Writing Music. Iconic, Performative, Operative, and Material Aspects in Musical Notation(s)
Elena Minetti and Carolin Ratzinger
3 April, 2023, 12-1 PM EST
Elena Minetti and Carolin Ratzinger
AMS Staff
About AMS Staff
Posts by AMS Staff:
Beyond the Staff: Pedagogies and Practices
AMS Study Group for Music Notation, Inscription, and Visualization
NB: For those who cannot join the AMS/SMT annual meeting, please consider this call for papers as a Call for Proposals for a special journal issue.
For the 2023 meeting of AMS/SMT in Denver, CO, the Study Group for Music Notation, Inscription, and Visualization is soliciting papers for a session titled “Beyond the Staff: Pedagogies and Practices,” focusing on the advantages and limits of oral, staff and non-staff music notations when teaching music history and theory in a post-canonical, decolonial, and global classroom.
While undergraduate and graduate instructors are increasingly interested in finding alternatives to the limits and epistemologies imposed by staff notation, they do not always have the training or resources to design new materials for the classroom (e.g. graduate students, adjunct and non-tenured faculty, professors with heavy teaching loads). By bringing together the research and pedagogical expertise of those who are currently addressing this problem, the panel’s ultimate goal is to create a special journal issue that would work both as a go-to reference for undergraduate and graduate assignments, and as a model for future efforts with similar objectives.
“Beyond the Staff: Pedagogies and Practices” invites talks that feature a diverse range of Western and non-Western notations, broadly defined, prompting our speakers:
- to show through specific case studies how certain notations can change the implicit narratives we bring into the classroom, helping us rethink the ways in which we do music history and analysis.
- to share original methods and practical solutions for familiarizing students without any previous knowledge to both staff, non-staff notations, as well as modes of music visualization and manipulation afforded by new technologies (e.g. music production softwares)
- to bring in critical perspectives targeted at classroom discussions about notation/transcription systems and their entanglement with (settler-)colonialism, capitalism, and structural racism.
To expand the scope of our inquiry beyond musicology/music theory/ethnomusicology, and stress the relevance of these issues in a broader cultural context, we have invited Dr. Olufunmilayo Arewa as keynote speaker. Dr. Arewa is currently the Murray H. Shusterman Professor of Transactional and Business Law at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. In her work, she has shown how the visual bias towards staff notation in copyright disputes disproportionately marginalizes improvisation and non-Western music practices. Viewed through the lens of music pedagogy, Dr. Arewa’s work sheds light on what might be the consequences at a legal level of an educational system that uncritically naturalizes Western standard notation.
We encourage submissions from scholars affiliated or who will be affiliated with any of the three societies (AMS/SMT/SEM). Please submit anonymized abstracts (350 words max.) in pdf or doc form to notation.studygroup [at] gmail.com by the end of the day, March 10th. Please include your affiliation and position (if any) in the body of your email.
In your submission, please indicate whether you would like your abstract to be considered for a live paper presentation, as an article for the special journal issue, or for both. As there is limited capacity for the live presentations at AMS/SMT, some submissions may only be considered for the journal. In this case, we will contact selected authors to submit a more detailed abstract at a later date.
Giulia Accornero (PhD Candidate in Music Theory, Harvard University) accornero [at] g.harvard.edu
Ginger Dellenbaugh (PhD Candidate in Musicology, Yale University) ginger.dellenbaugh [at] yale.edu
Music Notation and Analysis in Music Theory Courses
Shersten Johnson, University of St. Thomas
Music theory courses aim to help students comprehend musical structure so that they can listen more deeply, perform expressively, and compose creatively. Part of the challenge of trying to understand how music is structured, however, is that somehow one must capture the sound-imagery––essentially vibrations of air molecules, which are here one moment and gone the next––in order to measure, divide, and compare components. Because of music’s ephemeral nature, we typically rely on printed scores and other kinds of diagrams of the sound-image, which allow us to consider relationships and patterns outside the pressures of real-time performance.
