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.

• 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