Showing posts with label Composition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Composition. Show all posts

Friday, December 6, 2024

"Surfaces For Inscription". For String Quartet. The Full PDF Score





"Surfaces For Inscription"

 For String Quartet

Bil Smith Composer

A Commission from Royal Mail PLC

Published on LNM Editions

Link To The Full PDF Score


In the exploration of "Surfaces For Inscription" for String Quartet, crafted with a paratonal notation system, the performers delve into the intricate play between power, knowledge, and the aesthetics of musical discourse. This piece, a convergence of symbols and sounds, becomes a fertile ground for the analysis of how musical texts govern the practices of interpretation and performance, shaping the very ontology of music itself.


The notation system, with its diminutive inscriptions, surrenders to the minuscule, thereby challenging our habitual desire to apprehend the work in its entirety. This act of reading, an exercise in disciplinary power, constrains the quartet within a framework of detailed scrutiny that paradoxically limits the comprehension of the piece's holistic essence.


This limitation is not a mere oversight but a deliberate strategy that engages the performer and the audience in a complex play of visibility and invisibility. By necessitating a choice between the granular and the gestalt, the notation system enacts a form of control, directing the attention and thereby the interpretative practices of its beholders. It becomes a panopticon of sorts, where the observed - the notation - exerts a reverse surveillance, dictating the terms of its own visibility.


The banishment of quasi-atmospheric modulations, produced by the abundance of vertical runoffs, represents not merely a technical innovation but a radical reconfiguration of the musical landscape. These vertical runoffs, rather than arresting the motion of the notation, magnify the dynamism inherent in the paratonal system. This is a metaphor for the relation between power and resistance, where the apparent constraints of the notation system serve not to freeze but to catalyze the gestural potential of the music.


The thick pools of notation, corresponding point by point to the musical structure, create a discursive field where meanings are constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed, always within the bounds of the system's logic.












Thursday, October 10, 2024

"Balastrada" for Two Sopranos


"Balastrada"

For Two Sopranos

Bil Smith Composer

Published by LNM Editions

A 'Vocal Fanfare' Commissioned by MediaTek

 

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The Conceptualization of Uncertain Compositional Devices is an Enduring One.


The conceptualization of uncertain compositional devices, understood as a set of possibilities, each assigned a specific notational value—a schema for performance that draws its origin from the very circumstances that gave rise to it, namely the game of chance, the die, and its faces—retains a lasting hold on our thinking about music and its indeterminate forms. This notion, which locates the act of composition within the dynamics of chance, operates not merely as a technical device but as a profound framework for understanding the engagement between contingency and intention.

In the realm of indeterminate composition, the 'occasional cause'—that is, the metaphysical spontaneity of the performer or gambler—continues to assert an intuitive grip on how we conceive of uncertain eventualities. It shapes both the interpretation and application of musical events across varied contexts. The performer's role, caught in the uncertainty of each moment, mirrors a broader existential engagement with the unknown, one that colors the relationship between agency and outcome.

However, stripped of these metaphysical associations, the meaning of composition remains as elusive as ever. Is composition an idealized construct, one that neutralizes the unpredictable through the abstraction of infinite possible trials? Or does it represent a real property of the world, a genuine propensity or random generator that functions independently of the human mind’s interpretative frameworks? This question points to the fundamental enigma of how we understand the role of contingency in artistic creation.

As composers, we dramatize this tension in the asymmetry between the wager and its outcome. On the one hand, we have the naive performer—analogous to the ordinary gambler—who approaches each roll of the die as a singular, hazardous adventure. Each note, each moment, is fraught with uncertainty. On the other hand, the composer assumes the role of the casino manager, who controls the overarching structure and never truly loses. The composer's position in the long game assures mastery over the risk inherent in each individual gamble, rendering the short-term fluctuations irrelevant to the final outcome.

Yet, what emerges from this dialectic is a deeper philosophical tension between the notion of chance as an epistemological deficit—something we confront because of our limited knowledge—and the idea of chance as an object of technical mastery, as a domain that can be quantified, predicted, and controlled. The notion of probability, and more recently, risk, provides a conceptual apparatus for this engagement. While the concept of risk may appear as a relatively modern invention, it carries with it far-reaching implications, not just for contemporary compositional techniques but for the entire intellectual framework within which we approach uncertainty in modernity.

Thus, the compositional process becomes a negotiation between two seemingly opposed conceptions: the performer's intimate, momentary engagement with chance and the composer's detached, overarching control of the totality. In this interplay, we find not just the logic of musical creation, but an enduring metaphor for how we, as human agents, confront the uncertainties of existence itself.




















Sunday, September 1, 2024

"Imperial Catechism". For Piccolo and Corno da Caccia. The Full Score (PDF)


Corno da Caccia

"Imperial Catechism"

For Piccolo and Corno da Caccia

Bil Smith Composer


Published By LNM Editions

(Laboratorie New Music)

Link to The Full Score (PDF)


Within the score for "Imperial Catechism" we find a notational approach that eschews conventional musical symbols in favor of permutations of geometric forms and symbolic ciphers. These elements are paired and displaced, crafting a visual and auditory puzzle that beckons the performers to engage in a deeper level of interpretation and interaction with the piece. This method not only challenges the performers to rethink their approach to music-making but also invites them to traverse the poles of expressivity, from surplus to subjugation, within the framework of the composition.


The score of is a veritable playground of artifactual expression, exploiting the fluctuating value and overavailability of certain images within the current visual economy. By presenting these images in an alternate visual context, the composition transforms what might otherwise be considered exhausted motifs into elements of a fantasy that serves as a vehicle for exploring the legitimacy or absurdity of the underlying phenomena. This approach stages a paradoxical confrontation between excess and impoverishment—or precarity—highlighting the tension between abundance and lack that permeates the modern compositional experience.


In considering the contemporary doxa of sculptural notational production, "Imperial Catechism" occupies a unique position. The piece can be understood as contextualist, engaging with questions of site-specificity, discursive, and institutional criticality.