"Arculon" for Inderbinen "Tricky" Four Valve B Flat Trumpet

 

"Arculon" For Inderbinen "Tricky" Four Valve  B Flat Trumpet

Bil Smith Composer

2022

Published by LNM Editions

Link to Hi-Res PDF Score

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X_3r_TXn0qKg7TRmnvbEtF4gmg4u51wl/view?usp=sharing

"Vibrave" for Guitar. Bil Smith Composer

 

New Work For Vibraphone Inspired By John Baldessari. (Page 3 of 15)

New Work Inspired By John Baldessari

For Vibraphone

Bil Smith Composer

Published by LNM Editions

Person on Bed (Blue): With Large Shadow (Orange) and Lamp (Green), 2004. Three dimensional archival print with acrylic paint. 213×191 cm. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / London / Paris.  John Baldessari

John Baldessari - National City (W), 1996-2009. Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York (Left) / John Baldessari - National City (4), 1996-2009. Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York (Right). 

"Mimetized Disasters, Dan Quayle And His Evangelist Wife In A Hotel Room". The Score and Transparencies

"Mimetized Disasters, Dan Quayle And His Evangelist Wife In A Hotel Room". Page One

"Mimetized Disasters, Dan Quayle And His Evangelist Wife In A Hotel Room". 

Instrumentation:

Euphonium

Piccolo Saxophone

(Eppelsheim - Soprillo)

Contraforte

(Eppelsheim-Wolf)

Dynoresonant 

B Flat Trumpet

The Score and Transparencies

Bil Smith Composer

A Commission from Time Warner

"Mimetized Disasters..." explores a rhythm that abandons counting, that engages with speed and duration as primary rather than secondary occurrences, and that emerges through the interface between movement and resistance and from models of force, viscosity, and friction. 

In this work, I examine some of the limitations of existing rhythmic notation and, using examples from non-geometrical’ notational approaches. I had been struggling for some time with concerns about an increasing prevalence of notational grids, and

in particular the overwhelming dominance of the horizontal and the vertical in the notation of rhythm

Hyper- Appropriation:

The (The) inevitable violation.  A perfect conversion of the objective sum and a precise allusion.

Transparency One

Transparency

Neo-Conceptualism and Notational Syntax: "Luxtrapathy, Capitalocene, and the Logicade" for Trumpet and Cello

Rooted in the roiling undercurrents of neo-conceptualism, this work dares to be manifesto and riddle, a dense, sonic palimpsest whose aesthetics spiral into a ceaseless interplay with semiotics and ideology, calling forth a polyphony of discourse. Here, at the juncture where conceptual art marries the serpentine tendrils of post-structuralist thought and music's restless innovation, the piece asserts itself as an excavation.  It is a layered exploration into the shadowy caverns of signification. What does music mean? And beyond that, what does meaning, in its unsteady teetering, mean?

Aesthetic Framework and Methodology

Is the score a site? A map? A battlefield?  It is forged through installations of cool restraint, their affective charge concealed beneath the rigor of their form. Across both the monumental and the diminutive, these works reproduce texts with a precision that feels at once obsessive and detached. These fragments, pulled from psychoanalysis, communication theory, political science, jurisprudence, and economics, become something akin to artifacts in a reliquary. Yet, unlike static relics, they breathe, hum, and resonate, weaving themselves into the contrapuntal fabric of the musical narrative. The score does not simply use text; it inhabits it, inhabiting the contradiction of being at once a musical object and a critical aperture.

Visually, the score pulsates with an almost unbearable saturation.  Colors bleed, fragments clash, the whole shimmering as if on the verge of disintegration. This oversaturation is no mere flourish; it is the work's refusal of dogma, a deliberate counterpoint to the rigidity of traditional musical texts. Every note, every mark on the page, exposes the fissures within the system of musical notation itself. Universality becomes a fiction laid bare, its incompleteness revealed. This is not a document that demands to be played; it is a demand to be thought. To wrestle with the impossibility of its completeness is to participate in the work’s reimagining of what musical and intellectual creation can be.

Here lies not resolution but aperture: a gleaming, jagged invitation to thought and sound. What emerges is not music as we know it, but music as a question, endlessly refracting.

Aesthetic Framework and Methodology

The score is crafted through sober installations characterized by a consistent style. It comprises both small and large-format works where fragments of texts are meticulously reproduced. These texts draw on disciplines such as psychoanalysis, communication theory, political science, jurisprudence, and economics, weaving them into the fabric of the musical narrative. The use of text within the score underscores its dual function as both a musical artifact and a site of critical inquiry.

The visual and notational elements of the score reflect an oversaturation of color and meticulously arranged fragments. This aesthetic strategy not only enhances its visual impact but also serves as a counter-illustration to traditional dogmatic musical texts. The resulting work challenges the universality of musical notation, revealing its inherent incompleteness and opening up new spaces for thought and interpretation.

