things of musical note

what I mean when I talk about music notation

Notation is a phenomenon so frequently referenced in music discourse that it is rarely defined. In place of explicit definition, the word ‘notation’ is often preceded by a term of categorisation — ‘written’, ‘oral’, ‘graphic’, and so on. However, these categories can mislead us to assume their exclusivity: for example, is not graphic notation also sometimes written; and is not staff notation inherently graphic?

So, as a starting point for this blog, which will primarily focus on topics surrounding contemporary Western classical music notation, I’m going to consider my understanding of the term over a series of posts titled ‘notation is —’. In these, I will try to unpack what I mean when I talk about music notation.

Firstly, I propose that notation can be broadly understood as any visual prompt that guides a musical practice. Most believe that notation necessarily functions as a communication tool and mnemonic,¹ an opinion I have come to share. It seems very difficult to prove otherwise, because every notation communicates something of the music to its interpreter; and any physical representation of music solidifies an aspect of a temporal form.

A more useful approach to this discussion is the semiotic one which acknowledges that one signifier surely sparks numerous and varied interpretations across different audiences, cultures, and time periods (Eco)². This recognises that specific notation will respectively serve multiple functions depending on the interpreter, because a reading is certainly influenced by the reader’s own set of cultural understandings.

The term signifier refers to a sign’s physical form as distinct from its meaning. For example: a drawing of a lamp has certain abstract physical properties (signifiers), such as colour and shape, that only represent (or signify) an actual lamp (the signified) by process of interpretation.³

With this in mind, I find the most useful categorisation of notation its physicality. Bent et al. differentiate ‘written notation’ (which includes written numbers and words; graphics and letters) from ‘oral notation’ (hand signs and spoken syllables, words, and phrases). I tend to avoid such categorisation on the understanding that the term ‘oral notation’ might imply that notation itself (signifier), rather than the idea notation signifies (signified),⁴ can be orally transmitted (see below). Instead, I understand notation as a necessarily physical communicative or mnemonic tool.

To clarify, I believe that notation itself, in its physicality, cannot be transmitted; unlike the idea notation signifies. For example, if I wrote down the letters L, A, M, and P, you might read them as the word ‘lamp’. In your mind, you might then picture a lamp; or hear the sound its switch makes; or imagine the atmosphere this lamp might create; or write out the word in your head. But, the physical letters L, A, M and P have not been transmitted anywhere except their physical form.

graphic notation

With this understanding that notation is inherently physical, use of the term ‘graphic’ to refer to a subset of musical notation is usually inimical. From the Greek graphikos, meaning ‘writing, drawing’, surely every notation can be defined as graphic.

It should be noted that the phrase ‘graphic notation’ might still be relevant in historical studies. For example, the term might usefully differentiate the work of the New York School of composers from their musical contemporaries who used staff notation, because the NY School were rebelling against the ‘score as Work’ concept then embedded in staff notation use. However, the term ‘graphic notation’ seems irrelevant in the case of contemporary classical music, because the Werktreue concept has now been sufficiently critiqued and debunked.⁵

Acknowledging the distributed process of music practice, whereby EXPLAIN⁶, we are challenged to question the usefulness of such terminology as ‘graphic notation’ (which continues to dominate musicological discourse).

Understanding notation use more broadly, contemporary music practice challenges the usefulness of such terminology which continues to dominate musicological discourse.

Such an encompassing definition of graphic notation works in parallel to Leo Treitler’s understanding of improvisation and composition, which is useful because?? write. Treitler explains that the only difference between ‘improvised’ and ‘composed’ music is their separation by the historical work-concept’s social and racial class divisions (39). The negative treatment of ‘improvised’ music blueprints that of ‘graphic’ notation: both connote ‘variability’ and ‘instability’; whereas ‘composed’ and Western staff notated music is ‘fixed’ and ‘considered’ (Treitler 39). In this sense, such categorisation as graphic notation can become a method of Othering: there is composed notation, which uses the staff; and there is the Other, which does not.

So, where all notation is understood to be graphic, this traditionally-understood notational hierarchy is neutralised: Glover/Curwen hand signal notation, for example, becomes as equally graphic and systematic as written notation.⁷

Conclusion? Taking into consideration that all notation serves to signify, we can conclude that all music notation is graphic. Link to next post.

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footnotes

1. For example, see Bent et al. “Notation” in Grove Music Online, the contributing authors of which are Ian D. Bent, David W. Hughes, Robert C. Provine, Richard Rastall, Anne Kilmer, David Hiley, Janka Szendrei, Thomas B. Payne, Margaret Bent, and Geoffrey Chew. ↩︎
2. See, for example, Umberto Eco’s The Open Work. ↩︎
3. This semiotic theory is referred to as signifier theory, and is often initially attributed to Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. For more information, see Writings in General Linguistics, for example. ↩︎
4. I understand the phrase ‘musical idea’ with wide scope. Based on context, I would argue a musical idea can be anything from a specific musical phrase or gesture; to a common thread running through an entire musical aesthetic; to the entirety of a notated score. See Schoenberg, The Musical Idea, for more information regarding musical ideas as ‘the totality of a piece’ (1). While this dissertation agrees that a notated score can be seen as a single musical idea, it disagrees with Schoenberg that the notated score is the Work: this study does not follow the traditional work-concept to which Schoenberg prescribes, instead agreeing with Clarke & Doffman that creativity is a distributed process. ↩︎
5. For more information on the Werktreue concept and its fall, I recommend Lydia Goehr’s The Imaginary Museum. ↩︎
6. For example, see Clarke & Doffman’s work on Distributed Creativity. ↩︎
7. See Whitney Mayo’s article, “Student Perceptions of Glover/Curwen Hand Signs”, for more information regarding Sarah Glover’s hand-signal system (which was later adapted by John Curwen and then Zoltán Kodály). ↩︎

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list of references

Bent, Ian D., et al. “Notation.” Grove Music Online, 20 Jan 2001, doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.20114. Accessed 24 May 2024.

Clarke, Eric F. and Mark Doffman, editors. Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music. Oxford University Press, 2017.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Writings in General Linguistics. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Translated by Anna Cancogni, Harvard University Press, 1989.

Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Music Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Rev. ed., Oxford University Press, 2007.

Schoenberg, Arnold. The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation. Translated and edited by Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff, Columbia University Press, 1995.

Treitler, Leo. With Voice and Pen: Coming to Know Medieval Song and How it Was Made. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Mayo, Whitney. “Student Perceptions of Glover/Curwen Hand Signs in the Elementary Music Classroom.” Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, vol. 0, no. 0, Jun 2023 (Ahead of Print). doi.org/10.1177/87551233231176218. Accessed 26 May 2024.