Graphic Notation

Every one of my encounters with graphic notation has captured my imagination. I remember the first time I opened the score to John Cage's Aria, Cornelius Cardew's Theses, and Cathy Berberian's Stripsody. The latter was especially meaningful because it contained actual illustrations of daily life and familiar human concerns. Though the score is meant to be performed by a single singer, I was captivated by the idea of a whole orchestra meditating on those images. The thought took me to a childlike place of glee. As I prepare for my upcoming graphic notation project, I'm certain that I want to use some literal representations of life alongside abstract shapes and symbols, to give the piece a programmatic framework.

I read an article from the excellent website New Music Box about an upcoming (well, in 2008) collection of graphic score samples in book form, meant to chronicle that particular development in music. One of the featured composers, Alison Knowles, has created, among other things, a score comprised of onion skin peelings scattered across a sheet of paper. I love the concept, both for its use of renewable, organic material (I'm sounding like a real Ithacan here) and for the quasi-mysticism of its process; music as divination. But Knowles said something in an interview that really affected me: when asked if she has any expectations about the outcome of her performances, she said: "I like to be really surprised". I think that statement gets at the core philosophy of the graphic notation movement. Perhaps many of these composers get more joy from the infinite musical potential of a visual concept than from a score that dictates every pitch and articulation. Sometimes it's more satisfying and stimulating to be surprised by the results of an experiment than to hear a good performance of our work in which we can predict every second of the proceedings.

Additionally, graphic notation opens up the realm of music to children, or anyone who has not been trained to understand standard music notation. I'm sure there are thousands of people out there who have something to express through music, but they find the standard systems too rigid or need a more open-ended stimulus.

I spent some time looking at score samples from the new collection mentioned on New Music Box. There is a nice dedicated website up and running where I was able to peruse to my heart's content. I was surprised to see that some of the scores still feature a 5-line staff and normal notes. They do, however, break the mold in other ways. One of the most uninspiring at face value was just a bunch of thin lines drawn across a blank sheet of staff paper, with some blue shading at the bottom. One score was an image of the solar system, with duos, trios and quartets between different groups of planets. Cute. And one of my favorites had a few different tuplets in interlocking circles, like a Venn diagram, surrounded by colored circular splotches. I liked staring at that one and contemplating the implications of the materials on the page.

Not the original image from the Notations 21 website, but this is at least part of the score.

Graphic notation has a really interesting psychological effect. The academic in me is stimulated by graphic possibilities in relation to my knowledge of musical gestures and textures, but the child in me responds to the visceral shapes and figures, and whimsy of seeing a stuffy system bent and twisted into something more playful.