Brian Ferneyhough was born in Coventry, England on 16th January 1943. He received formal musical training at the Birmingham School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, London. In 1968 he was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship, which enabled him to continue his studies in Amsterdam with Ton de Leeuw, and the following year obtained a scholarship to study with Klaus Huber at the Basel Conservatoire.
Following Ferneyhough’s move to mainland Europe, his music began to receive much wider recognition. The Gaudeamus Composers’ Competition in Holland awarded Ferneyhough prizes in three successive years (1968-1970) for his Sonatas for String Quartet, Epicycle and Missa Brevis respectively. The Italian section of the ISCM at its 1972 competition gave Ferneyhough an honorable mention (second place) for Firecycle Beta and two years later a special prize for Time and Motion Study III which was considered the best work submitted in all categories.
Whilst not having written expressly for the ELISION Ensemble, Brian Ferneyhough’s work has been and continues to be a central influence on the ensemble’s work aesthetic. ELISION Ensemble has premiered several works and is one of the leading interpreters of Ferneyhough’s work today.
The ELISION Soloists disc on the ETCETERA label, portraits Ferneyhough’s work for solo instruments (flute, bass clarinet, percussion, guitar, cello) and set an international benchmark for the interpretation and performance of complex music. An upcoming disc (including Terrain, Les Froissements des Ailes de Gabriel, No Time At All and Incipits) furthers this bond with the music of Brian Ferneyhough.
Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, the Civica Scuola di Musica, Milan, the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague and the University of California, San Diego. In January 2000 Ferneyhough joined the faculty at Stanford University and was named William H. Bonsall Professor in Music there shortly afterwards. Students from all over the world have benefited from his classes at, among others, the biennial Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt and at the Fondation Royaumont near Paris.
Brian Ferneyhough’s first opera, Shadowtime, was premiered in May 2004 at the Munich Biennale to great acclaim. Based on the life and work of Walter Benjamin, Shadowtime explores some of the major themes of Benjamin’s work, including the nature of language, the possibilities for a tranformational leftist politics, and the role of materiality in art. A CD of Shadowtime was released by NMC records in 2006.