Neo-Conceptualism and Notational Syntax

The score's neo-conceptualist foundation addresses the ideological constructs embedded in systems of notation and their corresponding semiotic frameworks. By deconstructing these systems, I create a counter-linguistic critique that highlights the essential limitations of musical notation as a universal language.

This critique is supplemented by the juxtaposition of iconic and notational rules, allowing for reciprocal transfers of meaning between aesthetic and semantic information. The resulting "literal" intersection is where the work finds its core: a space where meaning is not purged nor confined to referentiality but exists in a dynamic exchange of iconic and linguistic structures.

Francesco Filidei’s Killing Bach

 

Francesco Filidei’s Killing Bach

By Bil Smith

I have a weakness for a composer who gets himself into trouble and then has the technique to make the trouble worth our time. Francesco Filidei’s Killing Bach is a particularly satisfying example. Even the title takes a risk. Announce that you intend to kill Bach and you have given the audience every reason to suspect that the publicity may be better than the piece. Filidei earns his title, although the question of whether Bach can actually be disposed of becomes increasingly complicated.

What interests me is how much affection an undertaking like this requires. You have to know where the weight is carried before you can begin pulling a structure apart. Filidei’s engagement with Bach’s organ music has that intimacy. He has described his approach as a test of Bach’s powers of construction, with the interventions becoming progressively more devious and trivial. I like the admission of triviality. It introduces a certain embarrassment into the enterprise, the possibility that the person attacking the monument may expose more about himself than about the monument.

That is where the piece becomes especially interesting to me. Bach is an awkward adversary because the music can withstand an extraordinary amount of interference. Its relationships continue to matter even when their presentation becomes unstable. Damage one aspect and another seems to assume its structural responsibility. As a composer, I find this both exhilarating and slightly irritating. There are days when one would prefer the past to be a little less competent.

Filidei makes something substantial out of that irritation. The aggression has a compositional purpose, and its effectiveness depends on the precision with which it is placed. An interruption changes according to what we have been allowed to expect before it occurs. Arrive too soon and there is little to interrupt; arrive too late and the gesture becomes commentary on something already complete. I admire the discipline involved in making disruptive behavior carry the argument of a piece. It is demanding work, particularly when the result must retain a sense of danger.

I also appreciate the refusal to keep the orchestra well behaved. There is an enormous amount of etiquette attached to that body of musicians, much of it so familiar that we cease to notice it. We accept its arrangements of authority, its collective seriousness, its procedures for presenting the past. Killing Bach gives that institution a rather uncomfortable job. It has to participate in an assault on music whose authority it has helped maintain. The situation has theatrical force before anyone adds an explanation.

The humor is inseparable from this discomfort, although I hesitate to call the piece a comedy. Filidei himself has said that he considered it tragic and was surprised that it was taken as an attempt to be funny. That observation has stayed with me. It suggests a gap between what a composer believes he is doing and what an audience can bear to recognize. Sometimes laughter is the most readily available response to an event whose implications take longer to arrive.

I would hate to tidy that ambiguity away. The work gains from allowing us to enjoy gestures that may deserve a more troubled response. There is pleasure in seeing something revered subjected to indignity, and there is an equally strong impulse to protect it once the attack begins. Filidei gives both impulses room. He leaves the listener in the awkward position of encouraging the disturbance while remaining attached to what is being disturbed.

The 2015 Donaueschingen premiere, performed by the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg under François-Xavier Roth, is preserved in the NEOS festival collection. At just under twenty-one minutes, the recorded work gives this confrontation enough space to become an argument with consequences.

My admiration for Killing Bach has a great deal to do with its lack of comfortable distance. Filidei is implicated in everything he does to this music. His knowledge enables the attack, and the attack keeps revealing the extent of his attachment. I recognize something of the composer’s predicament in that relationship. We spend years acquiring an inheritance and then have to discover what we can do in its presence.

There are plenty of tasteful ways to acknowledge Bach. Filidei has chosen a much more difficult encounter, and I am grateful for the nerve, intelligence and troublesome affection he brings to it. I would much rather spend time with a work prepared to risk looking foolish in the company of Bach than with another faultlessly respectful tribute. This one has something at stake.

Circos: Disruptive New Tablatures from Laboratorie New Music

"Troy"
for Chamber Orchestra

"This Is The Past That Somebody In The Future Is Longing To Get Back To"
for Baritone, Baritone Horn and Alto Flute

Once again we revisit our experiments with utilizing Circos visualization mapping software which we, at Laboratorie new Music have modified to create a unique tool for generating a new musical lexicon.

"Daniele Summerveal"
for deModas Slide trumpet, Uniharp (September Florynce Tuning)
and French Horn

"Cut Rate Pulse"
for Stash Flute, Linq B flat Trumpet, Spizzichino 20" Chinese
Modent Splash Cymbal and Oboe