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This text adapted from Graphic Notation (music), Wikipedia, CC BY SA 4.0
Graphic notation (or graphic score) is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation became popular in the 1950s, and can be used either in combination with or instead of traditional music notation. Graphic notation was influenced by contemporary visual art trends in its conception, bringing stylistic components from modern art into music.
Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. Other uses include pieces where an aleatoric or undetermined effect is desired.
Modern graphic notation relies heavily on the imagination and inspiration of each individual performer to interpret the visual content provided by the composer. Because of this relative freedom, the realization of graphically notated pieces usually varies from performance to performance. For example, in notation indication "E" of his piece Concert for Piano and Orchestra, John Cage writes: "Play with hands indicated. Where clefs differ, a note is either bass or treble", an indeterminacy which is not unusual in Cage's work, and which leaves decision-making up to the performer.
Some graphic scores can be defined as action-based, where musical gestures are notated as shapes instead of conventional musical ideas.
The use of graphic notation within a score can vary widely, from the score being made up entirely of graphic notation to graphic notation being a small part of an otherwise largely-traditional score. Some composers include written explanations to aid the performer in interpreting the graphic notation, while other composers opt to leave the interpretation entirely up to the performer.
Though its most popular usage occurred in the mid-twentieth century, the first evidence of graphic notation dates back much earlier. Originally called "eye music", these graphic scores bear resemblance to the scores of composers like George Crumb. One of the earliest surviving pieces of eye music is Belle, Bonne, Sage by Baude Cordier, a Renaissance composer. His score, formed in the shape of a heart, was intended to enhance the meaning of the song.
Belle, Bonne, Sage, by Baude Cordier, 15th century
Experimental music appeared in the United States and Europe during the 1950s, when many of the once untouchable parameters of traditional music began to be challenged. Aleatoric music, indeterminate music, musique concrète and electronic music shook previously unquestioned concepts, such as musical time or the function of the musician, and dared to add others to musical space in all its dimensions, with all their ontological consequences and burdens. They also changed the roles of the composer, the performer and the public, giving them totally new functions to explore.
In this context, the score, which had to a great extent been considered a mere support for musical writing (with the exception of eye music), began to flirt with the limits of the work and its identity. This marriage produced three paths: the first considered the musical score to be a representation of organized sound; the second conceived it as an extension of sound; and the third viewed it as another type of music, a visual music with its own autonomy, independent of sound. The score took on new meanings and went from being a mere support of sound to being an extension of the work, or even another work altogether, an element that was as important as the sounds and silences it contained, or more. These conceptions required a new language and a new reading of what it is to be musical. They also required a new notation, one that would reflect the changes taking place in the second artistic vanguards, and contain them, granting them a new semantics. In this way, notation came to be more and more influenced by a dialogue with painting, installations and performance
Graphic notation in its modern form first appeared in the 1950s as an evolution of movement of Indeterminacy (randomness) as pioneered by John Cage. The technique was originally used by avant-garde musicians and manifested itself as the use of symbols to convey information that could not be rendered with traditional notation such as extended techniques.
Graphic scores have, since their conception, evolved into two broadly defined categories, one being the invention of new notation systems used to convey specific musical techniques and the other the use of conceptual notation such as shapes, drawings and other artistic techniques that are meant to evoke improvisation from the performer. Examples of the former include Morton Feldman's Projection 1, which was the result of Feldman drawing abstract shapes on graph paper, and Stockhausen's Prozession. Examples of the latter include Earle Brown's December 1952 and Cornelius Cardew's Treatise, which was written in response to Cage's 4'33" and which he wrote after having worked as Stockhausen's assistant. The score consists of 193 pages of lines and shapes on a white background. Here the lines represented elements in space and the score was merely a representation of that space at a given instant. In Europe, one of the most notable users was Sylvano Bussotti, whose scores have often been displayed as pieces of visual art by enthusiasts. In 1969, in an effort to promote the movement of abstract notation, John Cage and Allison Knowles published an archive of excerpts of scores by 269 composers with the intention of showing "the many directions in which notation is now going".
In 2008, Theresa Sauer edited a compendium featuring graphic scores by composers from over fifty countries, emonstrating how widespread the practice has become.
John Cage Tribute: "Notations 21" publication by Theresa Sauer
In addition to the more widespread popularity of graphic notation, new technology has expanded its possibilities. In his book The Digital Score: Musicianship, Creativity, and Innovation, Craig Vear describes how Artificial Intelligence and animation can be used to enhance the graphic score experience. He claims that these technologies are "the logical development of graphic score experiments from the latter part of the twentieth century. An interesting element of these is that they have to move in order for them to be read; without movement, they are unintelligible.
section of waterwalk by John Cage
Time-based pictographic scores such as Waterwalk by John Cage, uses a combination of time marking a pictographic notation as instruction on how and when to perform certain actions.
Pictographic scores such as Stripsody by Cathy Berberian use only drawings and text, foregoing any sort of time reference. This allows the performer to interpret the piece as they like.
../../images/relativepitch.jpg
Line staves showing approximate pitch, with the actual pitches being decided upon performance.
Altered notation can be seen in George Crumb's work, where he uses traditional notation but presents the music on the page in a graphic or nontraditional manner such as spirals or circles. One example of altered notation is Crumb's Makrokosmos" for Amplified Piano. Crumb's score contained three detailed pages of instructions, with movements including Primeval Sounds, Crucifixus and Spiral Galaxy.
Hans-Christoph Steiner's score for Solitude, created using Pure Data's data structures
Time-based abstract representation, can be seen in Hans-Christoph Steiner's score for Solitude in which the music is represented using symbols and illustrations. Note that here, time is still represented horizontally from left to right like in a pitch graph system, and thus implies that the piece has a specific form.
1000 Scores: Pieces for Here, Now and Later
Graphic notation: a brief history of visualizing music
A website documenting graphic scores by 12 well-known contemporary musicians and composers
Cathy Berberian performing Stripsody with graphic score (YouTube)
credit: Hans-Christoph Steiner's score for Solitude, created using Pure Data's data structures, by Davigoli at English Wikipedia GPLv2
Text adapted from Graphic notation (music), Wikipedia, CC BY SA
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