Graphic Scores-avant-garde

Graphic scores in 20th century avant-garde

John Cage will be the center figure of this session. Not only due to its the 20th century Western avant-garde music, but moreover, due to the extensive of his exploration of graphical scores, which range from more conventional open scores to systems for generating scores.

why graphic scores

Keeping the focus on music or sound art, it should be asked why are graphic scores needed? Why were they employed in musical composition?

The immediate answer might simply be to express compositional approaches or ideas in a score that conventional westerner notation is not able to do.

What are the approaches and ideas that graphic scores is better suited to express, than conventional westerner notation?

• description of certain sounds such noise, extended playing techniques (e.g. rubbing fingers on skin, bowing a cymbal, processing the sound, etc) that fall outside the scope of western musical notation
• description of the instrument configurations and setting of an instrument (e.g. the patch of modular synthesizer or preparation of a piano)
• capacity to change the form of the composition significantly, with each interpretation
• capacity to change the roles and responsibilities of composer and interpret

• instrument configuration
  • John Cage Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (1946-1948) - instrument configuration
  • David Tudor Rainforest - instrument configuration

• description of certain sounds
  • Cartridge Music ?

The score of Cartridge Music consists of a page of instructions, as well as four transparent sheets—one with points, one with circles, another with a circle that looks like a clock face, and a fourth with a dotted curved line with a circle at the end of it—and twenty pieces of white paper with shapes on them.

The first thing you do is to superimpose the transparencies over the sheet with shapes to get a determination for playing. You may place the sheets randomly, one on top of the other, only making sure that the circle at the end of the dotted line contains a point outside a shape and that the dotted line intersects at least one point within a shape. Where a dotted line intersects a point within a shape you produce a sound corresponding to that shape. What Cage means here is somewhat vague. I think he means that you make a sound with the object related to that particular shape, but to tell you the truth I have often simply traced the shape to help me move my object around to make sounds.

Intersection of the dotted line with a point outside the shape indicates auxiliary sounds made by any means other than those made by the objects in the cartridges. Cage often uses auxiliary sounds to interrupt the flow of an otherwise smooth and beautiful piece. You could amplify nearby microphone stands with contact microphones, for example. The intersections of the dotted lines with a circle within and outside a shape may be used to alter dynamic levels and tone controls respectively. In addition when a circle is intersected by both a boundary of a shape and the dotted line, a change of object is indicated. The dotted line may intersect the clock face at various points. The clock face is measured in five-second segments. Where it enters will be your starting time. Where it exits is your ending time.

• roles and responsibilities
  • John Cage Fontana Mix (1958)
  • examples from Umberto Eco's Open Work (1962)

• changing form
  • John Cage's Theatre Piece (1977)

• Chance and indeterminacy
• Open scores and system scores (the score as a program or a programming language)
• Shifting relationship: composer -> interpreter
• Ambiguity: Cornelious Cardew's Treatise
• Interpreting Cage's Fontana Mix a Theater Piece a score and performing it