Opening offer or contractual obligation? On the prescriptive function of notation in music today

Abstract

This article explores some of the diverse forms that musical notation has assumed in the early twenty-first century and discusses its use along a broad spectrum of creative intention, which includes visual representation of sounds, verbal lists of instructions or provocations, and much else. Drawing upon his own experience as a composer, and on studies of the work of composers both older and younger (Stockhausen, Lucier, Wolff; Molitor, Lely), the author examines the changing meanings of notes, staves and clefs, and the possibilities of graphic scores, text scores, and hybrid forms of notation. © 2014 Cambridge University Press.