There are many different kinds of graphic scores, some providing very minimal performance instruction and therefore requiring considerable interpretative strategies, others replete with detailed instructions, differing from conventional scores more in layout than in concept. This course will be a forum to study and perform graphic scores by Mark Applebaum, Anthony Braxton, Earle Brown, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Anestis Logothetis, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Alvin Lucier, Robert Moran, and new generations of emerging composers. We will study selected readings and writings to put them in a broader scholarly context and discuss strategies for performing these pieces, which will be put into action in weekly performance workshops. There will be a public performance at the end of the semester. The approach will be interdisciplinary, drawing upon semiotic analysis, gestalt psychology, visual art, and phenomenology.
One of the reason composers started to experiment with graphic scores in the 1950s and '60s was to develop a kind of musical notation that could be read, and therefore performed, even by those who did not identify as musically literate. This course is, accordingly, open to all students; no prior knowledge or instrumental expertise is required. We will work primarily with voices and body percussion. |