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OPENING OFFER OR CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION? ON THE PRESCRIPTIVE FUNCTION OF NOTATION IN MUSIC TODAY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2014

Abstract

This article explores some of the diverse forms that musical notation has assumed in the early twenty-first century and discusses its use along a broad spectrum of creative intention, which includes visual representation of sounds, verbal lists of instructions or provocations, and much else. Drawing upon his own experience as a composer, and on studies of the work of composers both older and younger (Stockhausen, Lucier, Wolff; Molitor, Lely), the author examines the changing meanings of notes, staves and clefs, and the possibilities of graphic scores, text scores, and hybrid forms of notation.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, ‘Musik und Graphik’, Darmstädter Beiträge zur neuen Musik (Mainz: Schott, 1960)Google Scholar, p. 7. My translation.

2 Stockhausen, ‘Musik und Graphik’, p. 6.

3 Wolff, Christian, Cues: Writings & Conversations (Cologne: MusikTexte, 1998)Google Scholar, p. 470.

4 Lucier, Alvin, Reflections (Cologne: MusikTexte, 1995)Google Scholar, p. 294 (Music for Solo Performer), p. 360 (Music on a Long Thin Wire), p. 378 (Risonanza).

5 Lucier, Reflections, p. 334.

6 See Goldman, Jonathan, ‘“How I became a composer”: an interview with Vinko Globokar’, Tempo, Vol. 68, No. 267 (January 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 23, 25.