Reflects on the increased distance between individuals due to social distancing and travel restrictions. Includes field recordings from my parents’ home in Sydney & fragments from the essays ‘On going a journey’ and ‘Why distant objects please’ from William Hazlitt’s Table-Talk.

Written in January 2021 for Clouds and Tracks, Audio Circular 1: https://cloudsandtracks.net

breathing-space (2021)

Commissioned by the Aurora Orchestra to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of its relationship with the BBC Young Composer Competition. This commission was generously supported by the RVW Trust.

Performed by members of the Aurora Orchestra on December 12, 2020 in Kings Place, Hall One. 

Trombone - Matthew Gee
Violin 1 - Alexandra Wood
Violin 2 - Jamie Campbell
Viola - Ruth Gibson
Cello - Sébastien van Kuijk

Points of Intersection (2020) - excerpt

Written for and performed by pianist Ben Smith at 'MUSICON: Eternal Returns' on 9.6.2021.

Many thanks to Simone Tarsitani, Eric Egan and Musicon, Durham University for the recording.

Watch the full concert here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZX8WNkc2VM&t=1527s

This piece is in dialogue with an earlier work of mine, 'flicker': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4RQoseTp7Y

flare (2021)

Written for and performed by the Miyabi Duo (Hugh Millington and Saki Kato) at Wigmore Hall on 4 June 2021. Commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society as part of its 2020/21 RPS Composers Programme.

A work in two movements:
1. bend
2. lullaby for the end/ beginning

in memory of Uncle Charlie

same but different (2021)

Pulsations (2021), prepared violin
Commissioned by Music We’d Like to Hear for Mira Benjamin (RVW Trust)

Extract from live performance at St Mary at Hill, 16.7.21

Pulsations (extract 1)

Pulsations (extract 2)

An assemblage of words from Gesualdo’s Madrigals, Books V and VI. 

These words previously expressed Gesualdo’s extreme emotions towards a passive female subject. Here the words are retold from a female perspective, with undertones of his violent uxoricide.

Burst 
Bite 
Blaze 
Burn 

Breathe 

Flood 
Flee 
Faint 
Flight 

Tell 

Wound 
End 
Born 
Cease

Performed by EXAUDI on 16.5.2022 at EXPOSURE2022, Milton Court, London (UK premiere) with funding from RVW Trust
Commissioned by Kölner Philharmonie (KölnMusik) for EXAUDI

burst flood wound

Commissioned and performed by Prague Quiet Music Collective

Part of a project called 'Five Uncertain Situations' with Prague City Gallery. Exhibition and concert at Dům U kamenného zvonu (Stone Bell House), Old Town Square, Prague in December 2022.

Bass clarinet - Anna Paulová
Baritone electric guitar - Ian Mikyska
Violin - Milan Jakeš
Double bass - Luan Goncalves

Mixed by Juraj Mišejka

This piece was written in response to a set of photograms from Aleksandra Vajd’s The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, which features two parallel lines, each changing colour halfway. To me this work is about things in flux, things moving toward or away from something else. In my piece, I am interested in how players might focus on periods of instability and change within and between sounds. By leaving the score more open, I hope to provide more space for the players to follow their curiosity and their ears, to be responsive to the sounds and to each other in the moment. - SL

"Sylvia’s piece is a rare occurrence: a simple, relatively undefined score that does not provide instructions for formal development over the entirety of the piece, yet immediately, the first time we rehearsed it, it was clear that the piece had a clear-cut character and a complex web of internal relationships. The simplicity and directness of Vajd’s photograms is here transformed into a focus on all the chaotic and noisy shadows, interferences, and byproducts that appear when players are tasked with exploring well-chosen, fluctuating effects and various transitions between them. Here, instability is always present at multiple levels — perhaps we could even speak of an interaction between instabilities, a dusty sonic layer covering the simple material play of the photograms." - Ian Mikyska

Overlapping Transformations (2022)

for Paetzold contrabass recorder and accordion

Commissioned by Tabea Debus and Samuele Telari, with funding from Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien as part of NEUSTART KULTUR.

Recording from 2022 - Sam Stadlen (Stadlen Productions)

Tabea Debus (contrabass recorder)
Samuele Telari (accordion)

As part of 'Sounds of Now: Rotations' at Music in the Round, Sheffield
Film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpV8ClWuDAo

slowly, turning (2022)

for soloist and 3-4 players

written for Daniel Fardon’s concert series Purcell // Parallels, in celebration of The Purcell School’s 60th anniversary

performed by students from the Purcell School: Mina, Jacqueline, Antonia, Da In and Aaron
on 3rd July 2023

things we overheard

'of the body fragile' explores the notion of understated violence. The piece was inspired by Nermine Hammam's 'Unfolding' (2011), a series of Japanese landscapes which considers the possibility of becoming blind to brutality through detachment and distance. The title is a quote from Francis B. Gummere's translation of 'Beowulf' (1909-1914): "Yet in the end it ever comes that the frame of the body fragile yields, fated falls". 

