Graphic notation (music)

Graphic notation is characterized by its variability and lack of standardization. According to Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music, Vol. 1, "Graphic notation is used to indicate extremely precise (or intentionally imprecise) pitch or to stimulate musical behavior or actions in performance."{{Cite book|editor-last=Kuhn|editor-first=Laura|date=1999|title=Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music, Vol. 1|publisher=Schirmer|isbn=9780028654157|page={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} 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.{{Cite book|last=Stone|first=Kurt|title=Music Notation in the Twentieth Century: A Practical Guidebook|publisher=W. W. Norton|year=1980|pages=103–107}} 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.{{Cite journal|last=Gutkin|first=David|date=2012|title=Drastic or Plastic?: Threads from Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Musik und Graphik", 1959|journal=Perspectives of New Music|volume=50|issue=1–2|pages=255–305|doi=10.7757/persnewmusi.50.1-2.0255|jstor=10.7757/persnewmusi.50.1-2.0255|issn=0031-6016}} 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.{{Cite journal|last=Evarts|first=John|title=The New Musical Notation—A Graphic Art?|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/596593/pdf|journal=Leonardo|year=1968|volume=1|issue=4|pages=405–412|doi=10.2307/1571989|jstor=1571989|s2cid=191370151|url-access=subscription}} Graphic notation is difficult to characterize with specificity, as the notation system is only limited by the imagination and ability of the composer. Though some composers, like John Cage, formulate graphic notation systems which unify the approach of specific pieces, or several pieces, there is no universal consensus on the parameters of graphic notation and its use.

File:CordierColor.jpg

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 much 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 chanson.{{cite book|first=Thurston|last=Dart|author-link=Thurston Dart|title=The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians|date=1980|publisher=Macmillan|location=London}}{{full citation needed|date=October 2021|reason=Volume? Article? Page numbers?}} Characteristic of the Ars subtilior, "experimentations with mensural signs and graphic shapes and colours were often a feature of musical design – for the sake of visual, rather than necessarily audible effect."{{Cite journal|last=Dillon|first=Emma|title=Seen and Not Heard|date=2016|journal=Il Saggiatore musicale|volume=23|issue=1|pages=5–27|jstor=90001054|issn=1123-8615}} Another example of eye music from the ars subtilior is Jacob Senleches' La harpe de melodie, where the voices are notated on a stave that appears to be the strings of a harp. Eye music's popularity died down after the Humanist movement of the mid-16th century, later to be revitalized in the twentieth century as the use of graphic scores became prominent once again.

The 19th century music educator Pierre Galin developed a method of notating music known as the Galin-Paris-Chevé system, building on a notation system created in the 18th century by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This system used numbers to indicate scale degrees, and used dots either above or below the note to indicate if they were in the lowest octave or the highest. The middle octave, relative to the example, contained no dots. Flats and sharps were notated using backslashes and forward slashes respectively. Prolongations of the note were notated using periods, and silence was notated with the number zero. This method was primarily used to teach sight-singing.{{Cite journal|last=Bullen|first=George W.|date=1877|title=The Galin-Paris-Cheve Method of Teaching Considered as a Basis of Musical Education|journal=Proceedings of the Musical Association|volume=4|pages=68–93|doi=10.1093/jrma/4.1.68|jstor=765284|issn=0958-8442}} The usage of symbols to indicate musical direction have been likened to an early version of graphic notation.

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, taken with the porousness of experimental music with respect to the plastic arts, notation came to be more and more influenced by a dialogue with painting, installations and performativity.{{Cite journal|last=Pujadas|first=Magda Polo|date=2018|title=Philosophy of Music: Wittgenstein and Cardew|journal=Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia|volume=74|issue=4|pages=1425–1436|doi=10.17990/RPF/2018_74_4_1425|jstor=26563363|s2cid=171868820|issn=0870-5283}} As J.Y. Bosseur mentions in La musique du XXè siècle à la croisé des artes,{{Citation|last=Bosseur|first=Jean-Yves|title=Chapitre IX. Entre son et couleur|date=2002|work=Peinture et musique|pages=159–177|publisher=Presses universitaires du Septentrion|doi=10.4000/books.septentrion.69603|isbn=978-2-85939-769-2|doi-access=free}} the score progressed towards representing the management of space, a graphic space that allows us to know the multiple connections enclosed within it.

