Name: Cassandra's Dream Song, Brian Ferneyhough by Jenni Hogan
Duration: 7 min 21 s
Description: The rather infamous solo flute piece written by Brian Ferneyhough, its best to just listen to it to be honest.....

in the bathroom

Commissioned by London Contemporary Music Festival.

Recorded live at London Contemporary Music Festival at Hackney Church by the BBC. Broadcast on BBC New Music Show December 2024.

bass and voice - Gwen Reed
guitar - Tara Cunningham
drumkit - Theo Guttenplan
piano - Edward Henderson

Real (demo with Gwen)

Commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in celebration of their 50th Anniversary as part of their 2023/24 Season' Grand Tour of Scotland with principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. Premiered at Perth Concert Hall and Theatre on 27th September 2023. Recored live at Glasgow's City Halls on 29th September 2023.

The Origin of Colour takes its inspiration from a short story in Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics series called Without Colours, which tells a surrealist tale of the creation of colour on Earth. In the beginning, the world exists in whites and greys where objects and people are shapeless entities bumping into each other in translucent static hues. Suddenly a meteor rips through the sky illuminating the world for the first time highlighting purple chasms and orange mountains; earthquakes emit blue fluids to form the first oceans; the violet Sun sets for the first time; the first black night reveals the stars; newly formed pink clouds unleash golden lightning; post-storm rainbows appear and now the world is full of blue skies, yellow fish, green trees and red fires. Calvino’s story is, above all, a love story between two characters who find and lose each other in the chaos of the Earth’s formation of colour. The dazzling quality of these new colours leaves one particular character in fear of this chaotic new world, and they decide to hide in a cave where colour did not reach. One final earthquake collapses the entrance to the cave leaving them isolated from their lover and the colourful new world on the other side.

This new showpiece for Chamber Orchestra attempts to capture Calvino’s creation story in a musical journey that maps the creation of colour on Earth from the hollow, translucent landscape described by Calvino to a kaleidoscopically vibrant world which is both beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

Thumbnail: From 5 panels of artwork inspired by The Origin of Colour by artist Kirsty Matheson

The Origin of Colour for Chamber Orchestra (Live Excerpt with SCO & Maxim Emelyanychev)

Commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as part of their 21/22 Season. Premiered by Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Sir James MacMillan on 11th November 2021 at Queen's Hall, Edinburgh. This excerpt was recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and performed live by Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by SCO Principal Guest Conductor Andrew Manze on 1st November 2024 as part of the Nordic Music Days Festival 2024 at City Halls, Glasgow.

Death in a Nutshell is inspired by Frances Glessner Lee’s “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death” which are a series of 20 re-creations of real-life crime scenes that she intricately fashioned in minute detail within dollhouse-sized rooms. These macabre miniature death-scenes were painstakingly handcrafted by Lee throughout the 1940/50s as a learning tool in forensic and crime scene investigation, and often depict a domestic scenario furnished in 1940s décor in which the body of a doll (or dolls) can be found. Each diorama presents a set of clues regarding the events that led up to the doll’s demise including witness statements and important details about the time of year and even the temperature of the room; all of which offer clues to the solution of a puzzle that can be solved from the objects found within each room. These studies have proved so successful that they are still used today and are housed at the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Officer in Baltimore, where the true solutions are kept firmly under lock and key.

This piece focuses on 6 of Lee’s grisly Nutshell Studies in an attempt to represent 6 different crime-scenes as musical miniatures that hint at a variety of elaborate clues and evidence which form their potential solutions. The work is constructed like a house in which we promenade from room to room, starting in the parlour and wandering all the way to the attic, where we find a deceased doll (or dolls) in each room as well a new mystery to be solved. This morbid tour unfolds as follows:

1. Malleus Dei (in the Parsonage Parlour)

2. The Colossus (in the Kitchen)

3. A Drowned Sorrow (in the Dark Bathroom)

4. Interlude pour l’esprit de l’escalier (on the Stairs)

5. The Family Plot (in the Three-Room Dwelling)

6. Hanging upon your every word (in the Attic)

Leave no stone unturned, no note unscrutinised, “convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell”, in this macabre collection of miniature pieces inspired by a dollhouse unlike any other.

