Brian Ferneyhough - Life

Life

Ferneyhough was born in Coventry and received formal musical training at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music from 1966–67. His teachers there included Lennox Berkeley, a respected teacher though a conservative figure who preferred the works of French impressionism to the internationalist avant garde. Ferneyhough was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1968 and moved to mainland Europe to study with Ton de Leeuw in Amsterdam, and later with Klaus Huber in Basel. Between 1973 and 1986 he taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Germany.

His profile rose in the middle of the 1970s, as the Royan Festival of 1974 saw the premiere of Cassandra's Dream Song, the first of several pieces for solo flute, as well as Missa Brevis, written for 12 singers. In 1975, performances of his work for large ensemble Transit and Time and Motion Study III were given; the former piece being awarded a Koussevitzky prize, the latter performed at the prestigious Donaueschingen festival. In many of these events he was twinned with fellow British composer, Michael Finnissy, whom he became friends with during his student days. In 1984 he was given the title Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Between 1987 and 1999 he was Professor of Music at the University of California at San Diego. As of 1999, he is William H. Bonsall Professor in Music at Stanford University. For the 2007–08 academic year, he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Harvard University Department of Music. Between 1978 and 1994 Ferneyhough was a composition lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and, since 1990, has directed an annual mastercourse at the Fondation Royaumont in France.

In 2007, Ferneyhough received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for lifetime achievement, which includes a 200,000 Euro cash award. In 2009 he was appointed foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.