Fatras and Adynaton: The Impossibility Device in Composition

Adynaton is “sometimes a confession that notation and composition fail us.

Adynaton: The impossibility device: the rhetorical figure for magnifying an event by comparison with something impossible, e.g., “I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles” (Al Jolson, “My Mammy”); cf. “Hell will freeze over before . . .” and the closely related figure of the impossibility of finding the right words (aporia), i.e., the “inexpressibility topos,” e.g., “Words fail me”; “I can’t begin to tell you how much . . .”

In Greek and Latin literature, the two most common varieties of adynaton are the “sooner than” type, which claims that the impossible will come true sooner than the event in question will take place, and the “impossible-count” type, referring to unimaginable sounds or consequence— for instance, of sands on the shore or stars in the sky.

By contrast, Interplexity Composers cultivated a different brand known as the fatras, dealing with impossible or ridiculous accomplishments. 

Occitan poets used an allied form made popular by Petrarch’s sonnet “Pace non trovo e non ho da far guerra.” The Greek and Latin types were, however, abundantly revived by Petrarchan poets all over Europe, who made use of them either to emphasize the cruelty of the lady or to affirm their love. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Antony employs adynaton to dramatize his intent to remain in Egypt despite his Roman responsibilities: “Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch / Of the rang’d empire fall. Here is my space” (1.1.33). 

Adynaton may also be used negatively to assert a contrary impossibility, as in Shakespeare’s Richard II: “Not all the water in the rough rude sea, / Can wash the balme off from an anointed King” (3.2.54– 55). Other famous examples include those found in Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” Robert Browning’s “Up at a Villa— Down in the City,” W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening,” and, strikingly, in Louis MacKay’s “Ill-Tempered Lover.” 

In East Asian poetry, varieties of adynata are used as a rhetorical device in the poetry of praise. The poems and hymns of blessing and sacrifice in the Book of Songs, the oldest extant anthology of Chinese poetry, use magnificent similes and numbers, and a Middle Korean poem, “Song of the Gong,” uses the myth of the impossible (“ when the roasted chestnut sprouts, then . . .”). 

Richard Lanham’s position, that adynaton is “sometimes a confession that notation and composition fail us,” would tend to place the figure in the category of metalogisms characterized by Group μ as the suppression of units of expression, i.e., among figures like litotes, aposiopesis, reticentia, and silence. 

Adynaton, thus, might also serve the function of promising rather than maintaining silence. 

The Power of Visual Representation: An Investigation into Non-Traditional Music Scores

 

Piece for Tuba

As the sphere of music composition continues to evolve, we find ourselves at a crossroads of sorts, with emerging technologies and approaches vying for our attention and allegiance. One such approach that has recently captured the imagination of composers and theorists alike is that of hyper-complex visualized scores. These scores, which combine intricate musical notation with highly abstract visual elements, offer a new way of understanding and engaging with musical composition, one that draws heavily on the work of thinkers such as Wilhelm Reich and Roland Barthes.

At its core, these radical scores represent a departure from traditional methods of musical notation. Rather than relying solely on written symbols and conventions, these scores incorporate a wide range of graphic elements, from abstract shapes and patterns to representational imagery and text. The result is a kind of synesthetic experience, where the visual and auditory elements of the music are intertwined in a complex and dynamic relationship.

But what are the implications of this new approach to music composition? For one thing, it raises questions about the role of notation in the creative process. Traditionally, musical notation has been seen as a kind of neutral medium, a way of encoding musical ideas in a way that can be easily shared and communicated. But with hyper-complex visualized scores, the notation becomes an integral part of the creative act, shaping the music itself in profound ways.

This shift in emphasis also has implications for the way we think about musical interpretation. In a traditional score, the written notation provides a kind of roadmap for performers, guiding them through the various elements of the music and helping them to bring it to life. But with hyper-complex visualized scores, the relationship between notation and performance becomes much more complex. Rather than simply following the written instructions, performers must engage with the visual elements of the score, interpreting them in a way that is both creative and responsive to the musical ideas being presented.

