# Difficult Time Signatures...



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Either the performer is a mathematical genius, or he's just making it up...


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Hamelin might be able to play this if transcribed for piano. Spill ink on paper and Hamelin can play it.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

How about 51/16?


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

So nice to be around folks who consider _truly_ difficult times,...difficult.

There's a song I love playing on drum set that for some reason a lot of non-classical musicians have a slightly tough time with,...it's in 11/8 time, mostly played as three beats of three followed by a beat of two, but with all sorts of variations played against each other.

Anyway,...just thought of this. Carry on. 'carry on, cause nothing really matters'


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

The guy is probably playing fairly accurately, though precision is considered pretty much impossible for that sort of score. I used to think Ferneyhough himself was a total charlatan but after watching a video of him conducting and talking through one of his pieces he seems to be acutely aware of the metres and rhythms in his music, so I guess if he can manage it then other people can. I still don't understand how anyone can enjoy it though.


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## GoneBaroque (Jun 16, 2011)

Well, I must be as weird as my wife thinks I am. Unlike jalex I enjoyed hearing both pieces. This this my first experience in hearing Ferneyhough's music, not at all unpleasant to my ears.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

GoneBaroque said:


> Well, I must be as weird as my wife thinks I am. Unlike jalex I enjoyed hearing both pieces. This this my first experience in hearing Ferneyhough's music, not at all unpleasant to my ears.


Not so much unpleasant in those pieces as incoherent (to me ofc). The piece in the OP is probably the most accessible piece I've heard by him.

Now the string quartets I find pretty unpleasant.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

What exactly is the point of that notation besides its own sake? Wouldn't it be easier to get rid of the barlines and time signatures and write "freely" at the beginning?


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Couchie said:


> What exactly is the point of that notation besides its own sake? Wouldn't it be easier to get rid of the barlines and time signatures and write "freely" at the beginning?


Apparently:



> It might help to note that Ferneyhough conceives meter more in terms of giving the composer/performer/listener a temporal space in which to create﻿ than in terms of a beat -- so such additive time signatures are acting more as a means to subdivide that space than to create the kind of steady beat that irregular tuplets would indeed obscure.
> 
> While the beat isn't irrelevant to Ferney (and he's certainly aware of it within his music -- to this end, there's a great video in which he conducts part of his newest flute piece,﻿ "Sysyphus Redux"), it also isn't the ultimate goal of meter -- in fact, he sees a situation in which beat is a central goal of meter as being somewhat inseparable from tonality.
> 
> p0lyph0nyXX


I hope that means more to you than it does to me.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Couchie said:


> What exactly is the point of that notation besides its own sake? Wouldn't it be easier to get rid of the barlines and time signatures and write "freely" at the beginning?


I read somewhere that its purpose (at least for some composers) is genuinely to make the music sound more tense by making the performer tense.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

It's not the time signatures per se which are the problem, but the crazy rhythms within each individual measure. 
Back in the 80s , I played Stravinsky's Rite of Spring under Joann Falletta, now music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and we all had to sweat through the fiendishly difficult constant changes of time signature. But this piece makes it look like a piece of cake !


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Polednice said:


> Either the performer is a mathematical genius, or he's just making it up...


One could always transcribe the monstrosity to MIDI making the accented notes a little louder, then try to memorize the result and play it back with the real feeling a musician can achieve. But even this sounds impossible to me. How does one memorize_ that_?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

kv466 said:


> There's a song I love playing on drum set that for some reason a lot of non-classical musicians have a slightly tough time with,...it's in 11/8 time, mostly played as three beats of three followed by a beat of two, but with all sorts of variations played against each other.


Sounds like Happy the Man's Service With a Smile, but I suppose they're far from only group to use that time signature that makes your heart want to skip a beat (in a wonderful way).


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