Codex Corpus Pharmaceuticum: Mechanics, Function, and Ontology of a Drug-Centered Musical Script

Toward a Pharmacopoeial Notation

This ongoing project represents a radical interrogation of the boundary between the somatic and the sonic, currently manifesting as the primary development of Volume 1. This inaugural collection is composed specifically for the piano, an instrument re-imagined here as a high-precision diagnostic interface for the administration of the Codex. In this context, the piano functions not as a tool for artistic expression, but as a delivery system for complex frequency-based formulations where the traditional note-head has been supplanted by the rigid, clinical iconography of the pharmaceutical pill.

The work posits that the score is a living pharmacopoeia, where each pill-shaped glyph carries the weight of regulatory finality and metabolic intervention. These icons of modern synthesis...the capsules, tablets, and perforated solids represent discrete, quantifiable units of time and affect, implying a half-life and a rate of absorption rather than a simple musical duration. The "ingestion" of the score by the performer translates these chemical artifacts into acoustic events, where the physical properties of the pill...its density, surface architecture, and "solubility" dictate the mechanical onset and decay of the sound.

The breath and range of this system are anchored by the symbolic power of the accidental. Sourced from a vast array of historical and microtonal traditions including the Just Intonation of Ben Johnston, the archaic flourishes of the Renaissance, and the hyper-precise Spartan-Sagittal systems act as essential catalysts. They represent the "molecular" fine-tuning of the performance, modifying the primary pharmaceutical directive with a staggering depth of historical and biological subjectivity. As Volume 1 unfolds, the pianist navigates a landscape where the ancient geometry of the pitch meets the cold certainty of the dose, treating the act of performance as a controlled trial that seeks the exact point where notation becomes a prescription for the human spirit.

This notational system proposes a fundamental reorientation of how musical information is encoded, perceived, and acted upon. Rather than treating sound as an abstract temporal phenomenon to be mapped onto staff, pitch lattice, or gestural instruction, it adopts the pharmacopoeia as its primary conceptual and visual substrate. Musical events are framed not as notes to be executed but as administered conditions, dosed states, and regulated interventions within a sonic body.

At its core, this system understands notation as a technology of control, mediation, and belief. Traditional Western notation encodes idealized relationships between symbol and action, presuming a stable subject who reads, interprets, and performs. By contrast, pharmacological imagery foregrounds ingestion, latency, metabolism, tolerance, side effects, and systemic uncertainty. Sound is no longer something simply produced. It is something introduced, absorbed, resisted, and transformed over time.

Mechanics of the System

The functional center of the notation is the pharmaceutical object itself. Pill-like forms act as the primary carriers of musical instruction. Their geometry, surface articulation, scale, and internal segmentation encode temporal span, density, dynamic pressure, and spectral emphasis. Rather than representing pitch directly, these objects define conditions under which pitch behavior may occur. Duration is implied through mass and volume. Articulation emerges from surface complexity or smoothness. Density and repetition are suggested by modularity and patterning rather than counted beats.

Type functions as a secondary but critical layer. Text does not label sound in a conventional sense. Instead, it operates as regulatory metadata. Like pharmaceutical labeling, it conveys dosage, constraints, and thresholds rather than expressive intention. The typography is deliberately clinical and procedural. It instructs without persuasion. It informs without interpretation. In this way, language becomes a stabilizing force that tempers the visual excess of the system while reinforcing its bureaucratic authority.

The symbolic accidentals play a decisive role in destabilizing expectation. Sourced from disparate historical and speculative tuning systems, they refuse a single lineage or hierarchy. Johnston, medieval solmization, Renaissance chromatic theory, sagittal systems, Wyschnegradsky’s micro-intervallic expansions, Klein-Zimmermann variants, and other notational frameworks coexist without reconciliation. These symbols no longer function as precise pitch modifiers alone. They operate as signals of deviation, contamination, or noncompliance within the pharmacological field. Each accidental marks a departure from normative dosage rather than a simple alteration of frequency.

Functionality and Performance

Functionally, this system does not demand uniform realization. It invites calibrated interpretation. Performers are positioned less as executors and more as clinicians or test subjects, navigating a score that prescribes conditions rather than outcomes. Decisions emerge through exposure and accumulation rather than linear reading. Repetition does not guarantee stability. Increased familiarity may instead produce distortion, fatigue, or resistance.

