LMJ21 CD Companion Introduction
Beyond Notation/Notation Beyond
How do we communicate sonic ideas to those who help us realize them and those who listen? One iconic translation/transmission process in the Western world is to write down what we yearn to hear in the inherited symbolic language of musical notation. Of course there is a panoply of approaches to realizing this goal, with the works included on the LMJ21 CD being one sampling of this diverse spectrum of compositional communication.
There have been several important books of exploratory music notation that document the visual aspects of the compositions they cover [1]. The main drawback to these resources, of course, is that they leave us with the nagging question, "What does it sound like?" We attempt to remedy that by providing both visual and aural evidence of these different approaches to "notation beyond" (see the texts and images in the accompanying CD contributors' notes, as well as at mitpressjournals.org/toc/lmj/-/21).
The CD begins with a recording of Jem Finer's outdoor sound installation Score for a Hole in the Ground. Inspired by traditional Japanese suikinkutsu ("water koto cave") sonic garden ornaments, Finer's "notation" consists of a construction plan for an underground instrument performed by its environment---emblematic of the abdication of compositional control that typifies many pieces that employ notation beyond traditional bounds.
The pointillist raindrop counterpoint of Finer's work modulates into the raucous ambience of ONCE Festival--goers hearing Gordon Mumma's MEDIUM SIZE MOGRAPH 1962, a choreographic score for two pianists, which specifies movement and articulation for the performers but not specific sounds.
One motivation for inventing notation is to communicate something for which symbols do not already exist. For example, how might one compose, in traditional notation, Pauline Oliveros's sociality of "deep listening," or Matthew Marble's "social geometry"? The living, breathing relationships between performers that characterize their works here are not interpretations of fixed symbols but real-time negotiations, ways of being with sounds and people in space, like those that crowds experience in navigating metropolitan walkways.
Another rationale for employing alternative notation is for pragmatic purposes, or "communicating the desired result to performers in the simplest way possible," as James Fei writes about his Faktura.
Technological innovations have revolutionized not only the sound of music but also the way it is composed and graphically represented. Of course there have been many pioneers in the notation of music for electronics, from Stockhausen to Varèse and beyond, but Chris Mann and Phillip Schulze utilize uniquely 21st-century means to notate their work. In a third-millennial update to early synthesizer patch sheets, Schulze's virtual MAX/MSP instrument is the score, whereas Mann's The Use, a text-driven, interactive web-based composition also available as a smartphone application, puts the task of orchestration in the hands of the listener. In this recording, an algorithmically generated collage of Mann's materials is presented, produced by the "randomizer" button on The Use web site.
The remaining works, by Guillermo Gregorio, Rajesh Mehta, Alexis Porfiriadis and Katherine Young, all incorporate invented notation in a modality that allows for a broader interpretation by the performers' imaginations, delivered in the novel authorial voices of the composers. Each piece has a range of control factors, whether a combination of traditional and invented notational elements, as in the case of Gregorio, Porfiriadis and Young, or in the use of instructions for the interpretation of the graphics, as in the Cartesian x-y coordinates of Mehta's Imaginational Map.
Each work featured on this recording provides a unique diving board for explorations of not only the craft of composition but also semiotics and approaches to musical communication.
Andrew Raffo Dewar
LMJ21 CD Curator
E-mail: adewar@ua.edu
Andrew Raffo Dewar (b. 1975 Rosario, Argentina) is a composer, improviser, woodwind instrumentalist and ethnomusicologist. Dewar studied with saxophonist/composers Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton and Phillip Greenlief, composer Alvin Lucier, trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon and multi-instrumentalist improviser Milo Fine. He has also had a long involvement with Indonesian traditional and experimental music, particularly the Minangkabau music of West Sumatra and Central Javanese gamelan. As a composer, his pieces have been performed by the Flux Quartet (NYC), Sekar Anu (Indonesia), the Koto Phase ensemble (USA/Japan) and the XYZ composer collective (NYC). He has received grants from Arts International, Meet The Composer and the Getty Foundation to support his work. In addition to leading his own ensembles and performing in collaborative groups with musicians from around the world, he performs with and appears on recordings by the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet and the Bill Dixon Orchestra. Dewar is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts in New College and the School of Music at the University of Alabama.
Reference
1. See John Cage, Notations (New York: Something Else Press, 1969); Erhard Karkoschka, Notation in New Music (New York: Praeger, 1972); Theresa Sauer, Notations 21 (New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2009).
LMJ21 CD Companion Introduction
Updated 9 November 2011