Death in a Nutshell for Chamber Orchestra (Excerpt) - 1.Malleus Dei (in the Parsonage Parlour)

Imagined Balcony Scene #2 is part of a series of pieces where I reimagine classic tropes from theatre and film. The first ‘Imagined Balcony Scene’, as one may of guessed, is the classic Romeo and Juliet scene, and the second, my ‘re-imagining’, makes Juliet a little more angry than in the original. She is annoyed her new love isn’t there. She shouts his name into the empty courtyard. She vents all her frustrations of teenage life as her new world collapses. She sings her song into the air. She was ready to give up everything, her name, her family, but would she now.
The piece also takes inspirations from a friend of mine’s recent trip to Verona, where they went to the ‘real’ balcony only to find it closed. The frustration of not being able to access the ‘real’ version of the famous ‘imagined’ balcony resulted in them re-enacting the original scene in every other space they could find. Hilarity ensued as they over dramatised the situation of both the young lovers, and themselves. This second story may also be a slight re- imagining of an almost true story.
Imagined Balcony Scene #2 was premiered by Conrad Marshall, at St. Michael’s, Ancoats, Manchester, on 4/5/17 and was commissioned as part of Psappha’s on-going ‘Writing For...’ project. Many thanks to the ensemble and everyone involved in their guidance and commitment to this project.

Live Recordings

Imagined Balcony Scene #2

Penrose is a brief study for string trio that explores obsession and compulsion through short processes mixed with my own, romantic intuition. 

 The piece is divided into three short sections played without pause, each being lead by one of the three performers. The first, ‘Oh Darling! Don’t get sentimental…’ is focuses on the violin. It contains a rising phrase that grows increasingly tense as more notes are added, but always ends with a sweet descending, emotional set of falling thirds. This builds until the whole ensemble is infected by the tension and the objects they have obsessed over in the course of the section begin to distort.  

 The second, ‘Pure Crow II – in memoriam’ is a re-writing of a short string quartet written after a close friend died. The violin and viola swirl and shimmer through harmonic rotations and ever-fluctuating rhythms, whilst the cello sings mournful objects around them. 
 
The final section, ‘Hôtel du Lac, Tunis’ uses the brutalist structure of the eponymous structure to create a musical form full of sinking consonance, as the viola sings an ever-shortening song, over the drones played by the remaining players.

 Penrose was commissioned by my dear friends Freya, William and Josephine for the 17th edition of their concert series Listenpony. It was premiered at The Crypt on the Green, London, by Apartment House on 28th January 2018

Liam Mattison (London, January 2018)

Penrose

Live recording of the first performance.

I. A cat went to the shops ellipses
II. Hollywood Adaptation - Transition
III. Hull Fair - Trance
IV. 9.25 am (Saturday)
V. 8.50 am (Friday) - Repentance
VI. Mother's Perfume 

ADULTHOOD is a piece about reflection and nostalgia; it draws its themes and structures from the re-contextualisation of childhood fantasies and memories through the eyes of my adult self – innocent games become drinking games, early mornings move from waking up full of energy to waking up tired and, sometimes, hungover, huge fairground rides become small and constricting. The piece was written at a time of my life when I had far too many grown-up things to think about – moving house, working nine to five, opening up emotionally to others – and so it felt natural to escape these pressures by writing a piece harking back to a simpler time, but perhaps not longing for those times to return.

The first performance of ADULTHOOD was programmed alongside a work by my old conducting teacher, Gregory Rose, in a festival that contained music that he taught me, alongside works that were completely new to me. The piece draws on my half remembrances, or complete reimagining of those conducting lessons and exams, whilst also pushing my own musical language in a new direction.

ADULTHOOD is the 2018 Presteigne Festival/Royal Philharmonic Society Alan Horne Memorial commission. It was premiered by George Barton (percussion) and Siwan Rhys (Piano) as part of the 2019 Presteigne Festival, at St. Andrew’s Church, Presteigne on 26/08/2019.

Live @ Presteigne 2019

ADULTHOOD - World Premiere (Live @ Presteigne Festival 2019)

The rather infamous solo flute piece written by Brian Ferneyhough, its best to just listen to it to be honest.....

Cassandra's Dream Song, Brian Ferneyhough

A second mix of my piece 'In the absence of heather'

In the absence of heather rotates some invented and some found musical objects through an ever changing harmonic cloud to reveal the intimacies and intricacies held within each. Half-remembered melodies and harmonies coalesce - folding and collapsing into each other, pining to remember their own intent and purpose whilst sympathising with the forgotten wishes and paths of others.

During the composing of the piece, I was thinking a lot about those emotionally unbearable harmonic suspensions in early music, and how it feels to experience that yearning for resolutions in all aspects of life. At the time of writing this note, resolution and the outside world seem tangibly close but still so far away, so the longing for a resolve continues.

In the absence of heather was commissioned by Ret Frem Ensemble during the COVID-19 and received an online premiere on 20th July 2020, filmed in isolation.

In the absence of heather

experimental solo/chamber performer...[recent] highlights; SJSS/BBC1/BBC radio 3/QEH/barbican/darmstadt/principal sound/tete a tete...improviser/deviser/collaborator [in] film/dance/electronics/loop pedal/irish folk...PhD @ University of Leeds

Cassandra's Dream Song, Brian Ferneyhough

Jenni Hogan

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