ring modulation. This being said, Ferneyhough refers in the preliminary remarks to the score to ‘the performer or his assistants’ (emphasis added).

[4] The disc in question is Ferneyhough: Various Works, Etcetera KTC 1070.

[5] Certainly differing arguments would hold sway with the respective outputs of James Dillon, Richard Barrett, Michael Finnissy, Klaus K. Hübler or Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, to name only a few examples of composers who have, in varying ways, been saddled with the ‘New Complexity’ label.

[6] Quoted as an epigraph at the beginning of ‘Epicycle, Missa Brevis, Time and Motion Study III’ (Ferneyhough, 1995b, p. 86) and in an interview with Joël Bons (Ferneyhough, 1995f, p. 228).

[7] The sentence in question begins on page 15 of the score, a bar before the change of meter to 3/8 combined with a tempo change to sub. ♪ = 42. It continues until the end of the first system on page 16, concluding with a 12 second fermata.

[8] See, e.g., Derrida's engagement with Rousseau (Derrida, 1974).

[ 9] It should be added here that this is not an all-encompassing totalising system. At least two other sections demand further attention in this context. First, the opening three and a half bars of Sequence 3 see the bow transferred to the left hand and a plectrum used in the right. Midway through the fourth bar the plectrum is discarded and the bow returned to the right hand. Second, although it seems that ♪ = 36 has been taken as a metronome marking on two occasions to indicate moments of physical information loss, there is a third, seemingly unrelated use of the same marking, within Sequences 4 to 8, with the indication ‘suddenly glassy, febrile, like spider's web in wind’.