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New Complexity
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In music, the New Complexity is a term dating from the 1980s intended to categorize primarily British composers seeking a "complex, multi-layered interplay of evolutionary processes occurring simultaneously within every dimension of the musical material" (Fox 2001).
gh often atonal, highly abstract, and dissonant in sound, the "New Complexity" is most readily characterized by the use of extremely complex musical notation.
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In music, the New Complexity is a term dating from the 1980s intended to categorize primarily British composers seeking a "complex, multi-layered interplay of evolutionary processes occurring simultaneously within every dimension of the musical material" (Fox 2001).
Music of the "New Complexity"
Though often atonal, highly abstract, and dissonant in sound, the "New Complexity" is most readily characterized by the use of extremely complex musical notation. This includes extended techniques, microtonality, odd tunings, highly disjunct melodic contour, innovative timbres, complex polyrhythms, unconventional instrumentations, quick changes in loudness and intensity, and so on. The density and difficulty of a "New Complexity" score presents enormous challenges for performers.
Why write such complicated notation? While most composers attributed to the "New Complexity" are experimenting with asymmetry and complexity of musical form, some composers associated with the school are attempting to write notation beyond the regular desire to compose a determinate sound world that is envisioned or imagined beforehand. For example, Michael Finnissy has referred to his scores as "action forms" or "obstacle courses." This means that the notation, though highly specific, practically speaking, is often a kind of choreography of physical gestures, not really governing the sound produced by the performer. A difficult figure is not designed to produce a specific sound, in this case, as much as it is supposed to be attempted. And other works, like Brian Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study No. 2 amplify and electronically process subtle sounds of the performer's body in the process of attempting to execute very difficult and detailed notation. The resultant effect (of hearing the detailed sounds of a performer struggle through a performance) can be said to critique the politics of classical music performance, since traditionally, performer's interpretations are subordinate to the demands of the composer. In the case of the Ferneyhough piece, the performer's "unintentional" movement becomes part of the musical work, paradoxically rendering the performer's moving body quite powerful.
Many performers of "New Complexity" find the extremely difficult requirements of these scores to be liberating in their very difficulty and abstraction, performing a lively critique of classical music performance practice (Cox 2002). Others have suggested, more radically, that the demands of "New Complexity" scores celebrate the relationship between composer and performer as role-playing a sado-masochistic relationship; the composer as sadist, the performer, masochist. Some believe that New Complexity is a "postmodern" rebellion from the sometimes conservative performance practice that evolved around the highly systematic and modernist "old complexity."
Institutional support
Since "New Complexity" composers usually depend upon extremely dedicated performers, like most living composers, they require institutional support. Some prominent figures are aided by support from academic and state cultural institutions, where composers are employed as professors, performers are employed in-residence, and commissions are supported by foundations. Of the Britons, this includes Barrett, Dillon, Ferneyhough, Finnissy and Redgate. However, the proportion of state support they receive is much less than that of composers working in tonal, neo-romantic, or minimalist idioms. Excepting a few older-generation figures, new complexity composers are, after several decades, still by and large consigned to the fringes of the European new music system. In the United States, "New Complexity" composers are more rare and even more marginal to the new music scene.
Origins and influences
Like many of the movements in the world of the musical avant garde, the impact of "new complexity" has extended beyond its British origin, having an impact on the work of composers and performers throughout Europe, the U.S., and the Far East. Among the influences are the Second Viennese School, Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Serialism, Sylvano Bussotti, Sorabji, Liszt, Luciano Berio, Iannis Xenakis, spectral music, and improvisation.
This movement can roughly be divided into those who studied with Ferneyhough (including Erber, Redgate, Durand, Hübler, Cox, Mahnkopf) and those who at the outset of their career were influenced by Finnissy (Barrett, Dench, Dillon and to some extent Emsley and Clarke); on the fringes of this movement are composers who have studied with Lachenmann (Schurig). Many of Finnissy's students, including Andrew Toovey, Morgan Hayes, Luke Stoneham, Alwynne Pritchard, Gabriel Erkoreka and James Weeks, are not generally associated so strongly with the movement. Generally, those influenced by Ferneyhough produce work with a fastidious attention to microscopic detail of individual material and dialectical interplay between gestures, whereas those influenced by Finnissy are more focussed upon the global aspects of the music, this also reflecting the influence of Xenakis. Finnissy's own works for multiple players frequently employ such indeterminate techniques as unsynchronised parts with no full score, in which the co-ordination between players is relatively free.