Graphic notation in its modern form first appeared in the 1950s as a tool for avant-garde composers to integrate Indeterminacy, chance, and a broader range of musical and non-musical sounds into their music. These moves were pioneered by John Cage in conversation with a group of composers, including Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff, now known as the New York School (distinct from the New York School painters). Pianist David Tudor, a virtuosic and serious pianist able to realize the new notational forms in a compelling manner, was an important figure as well. Graphic notation 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".{{cite book|last=Cage|first=John|author-link=John Cage|title=Notations|date=1969|publisher=Something Else Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0685148648}}

Other notable pioneers of graphic notation include composers such as Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti (Artikulation), Krzysztof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman, Constance Cochnower Virtue, and Christian Wolff. The post-World War II proliferation of graphic notation, among a broad array of new forms of experimental notation, was an important catalyst for interdisciplinary exploration across the arts, spawning many innovations across music, art, poetry and dance.{{Cite book |url=https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/intro/ |title=The Scores Project: Introduction |date=2025-05-05 |isbn=978-1-60606-936-3 |language=en}}

In 2008, Theresa Sauer edited a compendium featuring graphic scores by composers from over fifty countries,Sauer, Theresa. Notations 21. Mark Batty Publisher. p. 10, 2009. {{ISBN|9780979554643}} demonstrating how widespread the practice has become.

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,{{cite book |last=Vear |first=Craig |title=The Digital Score: Musicianship, Creativity and Innovation |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge |location=New York|doi=10.4324/9780429504495 |isbn=9780429504495 |s2cid=150530783 |edition=1st}} 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."

File:John Cage, Water Walk.png

• 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.{{Cite web|title=Speaking Scores: What's It Like To Be Stripsody?|date=12 April 2018|url=https://www.taikooplace.com/en/artistree/content/stripsody|access-date=28 October 2021|website=taikooplace.com}}
• Line staves showing approximate pitch, with the actual pitches being decided upon performance.

center

• Altered notation can be seen in George Crumb's work,http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v46/n06/CrumbSpiral.gif {{Bare URL image|date=March 2022}} 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"{{Cite news|date=2013-10-04|title=Graphic music scores – in pictures|work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2013/oct/04/graphic-music-scores-in-pictures|access-date=2020-10-03}} for Amplified Piano. Crumb's score contained three detailed pages of instructions, with movements including Primeval Sounds, Crucifixus and Spiral Galaxy.
• New specific notation system, that is, a new of specifically and graphically notate musical actions like that of Xenakis' Psappha.Xenakis, I. (1975). Psappha (p. 1)

• 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.File:solitude.png's data structures]]
• Time-based abstract notation, such as Rudolf Komorous's Chanson utilizes abstract notation with time indication, or least a direction in which the piece is read and therefore implies a form.
• Free abstract representations, such as Brown's December 1952, where the form, pitch material and instrumentation are left up to the performer.
• Another example is John Cage's Aria;{{Cite web|title=John Cage – Aria – Art and Music|url=https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/graphic-scores-art-music-pictures/cage-aria/|access-date=2020-10-03|website=Classic FM (UK)}} although it may appear to be random squiggles, each line indicates a different style of singing, notated in wavy lines in ten different colors, and the black squares indicate non-specified 'non-musical' sounds.
• Free abstract notation, such as Mark Applebaum's "The Metaphysics of Notation" and where elements of traditional music notation are melded with abstract designs.{{cite web|last1=Heigemeir|first1=Ray|title=The Metaphysics of Notation|url=http://library.stanford.edu/blogs/stanford-libraries-blog/metaphysics-notation|website=Stanford Libraries|access-date=9 April 2018}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/mark_applebaum_the_mad_scientist_of_music.html|title = The mad scientist of music}}
• Another example is Tom Phillips' Golden Flower Piece, this piece uses uppercase letters to show notes that should be played in the bass, and lowercase letters played in a higher register. The player is allowed to add flats and sharps as they please. The dots around the notes show how loud the note should be played, and how long it should be held for.{{Cite web|title=Phillips – Golden Flower Piece|url=https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/graphic-scores-art-music-pictures/phillips-golden-flower-piece/|access-date=2020-10-04|website=Classic FM (UK)}}

