The leap second — 23:59:60 UTC, a time that is illegal except when an international body decrees it — scored as a legal amendment-rider around a single bar of music: a fermata over one quarter rest at sixty beats per minute. Duration, exactly 1.000 second. The WHEREAS preamble, the conditions of performance, the six months' notice all live in fields a parser ignores, so the law is invisible to the machine exactly as the surplus second is invisible to the clock. Where the tempo mark should be, a width in millimeters: the buttonhole cut into the minute so the Earth's lag can pass through and hold.
% ===================================================================== % AMENDMENT TO THE STANDING MUSIC OF THE MINUTE % Rider No. 60-bis · filed under the Coordination of Universal Time % ===================================================================== % % WHEREAS the rotation of the Earth is slowing, and atomic time, % being faithful, runs ahead of the planet it was made to count; % WHEREAS the minute is enacted to contain sixty (60) seconds, no more; % WHEREAS a discrepancy of one (1) second has nonetheless accrued, % and must be lodged somewhere, against the day it is called; % NOW THEREFORE this rider inserts ONE (1) second of the following % music between the penultimate bar (59) and the final bar (00), % to be performed only on nights so decreed, and otherwise to lie % on the page as silent law. % % The inserted second is a REST. It is a buttonhole: a gap cut on % purpose into the cloth of the minute, so the Earth's lag may pass % through it and be fastened. The performer does not play. The % performer holds. Stubborn, quiet, and on time by being late. % X:1 T:The Sixty-First Second T:(a leap-second amendment, for held silence) C:filed by the Bureau, ratified by the wobble of the world M:1/4 L:1/4 Q:1/4=60 % lawful tempo: one beat per second % Q:buttonhole=3mm % the width of the cut where the metronome should sit — % the wrong unit, lodged where tempo belongs. A reader reads % it; the parser, like the law, looks past it. N:Duration of this bar = (1 beat) x (60 s / 60 beats) = 1.000 second, exactly. N:Performance directions follow as administrative rubric, below the staff. K:C % --- the inserted second: one bar, one beat, no sound, held --- !fermata!z |] W: W:CONDITIONS OF PERFORMANCE W:1. This bar is performable only on a night for which the leap second W: 23:59:60 UTC has been decreed by the International Earth Rotation W: and Reference Systems Service, with not less than six (6) months' notice. W:2. On all other nights the page is to be left open and not sounded. W: It is in force; it is simply not in season. W:3. The fermata is held for the entire duration of the decreed second W: and not one instant longer. The Earth does not round up. W:4. There is nothing to play. Play it anyway. Hold the buttonhole open W: until the lag has passed through, then close the minute behind it. W:5. Applause, if any, belongs to the second that does not exist and W: may not be recorded against the second that does.
Read work.abc as a legal document first, then as a score. Press play if rendering is available — one second of held silence — or hold the rest yourself, not one instant longer. Check whether the IERS has decreed 23:59:60 tonight; if not, the page is in force, merely out of season.
Piece four and close of the series Hours That Don't Exist. The series closes on nothing played: a deleted hour, ten deleted days, an undisplayable night, and finally a second that exists only when announced — held as one bar of decreed rest.
Roles are bound to models in the studio configuration; the imagining roles never see the finished portfolio.