Music Notation - Music graphics

curated by Niksa Gligo

including works by: Earl Brown, John Cage, Beaude Cordier, Dubravko Detoni, Dick Higgins, Tom Johnson, Anestis Logothetis, Nam June Paik, Reiner Wehinger

Western European notions of music have become so paradigmatically dependent on notation that to some twentieth-century authors (e.g. Nelson Goodman) the category of nationality is an ideal he fully equates to that of musicality; a notational record not notationality enough is a dubious point of departure for the music it represents! However, the design of notation has always counted on its own special efficancy in the transfer of writing into sound, that is, music. Let us set the following parameters: Baude Cordier's heart shaped canon Bell Bonne (circa 1400) suggests the direction of reading; the Mondrianesque abstraction of Earl Brown's layout for December 52 (1952) indicates a suggestion of the relationship between the sound on a horizontal axis of time, proportionally matching the spatial relationships between particular sound symbols on the sheet; the graphic representation of Tom Johnson's Imaginary Music (1974) renders concrete the associations evoked by the musically relevant titles of the compositions; the of 'a score for listening to' Gyorgy Ligeti's 1958 electronic composition Articulation, published by Rainer Wehinger, is intended to help the listener find his/her way around this particularly complex piece of music.

However there is no doubt that some of these exhibits suggest the possibility of existing as works of visual art, as an independent source of pure visual delight with no obligation - as a record of notational-musical intent - to be realised in sound. The problem of the emancipation of notation from its realisation should be considered in respect of the following viewpoints:
a) In his celebrated interview with Roger Reynolds from 1962, John Cage claimed that composition, performance and audial perception have nothing in common. Later, on various occasions, he developed this view, propagating the ever greater independence of the written notation from the composer's intentions, that is the greater independence of the performance from the writing, the greater independence of listening from composing and performing. Naturally, in this case the terms composing/composition, performing/ performance and listening have nothing in common with their traditional meanings.
b) Compositional intentions - in the traditional relationship between composition, performance and perception - are recorded with appropriate notational system can no longer adequately indicate the composer's intentions, it is natural for the composer to seek help by bringing in new signs. (therefore the history of our music - as a history of the changes in our notation for musicality - is also a history of the changes in the system of notation and signs.) New sign system appearing a history mostly in the twentieth century are categorised as graphic notation. Music graphics, however, imply that the composers have abandoned the idea of indicating their intentions by way of a written record at which point the record - as musical design - is truly liberated from its obligation of being rendered audial. (Maybe this is the result of the composers' indirect admission that their intentions cannot be indicated by any system of signs and notation in the sense of graphic notation!)
The exhibit in this show, each in its own way, document this situation, regardless of how their' instructions for the realisation' make them appear functionally dependent on their performance, or on the music resulting from their reproduction in sound.