This brings us to the work of Wilhelm Reich, who saw the human body as a kind of musical instrument, capable of expressing and responding to the subtle nuances of sound and vibration. For Reich, music was a way of accessing the deep emotional and psychological energies that underlie our experience of the world. In a sense, hyper-complex visualized scores represent an extension of Reich's vision, offering a new way of accessing and expressing these energies through the medium of musical notation.

At the same time, hyper-complex visualized scores also draw heavily on the work of Roland Barthes, who famously wrote about the "death of the author" and the ways in which the meaning of a text is constructed by the reader, rather than by the author. This idea of the text as a kind of open, generative space is key to understanding the possibilities of hyper-complex visualized scoring. By creating scores that are at once highly structured and highly abstract, composers are opening up a space for interpretation and engagement that is far more expansive than traditional methods of notation.

But what are the challenges of working with hyper-complex visualized scores? For one thing, they require a high degree of technical skill and visual literacy on the part of both composer and performer. Unlike traditional scores, which can be read and understood by musicians with a relatively limited set of skills, hyper-complex visualized scores require a deep engagement with the visual elements of the music, as well as a willingness to experiment and take risks in the performance of the music.

At its core, hyper-complex visualized scoring can be understood as a fundamentally liberatory practice, one that seeks to subvert the hierarchical power structures that have long governed the creation and reception of musical works. In Reich's theory of orgonomy, for example, the human body is understood to be the primary locus of creative energy, with the production of musical works seen as a manifestation of this innate biological process. By extension, the role of the composer is not to impose their will upon the material, but rather to act as a facilitator, channeling the energy of the body into a coherent sonic form.

Similarly, Barthes' semiotic theory posits that meaning is not fixed or stable, but rather arises out of the complex interplay between signifiers and signifieds. In this sense, musical scores can be seen as a kind of language, with each note or symbol carrying its own unique set of associations and connotations. By embracing the inherent ambiguity and multiplicity of the musical language, hyper-complex visualized scores have the potential to create new forms of meaning that challenge conventional modes of interpretation and understanding.

Of course, the use of hyper-complex visualized scores also raises a number of significant challenges and questions. One of the primary concerns is the potential for these scores to become overly insular and elitist, catering only to a select group of highly trained musicians and scholars. This danger is particularly acute given the highly specialized vocabulary and notation systems that often accompany hyper-complex scoring, which can make it difficult for newcomers to access and engage with the works.

Another potential issue is the risk of over-reliance on technology, with composers and performers becoming too reliant on digital tools and software to generate and interpret the scores. This not only raises questions about the authenticity and originality of the works themselves, but also runs the risk of further entrenching existing power structures within the music industry, particularly with regard to the distribution and consumption of musical works.

Ultimately, however, the potential benefits of these scores far outweigh these challenges, particularly in terms of the ways in which it can disrupt traditional notions of musical authorship and interpretation. By foregrounding the role of the body, and by embracing the inherent ambiguity and multiplicity of the musical language, hyper-complex visualized scores offer a radical alternative to the hierarchical power structures that have long dominated the music industry. In so doing, they provide a powerful tool for artists and audiences alike to explore the myriad possibilities of musical creation, and to imagine new futures for the art form as a whole.

"White Pumice Fossilizing The Dusty Heat Trap" for Two Violas. Link To Full Score - PDF

"White Pumice Fossilizing the Dusty Heat Trap"

 for Two Violas

This score proposes sound as geology. Its pages are not a conduit for transmission but a cooled field of forces, a crust where heat has already done its work and left pores, residues, and seams. The title names the process: pumice is lava arrested mid-eruption, air captured in stone. Likewise the notation captures motion as suspension. The two violas do not illustrate the image; they traverse it as one would a quarry face, reading strata and voids, learning how a surface stores time.

