The New Trends in Graphic Notation After 1945

Jiazhi Sun

（宜宾学院，四川 宜宾644000）

Abstract：With the evolution of electronic music and music instruments, the traditional notation method has falling behind the changing from recent decades. While recent years there are composers are using new methodology to deal with the challenge to solve the problems by explore new possibilities by applying graphic music notations.

Keywords：music notation ；graphic notation；music composition

The developments of musical notation are always associated with performance practice. For example,the composers in the Romantic period presented the more detailed dynamic, articulation symbols in their scores, compared with Baroque and Classical period,which could be regard as the requirements of new aesthetic trends to performers. Similarity, The emergence of new trends in graphic notation after the 20th, has identical demands too, all composers try to attempt various novelty forms to guide the performers to present their inner sound correctly. Those three composers have selected as most of distinct icon to understand why they choose those neoteric notations in the middle of twenty century.

R.Murray Schafer composed many works by using graphic notation. The first of Schafer ’s compositions to use graphic notation was Statement in Blue(1964), written for a class of eighth- grade students, this piece is provided for students who studied their instrument less than one year, and want to attend the symphonic band in their school . The composer describes this piece as：“the pitches are left largely determinate for the performers to gather into tone- fields for themselves, though other aspects of the piece (instrumentation, dynamics, and form)are controlled by the score.”There are no clearly rhythm, dynamic, and meter. The final effect was resulted by the taste of performers，and the pitch materials are totally indeterminate and subject to the per former. And the composer uses many ideographic words to indicate the sound, such as “ imitate the calm water, a pebble in thrown in, and the water is clam again, ”guiding the performers to find the sound in their mind. Besides, even there is no specific pitch in, but in this score, this work still cover ed with daring and contrasting graphic waves to indicate the ascending and descending of the phrases. Showing the variations and transformation in each section to reveal the certain musical image.

Because this graphic notation does not process the fixed pitch, rhythm, which will add more occasionally and changeable.It will result that different performers could produce different sound and effect based on their various tastes, which is one of the most distinct characteristics of the twenty-century music and their previous music too.

Besides the properties of changeable in the twenty- century music, the composer also found that the traditional notation cannot fulfill the demands of instructing the performers how to play the newly invented instruments in twenty century. So it requires the composers to explore new methods to present their expected new sounds in the new instruments. The composer Ellen Fullman Said, “My approach to composition is similar to the editing of film： one event on a time-line dissolves or cuts into the next. I also think of it as sculpture： sound waves moving through space. In the late 1980s, I developed a notation system that reflects these processes, which I still use as the basis for scoring my work . She created a new and very long string instrument, it had fifty feet long, and developed with the unique notation to guide the performers how to play. This instrument process almost orchestral sound, and can produce abundant over tone, the frequencies of this instrument start from 55 hertz at thirty - two meters in length (the A below the low C on the cello) to A- 440 hertz. In her work Event location No.2 she explained that she must develop a new method for notation, because she thinks that for accounting the long duration of each note, to publish it on traditional way is impossible. The bold number at the top of box represent the intonation tuning of individual strings to be played, while the circled number presents that the positions on the floor per former must walk to i the time indicated.”On the other hand, the new notation style also inspires the people to invent new instruments. Both of them will promote the twenty -century music developed further.

To the last stage, the contemporary notation has become to a type of art. In the other word, even the primary aim of their score is to communicate with performers and composers to present their idea, but due to the new elements added in the contemporary music such as applying the electronic sounds and “ live”sound, the graphic notation has process the aesthetic values in the certain degree. Many composers showed their distinct personality on their under standing in both iconographic and compositional areas. So the writer of The New Musical Notation： A Graphic Art? – John Evart has written down his concern about： “ Perhaps within a few years these graphs and fantasies will be considerably more admired for their visual appeal and content than for what they were intended to communicate： the music itself.”

The composer of this piece is Anestis Logothetis,who noted both for his musical works and his invention of hi s graphic notation system. The name of this composition “ Odysee” (ballet) composed at 1967, it has two motions, “ The "path" which runs in vertical and horizontal Segments. Performers will be divided into three groups： One plays the first motion in“Path” , simultaneously, the other groups play the movement on the left to the right By observing this sore, some of people may begin to suspect the significance ofgraphic notation, what past should be emphasized more? In fact, this phenomenon is understandable, the musical art exists with visual arts is not an unfamiliar thing to people, we can find the examples in customs in opera, layout of concert that in stage performance. People will understand that the graphic notation will become a new type of visual art too.

Bibliography：

[1]Driscoll, Matthew. "Diverse Practices of Graphic Notation.”MA diss., the Mills College, 2015.

[2]Evarts, John. “The New Musical Notation： A Graphic Art?”Leonardo 1,no.4(October 1968)405-412.

[3]Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2015 (website).“Grants to Artists, Music Sound：Ellen Fullman”Accessed in 2015http： //www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/ellen-fulman.

[4]Hills,Cory. Graphic Notation as Means of Musical Gesture： Examining percussion works by John Cage Morton Feldman,and Vinko Globokar .”MM Diss., the University of Kansas, Accessed 2012.

[5]Sawatzky,David Cornelius.“ An Analysis of Graphic Notation and Its Impact on Conducting Gesture In Selected Works of R.Murray Schafer.”DMA diss., the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Accessed 2012.