Showing posts with label Contemporary New Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contemporary New Music. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2026

"Semio": A Reappropriation of Mathias Spahlinger's "128 Erfüllte Augenblicke" for Voice, Clarinet and Cello. Bil Smith Composer.



"Semio"  Bil Smith Composer

"Semio": A Reappropriation of Mathias Spahlinger's "128 Erfüllte Augenblicke" for Voice, Clarinet and Cello. Bil Smith Composer. Various pages of the score.


Mathias Spahlinger

































Friday, August 14, 2026

The Post-Conceptual Composer and Institutional Composition


The work of the post-conceptual composer is a contradiction intended to surprise both the listener and infinity. Ideas are the way a listener will refer to this surprise. The composer will state the idea as ludicrously infinite. 
Successful completions generally have been found to mitigate infinity. I predict we will see one such mitigation via Institutional Composition. This is a newly minted term meant to function as a post-conceptual commentary on infinity as well as the various institutions and assumed normalities of composing and/or a radical disarticulation of the institution of composition (radical is notationally understood in its relation to radix which means to get to the root of something). 




For instance, assumptions about the supposed aesthetic autonomy or neutrality of science fiction and fantasy are often explored as a subject in the field of literature, and are then historically and socially mapped out (i.e., ethnographically and or archaeologically) as discursive formations, then (re)framed within the context of The Infinite Library itself. 


As such, Institutional Composition seeks to make visible the historically and socially constructed boundaries between inside and outside, public and private.  Institutional Composition is often critical of the false separations often made between distinctions of taste and supposedly disinterested aesthetic judgment, and affirms that taste is an institutionally cultivated sensibility that may tend to differ according to the class, ethnic, sexual and gender backgrounds of music's audiences. 




The resulting work is meant to sound good. Sometimes the work suggests the form of the composer. I am grateful for the way a score presents itself as an autobiographical product of its creator and his/her place in the infinite. And yet, I have found this gratefulness tends to go awry in expressionist composition. 


It looks better when the score may more easily become a metric time element, a kind of objective tool that is an intrinsic part of the composer who is out to avoid subjectivity. This type of work is free even to be a belief, something that shows the size of a metric time element as representative of a belief.  The composition is representative of that belief.








Thursday, August 13, 2026

"Sensual Perspectivisation... "Laboratorie New Music: Compositeur Abstraite"



Score "Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion".  Pages 38-39.
Pages are sliced in four equal parts representing each of the quartet members.


Laboratorie New Music.


Listen to the Music Here:




Score Page from "Thick Channel Black Bourbon" for Solo Voice


New Laboratorie New Music Article on "Medium"





"Identical Intended Comments" for Contrabassoon and Soprano Saxophone





Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion for String Quartet.
Bil Smith Composer.
Invited Nomination Candidate for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music


Colophon (Performance Notes for "Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion"


Score "Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion".  Pages 38-39.
Pages are sliced in four equal parts representing each of the quartet members.

Matrix Plan for Publication.  "Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion"
Acetate Portable Overlay Tablature, 16 Ribbons (15 white, 1 pink)


Circular die cut into score with dice to determine sequence and
timing for each of the 16 sections.  The 16 sections are defined  by the white ribbons.


Score Pages: Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion

Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion


Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion.  Score pages 178-179

Explorer, Producer, Stoic, After Your Fashion.
 Page One of Colophon (Performance Notes)
with inference to Piero Manzoni to the right
(to be interpreted by the quartet with codicological structure



"Apparent Inscience of One Another's Project"
A cartographic circumfluent tablature constructed for two
instruments of converse provenance.


"Mysterious Eroticism of the Multi-Storied Car Park"
A Fanfare for Piccolo Trumpet in 'A'
Bil Smith Composer


"Delista" (Code Name) A new text score under construction
with the assistance of Siyang Lu


"Altoo" for Alto Flute and open for reinterpretation with different titles.  Whitespace.






Score Page (Loose Pages) from "Thick Channel Black Bourbon" for solo soprano




Undone
Scored for Six Isolated Instruments.
"Unlike the geometric eye of rationalized sight, which one can direct and focus at will, the physical eye, as we have seen,  (visual models are far too frequent and integral to permit so easy a dismissal) is one member of the body which does not always obey the will as it continually generates images and opacities on its own."




"Minatory Spectre for Alto Clarinet,  Alto Saxophone and Trombone





"Come Live With Me and Be My Love" 
a Circos Simulacrum of Censorship Project






"Semio": A Reappropriation of Mathias Spahlinger's "128 Erfüllte Augenblicke"  for Voice, Clarinet and Cello. Bil Smith Composer. (Page 99)