Alternative Title

Notating Human Made Objects

Publication Date

Fall 12-20-2022

Abstract

Scores of Nature (Volume 2) is a collection of experimental notation and scores, which are created through serial, unplanned, and partially planned musical sequences overlaid onto natural scenes, spaces, or objects that the composer has taken photographs of in different places. This sequence is of five sets of images, many of them with curvature or lines that can be redesigned within an imaginative or manipulated musical staff with parallel or intersecting lines, clefs, time signatures, and other elements of a traditional score. In some cases the composer has offered a possible interpretation of the experimental score and notation through traditional renderings following each artistic representation of nature, landscape, or object. The point of this kind of experimental writing is to engage people with notions of writing music, questioning the limits of the score and notation, and opening up the question about both the unexpected, chaotic aspects of nature and environmental spaces and their highly ordered, predictable aspects, which play out in landscapes and objects all around us. For example, how might a sequence of window on a hotel, or a variety of fences and barriers, or a handicap parking zone inspire us to write music across those spaces, and how might that both look like and sound like? Furthermore, what is the relationship between what we traditionally think of as a score (and its notation) and artistic renderings of lived spaces? What, if anything, do they have in common, and how might that lend itself to how we understand music and live our lives in and around music?

The five pieces shared here include:

1. Cando Canzone (North Texas): Notational score made from apartment building

2. Hotel Habanera (North Texas): Notational score made from hotels on a highway

3. Hydrant Hornpipe (North Texas): Notational score made from fire hydrants

4. Fence & Barrier Bourrée (North Texas): Notational score made from fences and road block/barrier

5. Parking Lot Letkajenkka (North Texas): Notational score made from parking lot lines

In each case, the composer has offered possible interpretations of the natural scores in traditionally articulated notation.

Document Type

Other

Keywords

Experimental Music; Experimental Notation; Environmental History; Environmental Scores; Environmental Notation; Musical Scores; Avant garde; Nature and Music; Natural Music; Natural Notation; Nature Scores; Parking Lots and Music; Hotels and Music; Fences and Music; Found Objects and Music; Human made objects and Musical Scores; Fire Hydrants and Music;

Disciplines

Audio Arts and Acoustics | Composition | Fine Arts | Music Performance | Music Theory | Other Music

Notes

Part of series on experimental musical notation and scores.

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