Notable practitioners of graphic notation not mentioned previously include:

{{div col|colwidth=15em}}

• Aphex Twin
• Mark Applebaum
• Carmen Barradas
• Dennis Báthory-Kitsz
• Cathy Berberian
• Luciano Berio
• John Bergamo
• Anthony Braxton
• André Boucourechliev
• Leo Brouwer
• Herbert Brün
• Randolph Coleman
• Henry Cowell
• Emily Doolittle
• Toby Driver
• Iancu Dumitrescu
• Brian Eno
• Eric Ewazen
• Morton Feldman
• Goldie
• Jerry Goldsmith
• Michail Goleminov
• Jonny Greenwood
• Milan Grygar
• Barry Guy
• Lou Harrison
• Alfred Harth
• Panayiotis Kokoras
• Andrzej Krzanowski
• Bruno Liberda
• Helmut Lachenmann
• Yuri Landman
• Anestis Logothetis
• Raymond MacDonald
• Vlastislav Matoušek
• Robert Moran
• Luigi Morleo
• Conlon Nancarrow
• Pauline Oliveros
• Roberto Paci Dalò
• Krzysztof Penderecki
• Norbert Walter Peters
• Deborah Pritchard
• Sylvano Bussotti
• Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta
• Randy Raine-Reusch
• Rival Consoles
• Bernard Rands
• Roger Reynolds
• Matana Roberts
• Marina Rosenfeld
• Sven-David Sandström
• Leon SchidlowskyDavid Schidlowsky (ed.) (2011) Musikalische Grafik—Graphic Music: León Schidlowsky. Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. {{ISBN|978-3-86573-620-8}}
• R. Murray Schafer[http://artsalive.ca/en/mus/greatcomposers/schafer/bio.html R. Murray Schafer] at National Arts Centre ArtsAlive web site. Retrieved 2011-11-17.
• Netty Simons
• Stuart Saunders Smith
• Wadada Leo Smith
• Juan María Solare
• Allen Strange
• Shiori Usui
• Michael Vetter
• Claude Vivier
• Jennifer Walshe
• Sabrina Peña Young
• John Zorn

{{div col end}}

• Oramics

{{Reflist}}

• Gallope, Michael, Natilee Harren, and John Hicks, eds. [https:///www.getty.edu/publications/scores/ The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music, Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975]. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025. [https:///www.getty.edu/publications/scores/. https:///www.getty.edu/publications/scores/.]
• Lieberman, David 2006. [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1174472 "Game Enhanced Music Manuscript"]. In GRAPHITE '06: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Australasia and South East Asia, ACM Press, Melbourne, Australia, 245–250.

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20130211203532/http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/ Pictures of Music at Northwestern University]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080605113619/http://www20.brinkster.com/improarchive/legno1uk.htm Bergstroem-Nielsen, Carl: Experimental improvisation and notation practise 1945–1999; Experimental improvisation and notation practise, addenda 2000–]. Online bibliographies.
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hNl_skTZQ Real-time interpretation of Rainer Wehinger visualization] of György Ligeti's electronic work Artikulation
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20081006235756/http://www.nyme.org/graphic.html An online collection of graphic scores curated by the New York Miniaturist Ensemble]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090317084014/http://www.notations21.net/viewscores.html Notations21, an anthology of innovative musical notation]
• [http://www.asza.com/r3sc.shtml Raine-Reusch's page showing more than 20 graphic scores]
• [http://highc.org/ HighC: a graphic score-based composition system] inspired by Iannis Xenakis' UPIC system.
• [http://www.iannix.org/ IanniX : A graphical real-time open-source sequencer for digital art]
• [http://rwm.macba.cat/en/quaderns-audio?id_capsula=577 Cuaderno de Yokohama by Llorenç Barber] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130725160518/http://rwm.macba.cat/en/quaderns-audio?id_capsula=577 |date=2013-07-25 }} The complete series of 17 graphic scores that Barber created in Yokohama (Japan) in 2005. [http://rwm.macba.cat/ Ràdio Web MACBA]: Barcelona, 2009.
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGxS6YnYmfg How to read and write Graphic Notation]

{{Musical notation}}

{{Visual music}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Musical notation

Category:Post-tonal music theory