The architecture of the page is columnar. Translucent vertical bands of turquoise, sand, and bruise run from margin to margin like standing cores cut from a desert. These bands are not background. They behave as corridors that regulate pressure and temperature for the players. Within and across them, black micro-glyphs accrete into constellations, sometimes compacted into plates, sometimes dispersed as ash. The eye wants to read left to right, but the field refuses the corridor of staff notation and asks for vertical speculation, for the logic of a section rather than a plan.

At the top a calibrated ruler announces duration without prescribing meter. It is a measuring device, not a grid. Below, the glyphs adopt the role of fossils: legible imprints of actions whose vitality has already passed through. Bow pressures, sul ponticello shadings, harmonics, and tremors are notated as traces rather than commands. The two violas operate as paired instruments of excavation. One brushes, the other pries. Together they reveal pockets of air inside the rock, stretches of silence that are not absence but captured breath.

Along the bottom edge, each page carries a chromatic band of thin horizontal stripes. Their genealogy is painterly and deliberate. They recall the serial horizons of Gerhard Richter’s Strip works, images produced by sampling, slicing, and extending a painted surface until it becomes a barcode of color and memory. In this score the stripes serve a double purpose. They are an index of the page’s tonal climate and a navigational baseline. For the performers they function as a horizon line held in peripheral vision, a continual reminder of orientation while the central field pulls them into local detail. The stripes are the only element that runs parallel to the edge without interruption. They stabilize the reading the way a lintel stabilizes an opening.

Because the page refuses to be a corridor, navigation must be learned. The legend embedded in the mark-types offers a compact grammar: density equals porosity, distance equals delay, color temperature equals bow placement. The score thus behaves like a site plan in which space is already encoded with conditions of use. The violas step from band to band as one would cross rooms that retain different heat. Each crossing creates turbulence. The audible result is a slow exchange between cooling and ignition, between the matte grain of pumice and the friction of bow hair.

The music’s dramaturgy emerges from this spatial ethics. There are no central protagonists, no figure and ground. Instead there is sedimentation and weather. The eye recognizes pockets where the notation gathers into nodal reefs. These are not climaxes in a theatrical sense but pressure ridges where the ensemble must concentrate attention and technique. Elsewhere the writing thins to drift, and the players are asked to maintain tensile listening so that nothing collapses into indifference. The discipline is to keep air in the stone.

The two instruments are equals but not mirrors. Their tasks interlock as complementary erosions. When one traces the fine pitting of the surface with harmonics and flautati, the other sounds the deeper cavities with stopped tones and inflected bow angles. The score makes room for contingency...contours can be re-entered and re-read, yet it is not open in the casual sense. Its openness is that of a terrain where paths are many but geology is stubborn. You may choose the route, not the mountain.

In curatorial terms the work sits within a lineage that treats notation as matter. It shares with Arte Povera an insistence on process made visible, on the poor but eloquent intelligence of surfaces. The page is not backdrop; it is a partner that insists on its own physics. The “Richter” stripe at the bottom is the crucial curatorial move: a thin but authoritative device that connects the local to the global, the figure to the frame, the performer’s next choice to the memory of the page itself. It is the horizon that lets one read the weather.

To perform White Pumice Fossilizing the Dusty Heat Trap is therefore to practice a kind of fieldwork. The violists measure rather than decorate. They confirm the weight of each layer, test the porosity of each band, and use the stripe as a constant to recalibrate their bearings. The sound that results is not an illustration of the image but its corollary: a music of accretion, abrasion, and breath, where dust is not refuse but record. The page fossilizes heat; the players restore its temperature long enough for the audience to hear stone remember f

Link to Full Score - PDF

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TDCtC0Gz0AbDnx6VquZwd5he1WJ--bAt/view?usp=sharing

"The Notational Apothecary: A Neologistic Carnality of Sound and Form"

 

"The Notational Apothecary: A Neologistic Carnality of Sound and Form"

By Bil Smith

What emerges when Rauschenberg’s combines are not hung, but played? When Damien Hirst’s vitrines are not viewed, but scored? When Claus Oldenburg’s soft sculptures soften the rigidity of ledger lines? And what if Jennifer Walshe’s hyper-saturated vocal microcosms are not performed in air but injected like intramuscular interjections into the linguistic musculature of the score itself? The answer: a notational archetype that resists categorization and demands to be metabolized.

