Notation

by

Emily Zazulia

• LAST MODIFIED: 23 September 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199757824-0324

Introduction

The earliest artifacts containing musical notation date from about 3,500 years ago. In the intervening ages, humans from various cultures have invented myriad methods for representing sounds in writing. The scholarship on notation unsurprisingly skews toward Western music, particularly Western art music, since notation has been such an important tool for the creation, preservation, dissemination, and hegemony of this repertoire. Even non-Western traditions are often written about from a Western perspective. This can have distorting effects because of an unfortunate historical assumption that the use of notation was proof of a musical tradition’s sophistication, rationality, and superiority. Indeed, the use of musical notation has traditionally been the exception, not the rule. Today, scholars are engaged in a new appraisal of what counts as music notation, often opting for a capacious definition. Scholars of media and mediation are showing that the boundary between music notation and direct methods of sound recording is less firm than once thought. Likewise, the relationship between orality and literacy is increasingly framed as two sides of the same coin. While this reference will flag areas for broader reading, it will largely limit the scope of entries to those that concern written methods of music notation, rather than scholarship based on an all-embracing or metaphorical definition. For ease of use, it is organized according to topic, chronology, and geography, but its contents can be read profitably through thematic issues that cross categories. For instance, concerns over notation’s descriptive versus prescriptive roles pop up frequently, as do questions of what knowledge a performer must possess in order to read a given notational system. Issues of music theory also show up often, since the particular form notation takes is intimately tied to the nature of the music it is used for. This, in turn, complicates efforts at transcription, particularly across musical systems. And as the primary medium for the physical and material fixing of a famously ephemeral entity, notation frequently inspires semiotic and philosophical inquiry.

Semiotics and Function of Notation

Musical notation has engendered a long and growing literature about its nature and function. All the authors here might be seen to answer the question posed by Treitler 2011: “What kind of thing is musical notation?” The authors take different interpretive tacks depending on the form of notation under consideration. Seeger 1958 and Kapchan 2017 consider notation as an interface between oral and literate practices, as opposed to seeing writing in isolation. The essays in Schuiling and Payne 2022 treat notation as material culture. Other methodologically distinctive studies include Schuiling 2019, which proposes an ethnographic approach to notation’s mediating functions, and Goodman 1976, which sees music from a philosophical standpoint. Grier 2021 focuses on the dynamic tension between notation and developments in musical style. In proposing a new system of musical notation, Killick 2020 reflects on the role of notation for performing comparative analysis of music conceived and traditionally represented in different notational systems. Fubini 2004 is more concerned with the interpretive problems that musical notation introduces. Boretz and Cone 1976 approaches the role of notation through recent developments in contemporary music. Several entries under topic-specific headings also approach musical notation from the perspective of semiotics (see especially Treitler 1982, cited under Orality and Literacy in Early Monophony; Tanay 1999, under Early Mensural Notation; Zazulia 2021, under Notation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries; and Valle 2018, under Notation since 1900).

• Boretz, Benjamin, and Edward T. Cone, eds. Perspectives on Notation and Performance. Perspectives of New Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.

  Collection of eighteen essays by theorists, performers, and composers, all originally published in the journal Perspectives of New Music between 1963 and 1972. About half the chapters deal with technical problems of notation for particular instruments (e.g., flute, violin, piano), and others address philosophical questions concerning notation, such as the tension between a composer’s conception, notation, and performance, particularly with respect to (then) new music.

• Fubini, Enrico. “Temporalité de la musique et notation musicale: À I'origine du problème de l'interprétatlon.” Musicae Scientiae 8 (2004): 21–35.

  DOI: 10.1177/10298649040080S103

  Posits that the problem of interpretation exists in music because (art) music is traditionally transmitted by means of a symbolically representational score, as opposed to the work itself. Concludes that it is music’s temporal nature that will render musical notation always somehow incomplete, and proceeds from this position to reconsider the nature of the musical score.

• Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. 2d ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1976.

  DOI: 10.5040/9781350928541

  This book presents a relational theory of symbols in the arts. Goodman’s view of musical notation is predicated on a quite limited view of notational functioning, in which the musical score regulates the work it represents and any performance of the work must comply with the details of the score. This controversial position is tempered somewhat by its argumentative context.

• Grier, James. Music Notation in the West. Cambridge Introductions to Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

  DOI: 10.1017/9781139034821

  A history of Western musical notation from the ninth to the twentieth centuries. Organized chronologically, but with interludes addressing larger thematic issues like pitch and literacy. While Grier explains the workings of several key notational innovations (e.g., modal rhythm), the volume is more focused on explaining how notation afforded developments in musical style and in considering notation as a semiotic system.

• Kapchan, Deborah. Theorizing Sound Writing. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017.

  Although not concerned with traditional musical notation, this collection of essays aims to theorize the relationship between aurality and writing more generally. The essays concern the role of writing with respect to the experiences born of listening practices, which is challenging since this kind of “sound knowledge” is itself nondiscursive.

• Killick, Andrew. “Global Notation as a Tool for Cross-cultural and Comparative Music Analysis.” Analytical Approaches to World Music 8 (2020): 235–279.

  Proposes a newly conceived form of musical notation—an alternative to staff notation—that would facilitate cross-cultural, comparative musical analysis. Gives a history of other such endeavors and the reasons they have been seen as necessary and desirable. Illustrated with a number of examples drawn from different musical traditions. A companion website details tenets of the proposed system.

• Schuiling, Floris. “Notation Cultures: Towards an Ethnomusicology of Notation.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 144 (2019): 429–458.

  DOI: 10.1080/02690403.2019.1651508

  Proposes a methodology for studying musical notation from an ethnographic perspective—that is, in centering its role in mediating the social and creative agency of musicians as opposed to its representational structures. Schuiling proposes three key concepts—mobilization, entextualization, and remediation—which are adapted from anthropology and media studies.

• Schuiling, Floris, and Emily Payne, ed. Material Cultures of Musical Notation: New Perspectives on Musical Inscription. London and New York: Routledge, 2022.

  DOI: 10.4324/9780429342837

  Collection of essays with an expansive understanding of musical notation in its material guises. Common themes include theories of notation, the relationship of notation with musicians’ bodies, how notation engenders sociability, and its relationship to instruments and technology.

• Seeger, Charles. “Prescriptive and Descriptive Music-Writing.” Musical Quarterly 44 (1958): 184–195.

  DOI: 10.1093/mq/XLIV.2.184

  Argues that staff notation is a prescriptive system whose limitations become clear when used in descriptive (i.e., transcriptive) functions. Staff notation requires supplemental aural knowledge of the performance practice of a given tradition. In a response to the discrete nature of notes in Western staff notation, Seeger introduces graph notation as an alternative specifically geared toward a scientific, comparative study.

• Treitler, Leo. “What Kind of Thing Is Musical Notation?” In Reflections on Musical Meaning and Its Representations. By Leo Treitler, 107–160. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

  Broad-ranging chapter whose goal is to open up the consideration of music notation from a siloed and utilitarian understanding and into broader semiotic thought. Evidence drawn mostly, but not exclusively, from medieval sources. Themes include semiotic theory, the degree to which music notation is analogue of linguistic writing, and cognitive processes involved in reading musical notation.