Well, near the beginning of Ferneyhough's Second String Quartet, after the opening violin solo, the second violin plays several bars in rhythmic unison with the first, involving two level nested tuplet groups throughout (as well as extremely detailed dynamics, articulation, and so on). I reckon that's a lot harder to get together than would be the case with more simple metrical units.

But Ollie...that's not an answer to the question. What do you think of that example (it should have occurred to me too, and I'm sure there are similar ones)?

There are many other issues to address when playing music with a highly individuated approach to notation, such as Ferneyhough's. In particular, not just 'what does the notation tell us' but also 'why has he notated it this way' (which may vary from piece to piece, or at least between different sub-sections of his output). That can affect one's whole approach to performing the rhythms, and so on. The very first bar of Opus Contra Naturam includes four levels of nested irrational rhythms; also there is a different tempo marking for almost every bar afterwards (things like quaver/eighth-note=71.3, and so on). Devising strategies in order to somehow make sense of this notation is indeed a difficult process. Other parameters are also notated with a high degree of detail. Now, if there was less detail and more reliance on the performer's own choices in some of these respects, the difficulties would be of a different nature, to do with personal approaches to how one stresses certain notes, shapes lines, uses rubato, and so on. But in the case of Ferneyhough, it's not simply a case of all these things being already 'answered' by the score; in other cases there will be a degree of reliance upon shared common practices which can be executed intuitively (Beethoven was a pioneer of new performing practices and approaches to notation, but there is still a fair degree of commonality between those he expected and those which preceded him), whereas Ferneyhough's notation is radically counter-intuitive, aiming to channel performers' creative imagination away from such things. In the process of so doing, his music and musical notation focusses attention more acutely on the precise meaning of all sorts of basic symbols to do with rhythm, dynamics, etc., which occupy a more foregrounded position. These need personalised interpretation every bit as much as in any music.

In summary, I do think the rhythmic difficulties of Ferneyhough are of a different order, and would be surprised if many who either approach Beethoven Waldstein for the first time, or Ferneyhough for the first time, would really disagree?

Whilst what Ian has to say here is all very true, it is inevitably informed from the experienced performer's perspective, whereas I think that there is also from time to time the additional problem for the listener that, even when the performer has mastered such rhythmic intricacies as well is as humanly possible, there remains the question as to the extent to which even the most aurally adept listener may be expected consistently to attune him/herself accurately to the precise nature of those intricacies, especially when listening to a performance without a score? Whilst there can be no possible "correct" answer in respect of this issue (especially given its inherent "where do you draw the line?" implications), I cannot help but suspect that a law of dimishing returns may well have some relevance here in certain cases.

Best,

Alistair

If I may venture to suggest that listeners are unlikely to pick up quite a number of the details (in the sense they could discern how they are notated, certainly in a rhythmic sense), but if the performer were to get them wrong (at least to any substantial degree) they would hear the difference, without necessarily knowing exactly why. All of these details are means to ends rather than necessarily ends in themselves.

I am not advocating, as such, that listeners should all be able at all times to reconstruct a score from memory; for one thing, almost no listener could do that in most cases and, in any event, music is not generally intended for listening only by those who are musically literate (i.e. capable of reading a score); what I do say, however, is that I wonder if, the more complex the nature of certain rhythmic intricacies, the less certainty of their accurate realisation in performance the listener might derive from listening to them. In cases where the perceptible detail reduces below a certain extent even for the most adept listener, one might begin to wonder if certain of the notational conventions used in the score are more complex than is necessary for the purpose of putting across the composer's thoughts and intentions; the only trouble with this "argument" is, as I've implied before, where one can reasonably expect to draw the line in this regard, but I think that the issue nevertheless inhabits the rather wider world of the extent to which, in certain cases, the individual composer is him/herself able to hear, in his/her mind's ear and/or in performance, the full details of his/her work as written.

Best,

Alistair

One of the things that I always find striking is the number of composers, writing quite a range of different styles and at quite varying degrees of complexity/specification of parameters etc., is how many of them claim to be writing 'as simply as I can without betraying my style', etc. etc. Do posters here think this is a case of feeling obliged to talk down their difficulty so as not to be accused of making life unnecessarily hard for performers or listeners? Is it based on an assumption that economy of means is desirable - and how valid is such an assumption (or how meaningful, when some of the music it leads to is still highly 'complex' by any normal standards)? Or is something else at stake?