"Flee, Like An Explosion Of Heaviness." The Full Score (PDF). For Piano, Thein Piccolo Trombone and Contraforte

The Contraforte from Benedikt Eppelsheim

"Flee, Like An Explosion Of Heaviness."  

For Piano, Thein Piccolo Trombone and Contraforte

Bil Smith Composer

The Full Score (PDF)

Commissioned by The Santander Group

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5lqYq0XwE76R3U3eWUwcFFVUkU/view?usp=sharing

The score for "Flee, Like an Explosion of Heaviness" unfolds not merely as a set of musical instructions but as an experiential odyssey for the musicians—Piano, Thein Piccolo Trombone, and Contraforte—similar to the way a theatrical visionary might deconstruct the medium to reveal its core. Yet, unlike Brecht's intention to expose the mechanics of theater, this composition directs its dramatic essence into the physicality of the performers themselves.

The piece opens with an array of guidance icons, each one an invitation to interpret and explore beyond the normative expectations of notation. These symbols are imbued with an ethical potency, challenging the performers to engage with the music on a level that is both introspective and socially conscious.

This score is deconstructivist in essence, breaking down the established structures and expectations by employing a variety of techniques, the visual language of the score spans "narrative, romantic, axiometric, schematic, or completely abstract" visuals, each contributing to the overarching dialogue of the piece.

This is a composition that lives in a continuous dialectic between fact and implication, concrete performance guidance, and the suggested emotive or conceptual associations they evoke.

The musicians become akin to mendicant pilgrims, each carrying the entire weight and wonder of the theater within themselves. They navigate the score’s landscape with animistic devotion, embodying an apt analogy to the piece's compositional journey. The score's evolution is a pilgrimage across the vast terrain of human experience and artistic expression, where the performers' bodies are not merely instruments but sanctuaries of sound, housing the sacred essence of music and drama.

This embodiment of the theatrical in each performer reflects a unique compositional ethos. The performers are invited to become vessels of a drama that transcends the physical instruments in their hands. Their rigorously trained and sensitized bodies are tasked with channeling an entire edifice of musical theater, evoking a rich tableau of emotion and story through their every movement and note.

The spirit of "Flee, Like an Explosion of Heaviness" is one of nomadism and improvisation, characteristics that emerge in isolated, yet profoundly impactful moments throughout the performance. These moments spotlight the notational devices within the score, which, through their reliance on incongruity and paradox, animate the raw visual constructs with an enigmatic vitality.

As the piece progresses, these notational symbols and cues—spread whimsically across the page—spark flashes of understanding and illumination in the performers. It is within these ephemeral instances that the score breathes life, fostering a sense of living art that grows and evolves in the hands of those who interpret it.

"Flee, Like an Explosion of Heaviness," in its essence, champions a musical theater of the mind and soul, one that is carried within the performers and bestowed upon the audience not as a fixed narrative but as a journey of discovery. The score, through its visual and notational paradoxes, becomes a catalyst for this transformative process—a process where every musician is both a pilgrim and a storyteller, weaving tales not through words, but through the resonant language of music.