Time in this system is non-linear. Like pharmacokinetics, it acknowledges delayed onset, overlapping effects, and residual presence. A notated object may remain active long after it has been visually passed, just as a drug continues to act after ingestion. Silence is not absence but clearance. Change is not modulation but interaction.

Philosophical and Ontological Implications

Ontologically, the system reframes music as a form of administered knowledge. The score becomes an instrument of belief as much as instruction. To read it is to accept a set of assumptions about efficacy, authority, and compliance. The pharmacopoeial metaphor is not decorative. It exposes the degree to which musical systems, like medical ones, rely on trust in abstract representations that promise predictable effects while masking variability and risk.

By grounding notation in pharmaceutical imagery, the system aligns itself with broader questions of agency and autonomy. Who controls the dose. Who defines normal response. What constitutes an adverse reaction in sound. The visual language of medication carries cultural weight related to care, dependency, optimization, and surveillance. When translated into notation, these associations destabilize the romantic notion of musical expression and replace it with a model of managed intervention.

Purpose of the System

The purpose of this radical notation is not to replace existing systems but to reveal their underlying assumptions. It foregrounds the fact that all notation is a fiction that produces real consequences. By drawing from the aesthetics and logic of pharmacology, it makes explicit the transactional nature of performance. Sound is administered. Bodies respond. Outcomes vary.

In doing so, the system resists virtuosity, expressivity, and narrative closure. It privileges condition over gesture, state over phrase, and consequence over intention. The pharmacopoeia becomes not merely a metaphor but a structural foundation. Music is treated as something taken into the body of a performer and audience alike, something that alters internal states rather than illustrating external ideas.

This is notation as regulation, as speculation, and as quiet coercion. It does not promise cure or clarity. It offers a controlled exposure to uncertainty and asks what it means to perform under such terms.

Hypermetric Notation

 

Hypermetric Notation: The Interstitial Logic of Complexity

In the rarefied domain of contemporary new music, the advent of Hypermetric Notation marks a moment of rupture and recalibration in the relationship between composer, performer, and score. Hypothetical as its origins may be, its conceptual terrain is a labyrinth of overlapping densities, topological disjunctions, and interpretative infinities. Functioning both as a tool of precision and an apparatus for obfuscation, Hypermetric Notation embraces a methodology that privileges the interaction of multiple graphic systems, each imbued with its own semiotic weight and systemic intricacies. The result is a notational paradigm that eschews linearity in favor of dynamic polyreferentiality.

At the Edge of Representation

At its core, Hypermetric Notation operates on the premise that traditional staff-based systems are insufficient to articulate the multifaceted demands of contemporary compositional thought. What emerges is a system of representation where metric structures become spatialized, embodying a hyper-functional simultaneity that renders each notational layer autonomous yet interdependent. Metric frameworks, rather than being confined to the grid of temporal units, now expand into hypermetric planes presenting spatial matrices that exist within and between conventional durational hierarchies.

For example, a single hypermetric "unit" might encode not only rhythmic subdivision but also performative gestures, pitch constellations, and dynamic modulations, all mapped onto a single, multi-dimensional glyph. These glyphs, consisting of dense conglomerates of micrographic symbols eschew simplicity in favor of exhaustive specificity, serving as hermeneutic keys to the compositional fabric. The notation itself, then, becomes a performative object, demanding not just realization but intellectual excavation.

The Performer as Decoder

Hypermetric Notation shifts the locus of interpretative agency decisively toward the performer. The performer is no longer merely a translator of composerly intent but an active participant in reconstructing the work’s latent structure. The graphic systems within Hypermetric Notation, while ostensibly prescriptive, often yield layers of ambiguity and moments of indeterminacy that resist immediate rationalization. Thus, the performer must oscillate between deciphering its algorithmic exactitude and responding intuitively to its aesthetic provocations.

Take, for instance, the inclusion of nested graphic systems: a grid overlay that maps rhythmic polyphony against a secondary system of kinetic vector lines indicating directional movement within pitch space. These overlapping systems demand a hyper-awareness of micro-temporalities and macro-gestural arcs, producing a performance that operates in simultaneous realms of technical rigor and imaginative interpretation.

Functional Density as Expressive Terrain

The density of Hypermetric Notation is not an end unto itself but a mechanism for creating expressive tension. The juxtaposition of layered notational systems, each competing for primacy, engenders a productive dissonance that mirrors the music’s inherent contradictions. The graphic surface becomes a site of conflict, where clarity and opacity vie for dominance, compelling the performer to navigate its labyrinthine architecture with both analytical precision and aesthetic intuition.

