Ferneyhough’s ‘Chûte d’Icare’: Inter-Part Contagion

A previous CMT post about inter-part communication and diffusion phenomena between parts caused one reader to ask whether I’d ever looked at Brian Ferneyhough’s ‘Chûte d’Icare’, a 10-minute septet (clarinet, flute, oboe, vibraphone/marimba, piano, violin, and cello) composed in 1987-88. It’s a fascinating and, to me, beautiful piece…



    [50-sec clip, Nieuw Ensemble, Brian Ferneyhough, ‘Chûte d’Icare’, 1.6MB MP3]

E ach individual part ‘clings’ for a time to its idiosyncratic ‘status quo’, and then it decamps for elsewhere, perturbed by utterances emitted by its neighbors. There is a threshold of temporal and spatial ‘proximity’ that allows one part to affect others. If you are further away than that proximity limit, then you continue on your autonomous way. But if you are within the proximity radius, then you will likely be ‘infected’ by your neighbor(s).

T he ‘infection’ (with the expressive motif(s) emitted by adjacent part(s)) takes hold, lasts for awhile (and alters the affected part’s own utterances), and then subsides. The ‘infected’ part recovers. Or, alternately, it does not recover (“mortality”) and is reincarnated with new ideas, new expressions some bars later.

H ere is a little spreadsheet that illustrates a simple 3-state “S-I-R” (susceptible-infected-recovered) simulation of epidemic spread—the sort of contagion we hear in ‘Chûte d’Icare’. You can click on the screenshot to download it and play around with it.


T he point of doing simulations and mathematical analyses like these is not to get lucky and say “Aha! I get how it works!” or “The composer employed an algorithmic/formulaic tool to compose this!” Instead, the point is to be able to figure out a new gambit that could go into a composer’s toolbox, to deliberately create a visceral, real sensation of diffusion, or contagion, or some other natural process in her/his compositions—as part of a palette that can embody/represent Nature and call into question our roles in life and the cosmic [non-]scheme. Something that could be used either as an aid to composing, or as a convenience for testing and editing a work-in-progress, to confirm that the work does in fact accurately embody or emulate the intended natural process that is the subject or expressive element of the overall work. Alternatively, the point may be to help [some of us] find deeper meanings in the work, or prepare for listening/performing in such a way that we feel more at home with its expressions or patterns.

• Ferneyhough page at Wikipedia
  
• Nieuw Ensemble website
  
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    [50-sec clip, Harrie Starreveld, Brian Ferneyhough, ‘Mnemosyne’, 1.6MB MP3]