"Augmented Attempts at Rendering" for Orchestra, Primarily Strings - Bil Smith Composer on Laboratorie NewMusic label
In 2012, I was asked to create a work based on a defined aesthetic which I was well aware of, but was outside of my comfort zone...so to speak. This is a commission from SAP and I am thankful for their trust and willingness to explore. This work is predicated on ‘The Third Regime’, a neotastic compositional principal fostered at Laboratorie New Music. ‘The Third Regime’ is a deanthropomorphisation
of a realist musical composition and the enduring chases between the
spontaneous images of a score; this bequeathed to us by predictive
kinematics.
This is from a live recording in November, 2012 at BAM. The Brooklyn Academy of Music.
I have been conducting research on endangered and obsolete languages over the last several years and how they may be integrated into the fabric of my compositional pursuits.
An endangered language is a language that is at risk of falling out of use as its speakers die out or shift to speaking another language. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers, and becomes a "dead language." If eventually no one speaks the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". It has been a very interesting journey discovering recordings of last known survivors of obsolete languages. My interest in text scores/word events (Check out James Saunders and John Lely's book "Word Events: Perspectives on Verbal Notation") and reappropriated scores led me to develop certain theorems as to how best to integrate these various mediums into a singular, seamless work.
"Assemble the Mirrors..." is the result of these explorations and I anticipate I am only touching the tip of possibilities of what may come. SoundCloud: "Assemble the Mirrors Into a Box-Like Structure" (2013) https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/assemble-the-mirrors-into-a
"Vortices and Randomized Topological Solitons in Dense Quark Matter" for Solo 'C' Trumpet (with Temporal Adhesions) or Inderbinen 'Tricky' Four Valve Trumpet. Bil Smith Composer, 2011-2014.
Certain quasi notational systems require non-linear quantification to express their meaning.
We investigate compositions with combinations of quantifiers similar to Hintikka’s examples and propose a novel alternative musical reading expressible by linear formulae. Particularly with a neographic score, his interpretation is based on aural, textual, visual and logical observations. We report on our experiments showing that performers tend to interpret compositional passages similar to Hintikka's sentence in a way consistent with our intended interpretation.