My presentation will address two outcomes of the reliance on traditional print notation in music theory studies. First, rather than supporting understanding in a neutral way, notation directs attention and biases interpretation. In fact, the distinctions between audible and visible can sometimes blur in our musical theoretical discourse. Additionally, at times score study can reveal relationships that only obtain visually and not necessarily aurally. This paper will discuss several examples of mappings between sound and music notation that are actually quite tenuous and suggest alternative representations. Second, though we have the sense that notation is prosthetic on the sounding music – reducing, clarifying, and thus necessary for understanding – relying on print notation privileges visual comprehension. Dependence on visual representations limits accessibility for some students of music theory (for example those with low vision or dyslexia, or those whose musical experience is based on making music “by ear”). This presentation will address these two unintended consequences and consider complementary ways to understand certain concepts of musical structure through a variety of means.
“I Can’t Read Music”—Music Reading as a Cultural Practice in Popular Music
Bernhard Steinbrecher, University of Innsbruck
In my paper, I present one part of a joint-cooperation project currently under review for bilateral funding. The whole project carries the title “Reading Music: Modes, Dimensions and Scenes of a Cultural Technique,” aiming to formulate, on the basis of concrete situations and practices, a theory of music reading as a multimodal cultural technique. My own subproject proposal deals with the role and discursification of music reading in popular music, considering that an integral part of the self-promotion of many famous artist personae of popular music concerns their ignorance of traditional musical notation. These ‘reading difficulties’ often appear in the context of an opposing concept that eschews formal training and production principles in favor of increased artistic freedom and authenticity.
This raises several issues regarding genre-typical processes of transmedial transcription between the spheres of the visual, the auditive, and the physical-performative that have as yet been explored only seldom in popular music studies. Research questions concern, e.g., the analytical and reenacting modes and dimensions of music reading in scenes of learning and composition, asking to what extent acts of reading differ according to different popular music genres (specifically rock, electronic dance music, and hip-hop). Moreover, also the sociality dimension of music reading in contexts of performance and interaction is planned to be examined in this subproject, focusing on the role of notation in staging practices, live rituals, and practices of rehearsing and remembering.
In my paper, I outline the cornerstones of my planned project including its mixed-methods approach, striving to stimulate discussion and gain feedback and further ideas from experts in the new AMS Study Group.
Writing Sancaras (Characteristic Phrases) for New Audiences
Balu Balasubrahmaniyan, Wesleyan University
In the long history of South Indian (Karnatak) music, the concept of notation is almost nonexistent until the 17th century. Although Indian music pedagogy insists on oral tradition, Somanatha’s Raga Vibodha (dated 1609) attempted to create notational symbols for melodic ornaments, known as gamaka. This treatise described instrumental realization on the vina and included musical examples. As the study of Karnatak music became institutionalized, a need for notation arose. In addition to the conventional notation system, my revered guru T.Viswanathan (Viswa) developed a unique system known as descriptive notation, which reveals every detail of any complex phrase of a raga. Although Viswa’s own family tradition relied on oral pedagogy, his notational system had significant impact, particularly among non-Indians wishing to learn intricate melodic aspects of Karnatak music. Viswa’s cousin T. Brinda was critical of his work because she was against sheet music. As a student of both, I was able to understand the methodologies of the two great masters. It was challenging, in the beginning, to understand Viswa’s notation system since I am used to the oral tradition. Later, I understood his motivation to translate one’s understanding of convoluted phrases into a visualization.
Building on the works of his predecessors, such as Oriental Music in European Notation (1893) by Chinnaswami Mudaliar and Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini (1904) written by Subbarama Dikshitar, Viswa’s study in this area of research is monumental and thorough. He adapted aspects of various music cultures, including some Western music symbols in his notation. He also shared information on the numeric notation system used in Chinese and Indonesian Gamelan music.
In this presentation, I will briefly discuss Viswa’s contribution and demonstrate his descriptive notation in contrast to the conventional notation system. While notation is not capable of capturing the bhava (mood or feeling) of Karnatak music, I will indicate its place in my own practice as a performer and teacher at Wesleyan University. I use audiovisual samples in support of my presentation.