Performed by Marie Schreer (violin), Daniel Benn (violoncello) and Constance Leung (piano) in the Music Hall, Guildhall School of Music & Drama on 18th May 2015.

of the body fragile

'Landscape Fragments' explores the accumulation and dispersion of individuals, the state of being together and being apart. The piece was prompted by my experience of a family reunion, and reflections on migration and physical displacement from home. Voices proceed in their own tempi and metre, sometimes jostling against one another as a group of individuals, at other times wandering freely. The text consists of fragments of my past and current home addresses in Malaysia, Australia and the United Kingdom. As such, the text is in English and Bahasa Melayu. 

Performed by EXAUDI and conducted by James Weeks in Milton Court Concert Hall on 30th March 2015.

Landscape Fragments

Performed by the Guildhall New Music Ensemble and conducted by James Weeks on 15th July 2015 in Milton Court Concert Hall. 

Alto Flute - Henry Roberts
Clarinet - Stephen Williams
Acoustic Guitar - Matthew Hurley
Mezzo-Soprano - Claire Bournez
Viola - Elisabeth Flett
Piano - Clare Simmonds


Binding is a response to Machaut's Tant doucement, in which Machaut explores a lover's sweet imprisonment through the navigation of the voice around its registral and pitch boundaries, the enclosure of the voice which articulates the text, by the rest of the ensemble, and the repetitive structure of the rondeau. 

Binding uses these ideas as a starting point, however the image is not one of sweet imprisonment but rather of undesired smothering. The vocalist is trapped by the ensemble, straining to rise to the surface and pushing against the fragile yet secure walls of her prison, while the ensemble veils and constricts her. 

Binding

Piece for two violoncellos and video (for live performance)

The work investigates the natural decay of organic material. Two violoncellos trace the trajectory of expansion and collapse inherent in decomposition.

Violoncellos: Christopher Brown and Natasha Zielazinski
Video: Geoffa Fells (with thanks to Lawrence Jay Pearson, Sophie Clements and Paolo Catalano)

This track is best experienced with headphones.
Video: https://sylvialim.co/reordering-the-unconsumed-2016-17/

Reordering the Unconsumed

Premiered by Helena Ricci (prepared harp), Peter Thornton (trombone) and Samuel Barber (trombone).

04.07.2017 - Curious
Barbican Exhibition Hall 2

'It consists in the small signs of age that accumulate on the surface of objects . . . a gradual movement away from their original pristine condition. As they come into contact with the elements and the other objects in the world, their original surface takes on a surface of its own.' - Grant McCracken, 1988

sounds which grow richer as they decay

Please use headphones.

Bass clarinet - Heather Ryall
Flute - Fiona Sweeney/ Katie Macdonald
Violoncello - Evie Coplan/ Christopher Brown

Written for and first performed by Heather Ryall, Fiona Sweeney and Gabrielle Yuen at Barbican OpenFest's 'Unfinished' in The Charterhouse on 17 March 2018.

Colour Catalogue: Whites (2018)

baroque flute - Rosie Bowker
clarinet - Heather Ryall
viola - Jeremy Tonelli-Sippel
double bass - Gwen Reed

Shifting

The work is in two movements - Fraying and Prolonged. The first presents a sonic object that gradually disintegrates. The second reframes this object and slows it down, so that the process of decay is frozen, and the object appears almost immortal. The work grew out of reflections on 1 Corinthians 15 and Jiang Zhi's Love Letters (2014). In Jiang Zhi's photographs, flowers are on fire, but are not harmed by the flames.

Alto Flute - Isobel Doughty
Oboe - Caitlin Heathcote
Clarinet in B flat 1 - Heather Ryall
Clarinet in B flat 2 - Julia Raga Pascual
Horn in F - Karen Starkman
Trumpet in B flat 1 - Catherine Pollit
Trumpet in B flat 2 - Thomas Thornton
Tenor trombone 1 - Samuel Dye
Tenor trombone 2 - Jake Jones
Harp - Teresa Raff
Piano - Ábel Misha Gille Esbenshade
Violin 1 - Kanon Miyashita, Tilman Fleig, Yuriko Matsuda, Zora Orfgen
Violin 2 - Camille Saïd, Anastasia Egorova Wise, Zoe Hodi
Viola - Michaela Bartošová, Jeremy Tonelli-Sippel
Violoncello - Lucy Neil, Pieter-Jan De Smet
Double bass - Jess Martin, Cole Morrison
Conductor - James Hoyle

Recorded in October 2018.

Reframe (2017)

remnants (2017-18) investigates a single multiphonic on the violoncello. I wanted to provide a glimpse of the vast world that exists in one fleeting sound, and to allow the smallest changes within the sound to have maximum significance.

Violoncello: Natasha Zielazinski
Photo credit: Nina Close

Video of Natasha Zielazinski playing remnants: https://sylvialim.co/remnants-2017-18/

remnants

Performed by Ben Clark and Antonin Granier on 13.6.19 at LOOSE, LINE, LAYER in St. Mary-at-Hill, London.

The piece invites a child-like curiosity towards the instrument, and simply investigates its sonic possibilities. The materials arose from working collaboratively with percussionists Ben Clark and Antonin Granier. The first movement explores flexibility, the second looping elements, the third resonance.

Piece for three tuned cowbells (2019)

Sylvia Lim is a composer based in the UK. Her works are intimate, exploring a small amount of material in depth. She is interested in the materiality of sound, notions of close listening, perception, rawness and instability.

Sylvia Lim

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