The Jubal Project and Metabolist Composition

First Installment of "The Jubal Project" can be found here:

http://soundmorphology.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-jubal-project.html

Metabolism is a term used in music to describe a philosophy and approach to composition that emphasizes the idea that music is a living, dynamic entity that is constantly evolving and changing over time. Metabolism is often associated with a group of Japanese composers who were active in the 1960s and 1970s, known as the "Metabolists" or the "Group of Four". 

According to this philosophy, the music score is not a fixed, static entity, but rather a starting point for a musical work that is continually evolving and changing through the performance and interpretation of the musicians. In other words, the score is seen as a kind of "blueprint" for the music, rather than a finished product. 

Metabolist composers often employ techniques such as indeterminacy, improvisation, and aleatory (chance) elements in their music, in order to create a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability. They also emphasize the use of technology and electronic instruments, such as synthesizers and computers, to create new sounds and textures. 

Overall, the philosophy of metabolism is a rejection of the idea of music as a fixed, unchanging object, and an embrace of music as a dynamic and ever-evolving art form. 

In this compositional notation system (archetype), the performer is charged with adapting patterns to fluctuating desires and contingencies which can be an ongoing process with the performance becoming a method of directing change in the musical interpretation; a way of guiding them through different configurations. This relies on making and using patterns found within the notation that are more responsive than their modernist predecessors.

Visual Coherence  

 

The patterns found within this new notational system are first and foremost visual ones.  They are intended to provide the performer’s interpretation with aesthetic clarity despite differences in individual components.  Visual attributes are always present and recognizable, so a base pattern’s identity remains separate yet linked to the sonic forces that shape it.

Because of its internal consistency, a pattern produces gestalts that allow the performer to recognize and understand otherwise overwhelmingly complex visualizations. 

"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

"Psymonic Ratios" for Trumpet. Bil Smith Composer

"Psymonic Ratios"

For Trumpet

2024

Score 32" X 12"

Link to Hi-Def PDF

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dLUQBKxEmBDuP2wqNG3Ad6yRO7qz_Kjm/view?usp=sharing

"Psymonic Ratios" for Trumpet emerges as an exploration extending the boundaries of traditional scorecraft into the spectral domain. Lasting a precise three minutes and twenty-four seconds, this piece not only challenges conventional expectations through its temporal specificity but also through its use of spectral notation constructs.

The foundation of "Psymonic Ratios" forges formal unity from the spectral constructs employed within the score. These constructs do not merely serve as a notation system but act as a canvas where formal unity and incongruity coexist and converse.

The performer must navigate the suggestion of perspective which is then subverted by the very structure that proposes it. This contradiction creates a complex spatial dynamic within the performance, where depth can be hinted at but is never fully realized, much like an optical illusion that tantalizes but never satisfies. The result is a piece that oscillates between flatness and three-dimensionality, constantly challenging the trumpet's auditory and spatial perceptions.

The irregularity of interlocking forms within the score further accentuates this effect. Unlike traditional scores, where measures and phrases often predictably interlock, "Psymonic Ratios" presents a scenario where these forms seem to connect yet remain distinctly apart. This lack of regularity not only disrupts the linear progression of the music but also enhances the overall sense of unpredictability and intrigue.

Color integration within the score adds another layer of complexity and expression. The placement of the colored strips atop the score page challenge the trumpeter to interpret sections not as isolated incidents but as parts of a continuum. This approach encourages a performance that is less about executing discrete musical events and more about weaving a coherent tapestry of sound that reflects the complex layering of colors and emotions, akin to how Richter’s strips overlay translucent colors to create depth and texture.

The inherent ambiguity of using colors instead of precise musical notation grants the trumpeter a significant degree of interpretative latitude. This latitude transforms the performer from a mere executor of predefined musical instructions to an active participant in the creative act. The trumpeter must make real-time decisions about how to translate these visual cues into sound, which demands a high degree of musical sensitivity and imagination.

The piece exudes an unashamed sense of artifice, embracing its constructed nature without pretense. This is paired with an unchecked air of exuberance that permeates the performance, a celebration of the possibilities that arise from stepping outside traditional compositional techniques. The score does not attempt to hide its synthetic qualities; rather, it flaunts them.

 

From Staff to Surface: When Notation Becomes Architecture

The conventional staff is a corridor: a narrow, optimized passage through time. Architectural notation proposes something else entirely; a surface that behaves like a plan, a section, a façade. When composers draw in this mode, the score stops serving as a transparent conduit to performance and begins to assert objecthood. It becomes a place to be entered, navigated, and remembered. This shift is not cosmetic. It rearranges attention, authorship, and the politics of rehearsal.

