MUSIC NOTATION IN THE LATE 20th CENTURY:

AN INTRODUCTION

Ian Shanahan (1997)

Sources of information:
Kurt Stone: Music Notation in the 20th Century (Norton)
Hugo Cole: Sounds and Signs: Aspects of Musical Notation (OUP)
Andrew Stiller: Handbook of Instrumentation (UCLA)
Consult specialist texts devoted to particular instruments. [A bibliography has
been left on the Music Listening Rooms computers hard-discs.]
Study as many diverse scores as possible!

Introductory lecture only! (The subject is vast ... a lifetime study.) Ill speak
about general issues, referring to overheads of primarily Australian examples.
(Although Ill examine each overhead in detail, the tutorials will cover more specific
notational practices.)

Purposes of notation:
it allows composers to invent new music, and to calculate musical effects in
advance;
it allows performers to coordinate (i.e. notation can specify clock time);
for performers, it is a form of artificial memory;
it can be a pictorial description of sound, for further analysis (e.g. transcription).

The origins of music notation are found in phonetic alphabets (such as

Hebrew, etc.). Such alphabets are at least 4000 years old, and notate human vocal
sounds (language).

Music notation is highly adaptive, accommodating itself to the prevailing

culture and philosophies of music. A musics notation reveals what is regarded as
musically important and so, which parameters are relatively neglected. e.g.
19th-century Western notation provides symbols that deal with beginnings (and
endings) of notes, but not for what happens in the middle of a note; this suggests a lack
of interest in composing with nuances of timbre. On the other hand, the focus on timbre
and instrument exploration over the last 50 years in the West has caused a
proliferation of new notations [see bibliography].

~1~
 Modern Western notation possesses a genealogy spanning at least 1000 years. It
is arguably the most comprehensive and flexible music notation system to be found on
the planet today (due to Western syncretism!).

What else does a scores notation show? It can be seen as a set of instructions
to performer(s), of varying degrees of specificity from relatively indeterminate through
to highly elaborate:
{Morton Feldman: Intersection 1}
{Stephanos Malikides: Gliding}
{Chris Dench: mem(e)}
{Chris Dench: Closing Lemma}

NB: detailed instructions do not necessarily imply less performer input!

On the contrary, the score may impel a player to discover beautiful, intelligent musical
solutions to seemingly intractable musical problems. This is, I believe, deeply human: a
wetware performer transcends (or makes do), whereas a computer presented with
paradoxical instructions simply crashes. The issue of playability is a red herring here:
local accuracy may well be subordinate to a higher notion of fidelity. Quoting from the
preface to Denchs Closing Lemma ...

The written detail is to be seen less as a philologically exact notational equivalent

of a precise executative outcome, than as a metaphorical representation of, indeed
a symbolic trigger to, a particular expressive gesture. This understanding of the
notation as a coded message from the composer expressed in ... capsules of
information which require reading (that is, decoding and digesting) rather than
just reflex articulation, is central to the fluidity of the piece therefore many
personally divergent renderings are possible.

So, if the notation provides (say) an apparent overload of information per second, or
demands the seemingly impossible, what is the composers aim? Assuming that
notation encodes a composers intent, such difficult notation may speak more of the
pieces structure and/or variety of feels.

Moreover, the score is a map of the music, not the territory itself. Musicians always
bring things like culture and performance practice to a scores realisation. Thats why
a computer sequencer playing a score verbatim will always sound like a machine, not
like a human performer: the silicon-based gizmos always need additional programming,
well beyond whats given in the score, in order to sound vaguely human. e.g. in a jazz
chart, the conventional rhythmic notation of swing (i.e. regular quavers) does not
correspond literally to the resultant rhythm: a jazz musician who knows the traditions
performance practice will swing; a computer will just play the quavers straight,

~2~
exactly as written.

Music notation either attempts to represent a sound, or instead provides

directives for actions that cause a sound (e.g. tablatures). The latter possibility can
lead to the paradoxical situation wherein a specific instruction will create an
unpredictable outcome!
{Ian Shanahan: Lingua Silens Florum} Quote from preface concerning fingerings...
{Ian Shanahan: 153 Infinities} NB: time-space notation, accidentals, verbal instructions,
etc.

From what has already been said, we can surmise that there are different
attitudes among musicians towards the score. It may be regarded as simply an
instruction manual absolutely not the music or, rather, as a valuable text or
artefact in itself, within which some important aspect of the music resides (such as
composerly intelligence?). Ones position depends upon ones attitude towards music: is
music sound+silence only, or is there more to it than that? (e.g. the Ancient Greeks
[Pythagoreans] cosmology The Music of the Spheres incorporated the concept that
the planets made musical tones! [In a sense, they were right: each planets orbit is a
duration it has a periodicity and one can define a pitch-interval according to the
ratios of these periodicities. However, we perceive this interval with our minds [and
eyes?] instead of our ears. Yet one could argue that this astronomical phenomenon
satisfies certain musical criteria, and so ... the planets make music!])

Words are a powerful musical notation (either comprising the whole score, or
some part of it):
{Hazel Smith: Serpent Ex Spearhead} a rhythmicized poem
{Barney Childs: The Roachville Project}
{Karlheinz Stockhausen: Right Durations}

Pictures or other graphics likewise can be employed as musical notation:

graphic scores (a genre that reached its zenith during the 1960s)
{Robert Moran: Four Visions}
{Karlheinz Stockhausen: Kontakte} the graphics here represent the electronic sounds (cue
line)

Some further notational possibilities...

{Tom Johnson: Celestial Music for Imaginary Trumpets} a concept piece cf. planet
tones
{Ernie Althoff: Gold, Frankincense & Myrrrrh} score = instrument design; instrument =
piece

~3~
 {Roger Dean: MAX patch}
{Rainer Linz: (Dis)continuous Music} score (circuit diagram) = instrument design; device =
piece
{Ron Nagorka: Apathetic Anomaly I [record-player part]} score = a flow chart

If you strongly feel the need to invent a new notation, always invoke Occams
Razor: i.e. wherever feasible, appropriate or build upon standardised notations of
analogous techniques for other instruments (e.g. fluttertonguing and bowed tremoli on
strings have identical notations, because both techniques reply upon rapid iterations).
Do not reinvent the wheel! Only devise new notations when absolutely necessary
for example, if the technique is genuinely new and has no equivalent elsewhere and
then ensure that it is as graphically self-explanatory as possible.

Yet it is also highly desirable to avoid a situation where your work i.e.
your compositional vision is compromised by, or driven purely by,
notational conventions... e.g. I would never succumb to the rhythmic limitations of
music notation software packages. (This is one plausible reason to continue making
scores the old-fashioned way, by hand!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~4~
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