For example, the notation might juxtapose proportional rhythms encoded in fractal grids with graphic shapes whose curvature suggests interpretative phrasing. The hypermetric framework thus transcends its function as a mere representational device, becoming a medium through which the work's conceptual underpinning are materially enacted.

The Syntax of the Impossible

One of the defining features of Hypermetric Notation is its deliberate courting of impossibility. Brian Ferneyhough has often spoken of notation as an "exhortation to the impossible," and Hypermetric Notation amplifies this ethos to an extreme. By encoding overlapping layers of temporality, gesture, and spatiality, it constructs a system whose full realization perpetually eludes the performer. Yet it is precisely in this elusiveness that its aesthetic potency lies. The score becomes less a set of instructions and more a speculative architectur.  It becomes a framework for reimagining the act of performance as a site of negotiation, failure, and transcendence.

Hypermetric Notation as Aesthetic Object

While its primary function is to facilitate musical performance, Hypermetric Notation also asserts itself as an aesthetic object in its own right. Its graphic systems, reminiscent of architectural blueprints or data visualizations, invoke an uncanny sense of order and disorder. The hypermetric plane, with its intricate layering of grids, glyphs, and spatial trajectories, invites prolonged visual engagement, blurring the line between musical score and visual artwork. This dual identity underscores its conceptual ambition: to challenge not only how music is performed but also how it is seen and understood.

Toward a Hypermetric Aesthetic

Hypermetric Notation represents a radical rethinking of the score as a site of interaction between composer, performer, and listener. Its functional density, far from being a mere technical exercise, reflects a deeper philosophical inquiry into the nature of musical time, space, and perception. In embracing the complexities of hypermetric systems, contemporary composers assert the necessity of pushing the limits of notation, not as an exercise in virtuosity but as an exploration of music's potential to articulate the ineffable.

As the boundaries between visual and sonic art forms continue to dissolve, Hypermetric Notation stands as both a testament to and a catalyst for this convergence. Its challenges are as immense as its possibilities, demanding of its practitioners not only technical mastery but also a willingness to inhabit the interstitial spaces it creates. In doing so, it opens new pathways for musical thought...pathways that are as rigorous as they are revelatory.

Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash for Treble String Quartet

 "Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash"

Notational Topographies and the Transfigured Spatialization of Time

This score, in its most rudimentary conceptualization, exists as an interlocutionary medium between composerly intent and performative instantiation. Yet, far from serving as a mere cartographic delineation of musical events within a preordained chronology, the score operates as an autonomous aesthetic entity.  It emerges as a topology of gestures, inscriptions, and semiotic resonances that both encode and resist interpretation.

In Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash, I advance a radical recalibration of the notational archetype by invoking a dual-modal system wherein quantitative serialism and photographic indexicality coalesce into a stratified matrix of performative potentialities. This work, composed for string quartet, not only problematizes traditional taxonomies of rhythm, articulation, and gestural transmission but also articulates a methodology wherein the visual domain, predicated upon the works of Hanne Darboven and Thomas Ruff, becomes inseparable from the aural resultant.

The tabular inscription in Perisetta manifests as an interstitial form between Darboven’s numerological topographies and Ruff’s quasi-clinical representations of physiognomy. This aesthetic lineage gestures toward an intricate systematization of time, wherein numerical constructs dictate musical morphology in a manner that eschews linearity in favor of multi-directional simultaneities. Through this prism, the act of reading (a function historically tethered to conventional notational epistemologies) is reconceived as a kinetic engagement with a notation that is at once spatialized, deconstructed, and architectonic.

Temporality and Numerological Encoding: Toward an Anti-Linear Chronology

Temporal configurations within Perisetta resist metered regularity, instead favoring a synthetic elasticity of durational proportioning that derives from Darboven’s engagement with cross-sum calculations, recursive date formations, and vectorized numerical configurations. Where Darboven’s oeuvre posits an algebraic concretization of temporal succession, This score appropriates and mutates this approach by deploying a modular numerical syntax wherein additive and subtractive procedures dictate the relational properties of pitch, contour, and bowing pressure.

The score itself is structured around a matrix of algorithmically derived temporal units, each functioning as an independent isochronous cell, which may expand or contract according to a secondary, non-fixed durational logic. This results in a phenomenon wherein the act of execution becomes a form of chronological negotiation rather than a realization of pre-determined rhythmic stratification.

