"Artifice and Pretense" for Solo Piano

 

"Artifice and Pretense" 

for Solo Piano

Bil Smith Composer

2024

Link To Large Format PDF Score

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14huALFf8FFZrIGY8zP37zUT8He19PTm5/view?usp=sharing

"Artifice and Pretense," is a piece crafted with a paratonal notation system. Much like a message from a distant world, encoded in symbols that flirt with the edge of comprehension, the pianist, faced with the diminutive inscriptions of the score, finds themselves at the threshold of an insurmountable task. To engage with each note is to attempt to decipher a language without a key, where each symbol, each gesture, holds the promise of revelation and the threat of further obfuscation. This meticulous scrutiny, while revealing the microcosm of complexity within each notational element, simultaneously obscures the grandeur of the composition as a whole. It is a paradoxical pursuit, emblematic of the human condition: the more one seeks to understand, the more elusive understanding becomes.

Alternatively, for the Pianist to absorb the piece in its entirety from a distance is to grapple with the inverse dilemma. One might capture the essence, the overarching structure, but in doing so, the individual nuances, the intricate details that give the piece its soul, evaporate.  This detachment, a necessary sacrifice for the sake of comprehension, mirrors the alienation of the individual from the intricacies of existence, where the whole can never truly be grasped without losing sight of the parts that constitute it.

The introduction of a new progeny of musical expression, through the banishment of quasi-atmospheric modulations and the embrace of vertical runoffs, represents a rebellion against the constraints of tradition. Yet, this rebellion is not without its own contradictions. The gravitational pull of these runoffs, designed to liberate the gestures of the notation, instead imposes a new form of confinement. The score, with its thick pools of architectural diagrams, suggests an order, a system of coordinates that promises orientation within the chaotic sprawl of the music. But this system serves only to ensnare further, to heighten the sense of disorientation.

The performer, standing alone before the piano, becomes a figure of tragic heroism, engaged in a Sisyphean task where the act of performance is both an assertion of agency and an admission of its futility.