"Pillars Asymmetrica"
for Schilke E3L-4 4 Valve E Flat Trumpet
Bil Smith Composer
Link to Full Score PDF
Broke and Broken Cogita: Language as Score, Sound as Resonance
To approach Broke and Broken Cogita for tenor voice is to navigate a space where the boundaries between language, sound, and meaning are blurred, entangled, and constantly renegotiated. The score is less a set of instructions for musical performance than an intricate architecture of signifiers. It situates itself in the fertile territory where sound emerges from language and language folds back into sound, creating a recursive cycle of interpretation that both constructs and deconstructs the musical act.
Language, as the primal vessel of human intimacy and expression, becomes the nucleus of this work. Words are not merely vehicles for communication but sites of action—places where meaning is fragmented, recomposed, and infinitely deferred. This composition, then, is not a linear narrative but a fractured discourse: a multiplicity of voices, histories, and emotional resonances intertwined within the subjectivity of both performer and listener.
Structure: Words as Communicative Apparatus
The structural uniqueness of Broke and Broken Cogita lies in its deliberate prioritization of words as the primary medium of expression. Here, the linguistic and musical are not distinct realms but mutually constitutive forces. The score, rather than prescribing melodic and rhythmic content in detail, organizes itself around textual fragments, phonemes, and linguistic gestures. These are scaffolded in such a way that the performer must engage with language as a corporeal, rhythmic, and sonic material.
This approach positions the tenor voice as both narrator and instrument—a duality that forces an interrogation of the boundaries between speech and song. Each utterance becomes both a musical event and a semantic proposition, inviting the performer into a space of active interpretation. The performer’s engagement with the text is physicalized, requiring not only vocal execution but an embodied navigation of the tensions between meaning and sound.
Language as a Resonant System
Embedded within this framework is an implicit acknowledgment of the power of language to transcend its acoustic and semantic boundaries. Language in Broke and Broken Cogita is not just heard—it is felt. Words become sensory triggers, evoking tactile, emotional, and cultural associations that ripple outward into the interpretative field. By privileging language, the composer creates a score that resonates not only in the ear but also in the viscera, engaging the performer and listener on deeply subjective levels.
This process calls attention to language's polysemy. A single word or syllable may carry multiple valences depending on its articulation, its placement within the score, and its interaction with surrounding sounds. Here, meaning is not fixed but destabilized—a fluid construct that invites imaginative participation from all who encounter the work. The performative act becomes a site of negotiation, where the tenor enacts an intimate, individualized reading of the score, inflected by their own history, identity, and subjectivity.
Performance and Materiality
The physicality of performance in Broke and Broken Cogita extends beyond the voice. Words are rendered as sonic objects that are shaped, molded, and fragmented. The tenor becomes a medium through which language is materialized into soundscapes. This process mirrors the pliability of language itself—its ability to be disassembled and reconfigured, much like a sculptor reshapes raw material into form.
By emphasizing the corporeal dimensions of language, the score demands a heightened awareness of vocal timbre, breath, and resonance. It is not enough for the performer to enunciate; they must embody the linguistic gestures, channeling their physicality into the production of meaning. Each vocalized word carries with it the weight of its cultural, historical, and emotional lineage, rendered tangible through the act of performance.
Historical Echoes and Subversion
Broke and Broken Cogita does not operate in a vacuum; it dialogues with the Western canon while simultaneously subverting its conventions. The use of the tenor voice, a timbral register often associated with heroism and emotional intensity in Western operatic tradition, is reframed here. Instead of adhering to the traditional narrative structures of arias or recitatives, the score fractures these conventions, reassembling them as an open-ended exploration of resonance and temporality.
This approach recalls artistic practices that interrogate the high-art canon by infusing it with alternative narratives, such as Richard Kennedy’s Fubu Fukú. In that work, Kennedy’s reinterpretation of operatic tropes served as a vessel for a queer Black retelling of colonial history. Similarly, Broke and Broken Cogita embeds layers of cultural and historical resonance into its linguistic fabric, offering a space where performers and audiences can interrogate and reimagine the histories embedded in language and sound.
Temporal Disjunction and Deferred Meaning
Central to the score’s ethos is its treatment of time. Traditional musical structures often guide listeners through a linear progression of events; here, time is fractured, recursive, and indeterminate. Words are presented as fragments, echoes, and palimpsests, with their meanings emerging only in the interplay between performer, score, and audience. This temporality echoes the Derridean notion of différance, where meaning is never fully present but always deferred, existing in the interplay between elements.
This temporal disjunction creates a dynamic, unstable space where each performance becomes a unique act of interpretation. The tenor voice, in navigating this terrain, constructs a sonic narrative that is as much about absence and silence as it is about sound. The audience, in turn, becomes an active participant, filling in the gaps and imbuing the work with their own subjectivities.
Language as Continuum
Broke and Broken Cogita is a work that transcends the traditional boundaries of musical composition. By placing language at its core, it invites a profound engagement with the resonant capacities of words—capacities that extend beyond their sonic or semantic properties to encompass the full spectrum of human experience. The score’s fractured, recursive structure mirrors the complexities of communication itself, offering a space for exploration, subversion, and reimagining.
In this interplay of sound, meaning, and performance, the composition asserts that language is not merely a tool of expression but a continuum—a dynamic system through which humanity articulates its deepest intimacies, its cultural legacies, and its infinite possibilities. Through this lens, Broke and Broken Cogita becomes more than a musical work; it is a profound meditation on the act of communication itself, a conversation between past and present, performer and audience, sound and silence.