The recursive encoding mechanisms are an explicit reference to Darboven’s calendar systems, wherein the artist developed a distinctive conversion methodology that transformed numerical configurations into graphical transcriptions. In Perisetta, this logic is repurposed such that each performance instance is inextricably bound to a localized, yet infinitely permutable, durational syntax.

 Computational Indexing and Serialist Layering

The parametric layering within the score derives not from a conventional serialist approach but from an interlocking permutation of vectors that dictate the density and gradation of sonic material.

These strata are defined through:

A numerically inscribed tablature system, which situates pitch, articulation, and dynamics within a set of spatial coordinates.

A performative indexing matrix, wherein each quadrant of the page is assigned a gestural function, corresponding to a discrete set of bowing techniques and contact points.

An integrated phonographic notation, in which pre-composed photographic portraits of performers dictate gesture, posture, and tension thresholds.

This three-tiered structuration operates as a non-hierarchical field of encoded parameters, necessitating a form of interpretation that is both visual and kinetic, yet simultaneously resistant to traditional modes of reading.

Photographic Realism as Notational Inscription: The Thomas Ruff Parallax

A defining element of Perisetta is its engagement with photographic realism as a notational extension. By integrating high-resolution portraiture inspired by Thomas Ruff’s aesthetic objectivism, I introduce a physiognomic coding system that directly influences performative decision-making.

Where Ruff’s portraiture achieves an apparent neutrality through the suppression of emotive signifiers, I utilizes this aesthetic mechanism as a precondition for gestural determination. The extraction of temporal specificity from the physiognomic field creates an image-based notation wherein performer identity is implicated within the structural mechanics of execution.

By employing photographic indexicality, I establish a threefold dialectic between:

The encoded visual gesture, wherein the formal properties of the performer’s portrait inform the mechanics of bow pressure, vibrato articulation, and attack envelope.

The aleatoric stratification of visual sequences, leading to a form of notation that resists singular interpretation, instead favoring contingent realizations based on individual performer morphology.

The residual trace of photographic memory, transforming the execution of the score into an iterative process of re-inscription, wherein the visual referent lingers as a mnemonic structure.

Thus, Perisetta becomes a palimpsest of interstitial codes, wherein notation, performance, and photographic inscription merge into a single, mutable entity.

Aesthetic Idealism and the Chronotopic Collapse of Musical Time

The culmination of these methodologies (Darboven’s temporal inscription, Ruff’s documentary realism, and my notational expansionism) results in a radical reconceptualization of musical temporality. In Perisetta, the chronotopic parameters of the score do not function as a singular linear sequence but rather as a multi-axial structure of durational interpenetration.

This approach aligns with Darboven’s assertion that time cannot be objectified outside of human perception, and that its representation is inherently synthetic. Consequently, Perisetta engages with:

The dissolution of fixed temporality, where performative events exist within a spectrum of probabilistic occurrences.

A recursive re-framing of notation, wherein symbols operate not as direct imperatives but as relational possibilities.

A visual-auditory dualism, collapsing the distinction between performative gesture and encoded structure.

Notation as Temporality, Notation as Image

Perisetta, Barefoot and Dusted with Refinery Ash exemplifies a radical departure from traditional string quartet idioms, engaging with notation as a performative cartography wherein inscription, duration, and embodiment are inextricably linked. By synthesizing Darboven’s numerological inscriptions, Ruff’s photographic realism, and an experimental tablature system, I present a work wherein notation itself becomes a performative entity...a site of multiplicity, subjectivity, and transformation.

Rather than merely codifying sound, the score reconfigures our fundamental assumptions about temporality, notation, and musical semiotics, positioning itself not as a static document, but as an evolving palimpsest of aesthetic potentialities.

W.I.P. V 2.0>>>>>>>>>>>>The Notation as Kinetic Cinematograph

 

The Notation as Kinetic Cinematograph

This score, titled via a vertical golden banner as LIMOLLELEOPELLI, embodies the confluence of kinetic energy, choreographic fragmentation, and the industrial topology of the notational machine. It is at once a mechanical scroll, an exploded diagram, and a trans-musical fiction.  It emerges as a proto-instrumental architecture rendered as a surrealistic map.

At its core, this work is neither traditionally musical nor purely graphic.  It is a performative prosthesis, bridging auditory experience with biomechanical form. It invites the performer not to interpret, but to engineer presence, to activate a serialized cinematic body.

More to come...

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.