In one of our first sessions, we looked at graphic scores and how they have been used in experimental music and sound art. I had never previously heard of graphic scores before and as someone who has always struggled to read and play music in the traditional notated form (my first instrument was guitar, which is very rarely read from traditional notation), I found the concept very interesting and wanted to research into the concept a little more.
The first example of modern graphical notation is Morton Feldman’s ‘Projection 1″ from 1950. This graphic score looks almost like a circuit diagram, and is designed to be played consistently quiet, with different boxes in the score representing “instrument, register, number of simultaneous sounds, mode of production, and duration” according to Paul Griffiths in his book ‘Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945’. Time is represented by space, and the arrangement is certainly very sparse, which is of course not uncommon as Feldman was mostly a minimalist composer. I find it interesting and and of course very innovative, but I’m not sure it’s something I would find myself listening to very often as because it is so minimal my mind starts to wander a little bit (although this probably more on me than the piece).
Another example of graphical notation is Brian Eno’s score for his 1978 album ‘Music for Airports’. Himself not being a traditionally trained musician, and struggling with traditional notation in the way that I also do, he once said in an interview “quite a lot of what I do has to do with sound texture, and you can’t notate that anyway… That’s because musical notation arose when sound textures were limited”. The score features very unorthodox instructions such as “play the note C every 21 seconds”, a method which I personally really like as it gives the musicians playing it a lot of freedom. Each track on the album has a different score with very different illustrations and patterns. Track ‘1/1’ is made up of lines and dots, whereas ‘2/2’ consists of grey rectangular blocks.
I think this way of working really speaks to me and is something I would be interested in working on in the future, although I should maybe brush up on my drawing skills a bit! The album is very calming and was composed with the purpose of being played in airports in mind, to make the atmosphere more calm and to be easily interruptible without it ruining the music. Although before looking into graphic notation I was a big fan of Eno’s work with David Bowie and Roxy Music, I had never listened to his ambient solo works before. I thoroughly enjoyed this album and will listen through his catalogue more in weeks to come.
There are, however, older examples of composers trying to break free from traditional forms of notation. On designer David Hall’s website, I found an example of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.32, in which you can clearly see Beethoven deviating from the normal way of notating music at the time:
All in all, I find graphic scores to be a much more exciting, creative way of notating music and I would like to experiment with it in the future. As my drawing skills aren’t too great, perhaps I could use a picture that I’ve taken as my score, or use AI to generate the art and then improvise off of that. Who knows where the future will take me…
Bibliography
- David Hall. 2018. The art of visualising music: a brief history of graphic notation. [online] Available at: <http://davidhall.io/visualising-music-graphic-scores/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].
- Griffiths, P., 2002. Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.94.
- Reverb Machine. 2019. Deconstructing Brian Eno’s “Music For Airports” | Reverb Machine. [online] Available at: <https://reverbmachine.com/blog/deconstructing-brian-eno-music-for-airports/> [Accessed 29 April 2022].