Now let’s look at some examples. First off, we should note that the idea of music as being typically represented on a five-line staff is a pretty Western generalization – several wildly different systems of notation developed independently in other countries. Russian hook and banner notation, Japanese Shakuhachi notation, and even music notation systems for Braille border on graphical and challenge our preconceptions about what a score is. But regardless of the graphicality of these international systems, they still fundamentally exist to present a piece of music as something definite and repeatable. Which isn’t what we’re concerned with.
What we’re concerned with is the addition of graphical elements to scores as suggestions for improvisation. This technique emerged in the early 1950′s from a group of composers who rejected the traditional score for requiring performers to submit to the will of the composer. In contrast, graphical notation fostered an active collaboration between the performer and the composer. Examples:
John Stead – Play II (for harpsichord and synthesizer)
Ryan Rapsys – Fantasy (for piano and electronic sounds)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Helicopter String Quartet (for for string quartet, 4 helicopters with pilots and 4 sound technicians, 4 television transmitters, 4 x 3 sound transmitters, auditorium with 4 columns of televisions and 4 columns of loudspeakers, sound projectionist with mixing console/ moderator (ad lib.))
By my reckoning, after the initial experiments the field splintered and lost its focus. One side moved into an exploration of the boundary between a score and visual art (a typical example of this is George Crumb’s A Magic Circle of Infinity). Another went towards fluxus and event scores (a typical example of this is Yoko Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano).
Graphical notation shines when it is used as a tool for amplifying communication between the composer and the performer. It loses all of its power when it functions as an object or a performance art piece. So how can we do this? Tomorrow I’m going to talk about my flirtations with graphical notation in the past, and then I’ll show how it can be improved in the future.
More Resources
- BibliOdyssey has a fantastic piece on graphical scores
- The Block Museum on the campus of Northwestern had a good exhibit on graphical scores that is archived here
- More information on the Stockhausen Helicopter piece can be found on Stockhausen’s site