The origin of the name "New Complexity" is uncertain; amongst the candidates suggested for having coined it are the composer Nigel Osborne, the Belgian musicologist Harry Halbreich, and the British/Australian musicologist Richard Toop, who gave currency to the concept of a movement with his article "Four Facets of the New Complexity" (Toop 1988).
Few of these composers wholly approve of the term, which is used less often today than in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the work of most of the composers in question has become more diverse. In the UK, particularly at the instigation of ensembles Suoraan and later Ensemble Expose, the New Complexity were for some time frequently programmed together with then unfashionable non-UK composers including Xenakis and Feldman, but also such diverse figures as Clarence Barlow, Hans-Joachim Hespos and Heinz Holliger. Other quite different composers such as Christopher Fox were for a while tangentially associated with the movement, on account of the fact that they were frequently programmed together with them and acted as advocates for members of the movement through writings. A work of Fox was included on the disc Tracts by pianist Ian Pace, a disc often viewed as a quite uncompromising espousal of the movement (also featuring music of Ferneyhough, Erber, Dench and Barrett). Finnissy has also been noted for his advocacy as pianist of the music of Howard Skempton and Chris Newman.
There are various performers who have become to varying degrees closely associated with the movement: these include flautist Nancy Ruffer, oboist Christopher Redgate, clarinetists Carl Rosman and Michael Norsworthy, pianists James Clapperton, Nicolas Hodges, Mark Knoop, Marilyn Nonken, Mark Gasser, and Ian Pace, the Arditti Quartet, violinist Mieko Kanno and cellistsFranklin Cox, Arne Deforce and Friedrich Gauwerky, as well as ensembles Expose, Thallein Ensemble, Suoraan and ELISION Ensemble. The work of Ferneyhough and Dillon in particular has been taken by a wider range of European ensembles, including Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Accroche-Note, the Nieuw Ensemble, Ensemble SurPlus and Ensemble Contrechamps.
Notable composers
See also
Further reading
Numerous essays by and about composers associated with New Complexity can be found in the book series, New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Franklin Cox, Wolfram Schurig, co-editors (Hofheim: Wolke Verlag).
- Vol. 1: Polyphony & Complexity (2002)
- Vol. 2: Musical Morphology (2004)
- Vol. 3: The Foundations of Contemporary Composing (2004)
- Vol. 4: Electronics in New Music (2006)
- Vol. 5: Critical Composition Today (2006)
A collection of articles on most of the British members of the movement can be founded in the issue "Aspects of Complexity in Recent British Music", edited Tom Morgan, Contemporary Music Review 13, no. 1 (1995). The journal Perspectives of New Music also published a two-part "Complexity Forum," edited by James Boros, in volumes 31, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 6-85, and 32, no.1 (Winter 1994): 90-227.
- Boros, James. 1994. "Why Complexity? (Part Two) (Guest Editor's Introduction)". Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (Winter): 90-101.
- Friedl, Reinhold. 2002. "Some Sadomasochistic Aspects of Musical Pleasure". Leonardo Musical Journal 12:29-30.
- Marsh, Roger. 1994. "Heroic Motives. Roger Marsh Considers the Relation between Sign and Sound in 'Complex' Music". The Musical Times 135, no. 1812 (February), pp. 83-86.
- Redgate, Christopher. 2007. "A Discussion of Practices Used in Learning Complex Music with Specific Reference to Roger Redgate's Ausgangspunkte". Contemporary Music Review 26, no. 2 (April) 14149.
- Toop, Richard. 1993. "On Complexity". Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 1 (Winter): 42-57.
- Truax, Barry. 1994. "The Inner and Outer Complexity of Music". Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (Winter): 176-193.
- Ulman, Erik. 1994. "Some Thoughts on the New Complexity". Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 1 (Winter): 202-206.
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