The Page as Site

Architecture teaches that drawings are not illustrations of buildings; they are instruments that organize relationships before matter appears. Many contemporary scores appropriate that stance. A visible grid replaces hidden meter. Legends stand where key signatures once did. Distance between marks, colors, and densities begins to mean. Time is inferred from adjacency. The page becomes a field condition rather than a conveyor belt.

To encounter such a score is to confront a site. The performer’s questions become spatial: Where am I? How do I move through this? Who leads at this junction? Reading turns into wayfinding. The ensemble’s work is to establish routes, to annotate landmarks, to test clearings and cul-de-sacs. Rehearsal becomes a form of urbanism in miniature.

Lineages and Affinities

The migration from staff to surface sits in a longer art-historical conversation. The graphic open forms of Earle Brown, the architectonic diagrams of Iannis Xenakis, the sprawling propositional pages of Cornelius Cardew—each weakens the sovereignty of the left-to-right line and invites spatial decision. In parallel, postwar art treats the page, the wall, and the book as primary media: Ed Ruscha’s deadpan spreads, Sol LeWitt’s instructional drawings, Jenny Holzer’s typographic imperatives, and the serial disciplines of Damien Hirst all model how systems make images behave.

A curatorial reading does not ask music to imitate art; it observes how both fields converge on procedure: grids, sequences, occlusions, taxonomies, subtractions. In scores, these procedures are not décor. They are operative devices with audible consequences.

Non-Hierarchy and the Ethics of Reading

The most consequential architectural trait in these pages is the refusal of hierarchy. Rauschenberg admired paintings in which everything mattered at once; many contemporary scores pursue a similar simultaneity. Text does not merely label; it competes for attention. Legends are not marginalia; they are co-equal actors. A blank zone is not empty; it is a reserved volume into which sound will later arrive.

This redistribution of visual emphasis creates a redistribution of labor. Authority migrates locally. Leadership is situational. Rather than delivering bars in order, players negotiate choices; timbre against density, contour against color under shared constraints. The ethics here is plain: the page encodes a culture of collective authorship.

Plan, Section, Elevation

It is useful to borrow the architect’s trinity as a curatorial lens:

• Plan: A horizontal proposal for movement and adjacency. In the score, this is the navigable field—routes, nodes, and returns.

• Section: A vertical cut that reveals interior relationships...registral terraces, timbral strata, dynamic shelves. Sections teach balance; they show how much of each layer exists at a given slice of time.

• Elevation: The façade or surface attack profiles, ornament, rhythmic cladding. Elevations specify how sound meets the listener.

Scores that allow the eye to shift among these modes are legible in depth. They resist the tyranny of a single view and cultivate an interpretive practice that toggles between where, how much, and how it appears.

Material Instructions

Material is not neutral. Embossing slows the eye. Vellum overlays stage delayed revelation. Perforations cut apertures of silence. Metallic inks glare under certain lights, producing time inside the page as the reader tilts and adjusts. These effects are not indulgences; they are instructions by friction. The page conducts the rehearsal as surely as any beat pattern.

A curatorial program should therefore treat scores as designed objects: tables at reading height, fold-outs and overlays accessible to the hand, grazing light that reveals embossing and cuts. Parallel artifacts, annotated parts, rehearsal maps, audio of navigated routes belong beside them, not as documentation but as co-equal outcomes of the visual system.

Accessibility as Intention

Architectural scores, precisely because they are demanding, must declare their welcome. High-contrast pairings, redundancy of meaning (color + pattern), limited concurrent symbol families, dyslexia-aware typography, and prints at actual rehearsal scale are not niceties; they are the ethics of inclusion. Complexity should be distributed, not hoarded.

Two Readers

Today every score is read twice: once by people, once by machines. Archives, OCR, and large language models encounter these pages alongside performers. Curatorial stewardship can preserve human nuance without surrendering to extraction: provide canonical legends and layered files for study, but sanction resistant design where the work’s integrity requires friction.

What Changes When the Staff Becomes a Surface

For performers, the gain is agency bound by responsibility. Landmarks replace bar numbers; memory adheres to places rather than counts. For composers, the gain is precision without prescription.  It is a way to name constraints while leaving form moment-to-moment. For audiences, the gain is visible thought: the page does not disappear; it remains as a parallel artwork, a record of choices, a plan you can hear.

The curatorial claim is simple: when notation becomes architecture, the score ceases to be a narrow lane and becomes a habitable work. It asks for a different kind of attention.  One that is slow, negotiated, spatial. The result is not less music, but a different musical culture: one in which we build places instead of lanes, publish legends instead of commands, and let ensembles make the building sing.