"The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics."

Composer, Composers, Opposition

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"The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics."

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"I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups."

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"The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing."

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"I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven."

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"The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics."

Brian Ferneyhough, British Composer

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

Brian Ferneyhough, British Composer

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"Many composers today don't know what the human throat is."

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, German Musician

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"Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism."

Howard Dietz, American Musician

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"I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena."

Edgard Varese, American Composer

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"When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists."

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"I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him."

Warren Zevon, American Musician

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Explore more quotes by Brian Ferneyhough

"If nothing is at risk, nothing is established."

Nothing

"Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events."

Change

"When I left Europe in 1987 I did so with the thought that my relevance as a composition teacher would benefit from a certain cool distance to certain tendencies I had been observing for several years with increasing disquiet."

Thought

"In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really 'about.'"

Music

"Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply."

Nature

"My own position is, that it is largely up to the work itself to suggest the nature of these referential points without dimensions in and through the processes by which the distance between them is maintained."

Nature

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

Reflection

"If the work of art is to continue pursuing the vision of both being in and of the world but nevertheless in some fashion being more than just one more object to the mounting clutter, this is the specific point, I think, where this must be assured."

Art

"Hence my obstinate emphasis on stylistic continuity from work to work rather than specific sibling relationships between the individual work and other members of its stylistic 'family' in the world outside."

Work

"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."

Society