Brian Ferneyhough - Lemma-Icon-Epigram (1981)
00:00 - James Avery
14:28 - Ian Pace
28:16 - Massimiliano Damerini
42:23 - Nicholas Hodges
The title of this work refers to a poetic form, the Emblema, developed most notably by the Italian poet Alciati during the first half of the sixteenth century. In general usage, the term is taken to mean an epigram which describes something so that it signifies something else. Later developments distinguish three components: a superscription (or adage), an image, and a concluding epigram in which the preceding elements are commented upon or explained.
In a note for the Venice Biennale, he continues this preface:
The tripartite structure of this baroque concerto has been reflected in the present composition, and serves as a vehicle for my present concern with the concept of musical "explication" in musical terms. The first section, essentially linear in character, separates out surface gesture and subcutaneous generational strategy almost entirely, resulting in a vertiginous flight away from the center, a de-condensation of material, which constitutes itself in the act of attempting to prevent its elements from disappearing over the edge of discourse. The second section imposes an "aesthetics of will" upon essentially static chordal material which makes several attempts, in vain, to escape its given frame. It reacts as a brittle carapace, reflecting back to its constituents through the mirror of themselves. The concluding part begins during the final decay of the second (poly metrics) and begins to assemble a practice of theory around the isolated positions of previous sections: the compositional/transformational techniques of Part I (themselves the "material") and the sonic identities of Part II are forced to confront one another in a short explosion of reconstruction, thereafter fading into silence, or turning back obsessively into themselves, perhaps suggesting the ultimately tautological nature of resolution.
Lemma-Icon-Epigram was given its first performance during the La Rochelle Festival on 28th June 1981, by Massimiliano Damerini. The work was commissioned by the Venice Biennale.