Joseph Clayton Mills - Sifr (2015)

The premise behind «Sifr» is a simple one. Seven composers with diverse approaches to experimental sound and composition were each presented with the same piece of music and asked to create a score to accompany it—a score from which the given music could conceivably have derived.

By reversing the trajectory of the relationship between a score and its interpretation—by making the music, in essence, a “score” for composition—«Sifr» plays with issues of authority, musical representation, and what constitutes composition. Each of the seven composers—Ryoko Akama, Sylvain Chauveau, Jonathan Chen, Patrick Farmer, Sarah Hughes, Michael Pisaro, and Adam Sonderberg—approaches the problem in a unique way, which allows their individual compositional styles and concerns to be directly contrasted. What affinities and dissimilarities exist between them? Where are the points of overlap? Which aspects of the piece struck each composer as most significant? Which elements of the music are essential to its identity as a coherent work, and which are incidental or accidental? And how does one trace a line between?