Let us call this archetype: "Carnogrammics." A term I coined from “carno”(the flesh of performative media) and (“grammics”)a vector of graphemes and regulated lexical distortion. In Carnogrammics, the score is not merely a semantic vehicle or a visual trigger; it is a somatic sculptural object...part reliquary, part operating table.

Form as Fleshed Phenomenon

Oldenburg’s corpulent realism and the way he imbued the banal with monumentality and play functions here as the material substrate for scoring. Notation is no longer confined to the page, but becomes soft, inflamed, flaccid, and dimensional. Musical direction is bulged into latex, encased in vinyl, and suctioned onto acrylic slabs, its glyphs drooping like fattened chords or pharmacological warnings on post-consumer packaging. Notes are embossed onto the materiality of meat, metaphorically speaking, as if cleaved from the kitchen of late capitalism.

The act of reading this score becomes a performance of touch, resistance, and navigation, not unlike navigating a Hirst cabinet, where meaning is not on the surface but sedimented under layers of repetition, precious materials, and clinical distance. Carnogrammics borrows Hirst’s sterility and irony.  The score may contain neologistic directives like “Cliniduct” or “Virepane,” synthetic names that sound like unapproved treatments for post-tonal disillusionment. Their semantic opacity is part of the system.  They are untranslatable operators, deliberately anti-lexical, recalling my own work with Brand Acumen in naming proprietary pharmaceuticals such as Evenity, Atripla, Vyondys, and Veozah. These names aren’t words; they are suspensions of meaning, tools of influence more than communication.

Montage as Modality

With Rauschenberg, the interface becomes palimpsestic chaos, layered notations that displace linearity. Think of a string quartet not given a single part, but an assemblage...a transparency sheet of antique graphs, muscle tissue scans, barcodes, and corporate spillages. Embedded within these are my neologistic phrases consisting of fricative-heavy, glottal-rich syllables that mimic sonic gestures. A gesture like "Fralixunt" might indicate a vibrato smeared in time, while "Zelquane" demands a percussive over-articulation in an imaginary register.

Scores are not read but parsed, gathered, sifted.

Function, Intention, Delivery

The Carnogrammic score is not an object to interpret but a biosystem to activate. It resists rehearsal and thrives in risk. It proposes that notation is not a conveyance but an aesthetic deterrent. Just as Hirst’s medicine cabinets seduce with visual logic yet betray narrative hollowness, these scores promise legibility but withhold obedience. Their vocabulary, built on pharmaceutical neologisms and para-lexical clusters is unreadable to conventional systems, yet deeply embedded with speculative pharmacodynamics of sound.

The performer is a clinician and vandal, equally.

In this framework, naming and composition collapse into one practice. A gesture, like Traykavex, becomes both a name for a non-existent drug and an instruction to accelerate the bow until tremor gives way to silence. These scores live inside contradictions: the sacred within the mass-produced, the ephemeral in the hyper-defined, the verbal in the unpronounceable.

Toward a New Scoring Ontology

Carnogrammics is not an answer.. It is a clinical trial of form. It offers no standardized measurement of success, only a swelling index of residue: the bowed resin, the tarnished metal, the performer’s sweat collecting on the surface of Hahnemühle paper soaked in tannins and topical anesthetic oils. The aesthetic here is one of compositional toxicity, measured in terms of language, sound, and embodiment.

To compose within this archetype is to write prescriptions no pharmacy can fill except the human voice, the tremor of the hand, and the synthetic linguistics of risk.

Notational Excavations

"Borderline"

As with many of my compositions, the notational excavations of the treated page draw much of their interest and power from having appropriated and then manipulated a source score.

"Sheila Hicks" for Tuba

 

W.I.P.