Two new articles by Ian Pace, Lecturer in Music and Head of Performance, have recently been published. The first is a review-article entitled ‘Ferneyhough Hero: Scholarship as Promotion’, Music and Letters, Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 99-112, a comprehensive critique of Lois Fitch, Brian Ferneyhough (Bristol: Intellect, 2013). Drawing upon intimate knowledge of Ferneyhough’s music (which Pace has performed over a 25 year period, including the world premiere of the piano piece Opus Contra Naturam (1999-2000), and written about previously) and also of the wide range of scholarly and other literature on Ferneyhough, he argues in detail that this is a fundamentally flawed and hagiographic work more akin to promotional literature than scholarship, drawing wider conclusions about the problems of writing on living composers where writers’ primary concern is to flatter their subject and win favour in such a manner. A longer 35 000 word article, ‘Brian Ferneyhough: A Critical Overview of the Literature’, a thorough critical survey of all types of writings in four languages on Ferneyhough’s work, has recently passed through peer review and will be published in Issue 12 of the online journal Search: Journal for New Music and Culture later this year.

Of a totally different nature is another article by Ian Pace published in the April 2015 issue of Music Teacher magazine, entitled ‘Safeguarding’ (pp. 13-15). Following earlier writings (see here and here) in the wake of the conviction of early music conductor Philip Pickett. The article also reprints his Guidelines for Teachers and Students.