Brian Ferneyhough

String Trio (1995)

Violin, Viola, Cello
Duration: 23 minutes
First performance: November 1995, Victoria Hall, Geneva, Trio Contrechamps
Commissioned by the Festival d’Automne

Ferneyhough has pointed out that the string trio has a history “vastly different” from that of the quartet,
and has suggested he’s responded to the difference in casting his trio as “a series of interlocking
large-scale units and a series of shorter ’interventions’,” making something which “more closely
resembles a cassation or baroque trio sonata than any of the sonata-form derivatives typical of the
quartet”. One perhaps should recall here that the few great string trios include Mozart’s Divertimento in
Eb (in six movements¾¾though, to be sure, the first of them is a sonata allegro) and Schoenberg’s
single-movement work of 1946, which conspicuously departs from the sonata ideals of his quartets.

But it seems it wasn’t only the medium that compelled Ferneyhough’s formal choices. “I have been
utilizing the ’patchwork’ programme extensively,” he goes on, “in order to approximate to what I term
’objectivizing’ expressive strategies¾¾that is, music whereby expression arises from a perception
of the technical workings of the formal devices (perhaps also their ramified misperception)...This
piece is therefore something of a Zwitterding: it attempts to ally and align complex polyphonic procedures
(and demands) with a certain fragility or brittleness in the semantic domain, as well as an ambiguous
levity in the formal frame.” So because expression is shoved from the surface into the mechanics, the
surface may be left as a fractured skin over rich inner energies, and because those energies are not
allowed to run their course but are compartmented, the resulting switchback structure may seem
enigmatic.

Curiously, in view of what Ferneyhough says about his non-sonata design, the “large-scale units” do
form something like a set of four sonata-style movements. First comes “a long section in which each
instrument presents a kind of activity typical of it, which is then taken up by the others.” The viola
begins, mesto and for the most part pianissimo, introducing a world of flickering colours, quarter tones
and rhythmic instability. Violin and cello join in, and are left by themselves before a couple of bars just
for the cello. There’s then a much longer tutti at faster speed, and an even longer violin solo, with brief
additions from the viola. Not much space is left for the three instruments together to respond: the

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 Brian Ferneyhough

ensuing cello solo may seem to summarize, but it’s also opening the next phase, which it continues
while the other two slowly rouse themselves from chordal interjections.

The music breaks off at an immense crescendo for Intervention I/1, “a slow, almost incorporeal set of
eighth-tone weavings,” followed by the moto perpetuo of Intervention II/1 and the non-vibrato, strict-
tempo chords and crescendos of Intervention III/1. Then comes the second main section, “a set of
variations at a somewhat high tempo¾¾almost a kaleidoscopic scherzo.” Intervention I/2 restores the
eighth tones, which continue in the third main section, Largo desolato. Intervention II/2, which arrives
next, has the speed and fluency of II/1; Intervention IV is a short passage of quiet tremolos. The final
main section, which follows, is a “quasi-rondo whose successive polyphonic strands are twice repeated,
then eliminated.” In Intervention III/2 the earlier chords are splitting, but the sound is even more intensive,
and the segment comes to a grating conclusion. Two more Interventions complete the piece: II/3, still
fast but now rhythmically unpredictable, and I/3, extensively developing the eight-tone inflections.
Since the Interventions have now taken over so wholly from the ostensible main substance, we begin
to wonder whether it really was the main substance after all.

© Paul Griffiths, 1995. The use of this material in any form is protected by copyright and must be
cleared with the author at The Old Bakery, Lower Heyford, OX6 3NS, England. Tel: +44 (0)1869
340584; Fax: +44 (0)1869 347953

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