Graphic Notation

図形楽譜 / 1950s– / Style / Notation Systems

The scores Cage and Cardew drew when they abandoned the staff: shapes, lines, map-like pages. Opening performance to interpretation rather than instruction, the score itself became visual art.

Graphic Notation — AI-generated interpretation 1
AI-generated interpretation, not a reference work
Graphic Notation — Toshi Ichiyanagi, Music for Electric Metronomes 1960 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Leehal1
Toshi Ichiyanagi, Music for Electric Metronomes 1960 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Leehal1
Graphic Notation — Leonardo Luigi Perotto, Esquinas, graphic score 2020 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · © Leoperotto
Leonardo Luigi Perotto, Esquinas, graphic score 2020 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · © Leoperotto

At a glance

Visual cues

  • The staff abandoned
  • Instruction by shape and line
  • Pages open to interpretation
  • The score as artwork

Best used for

  • Handing improvisers a map instead of a list of instructions
  • Making the page of a piece into a figure worth hanging on a wall

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Dictionary entry

Type
Few kinds of sign, with the range where one shape holds one meaning
Composition
Show which direction on the page carries time before anyone plays
Material
Line weight mapped to loudness, kept dark enough to print clean
Caution
Freedom claimed without a key or any agreed convention scatters interpretation across players, and the score gets treated as a doodle.
Further study
Cage's Fontana Mix / Cardew's Treatise / Toshi Ichiyanagi and Japanese graphic scores

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Cite this entry

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https://indexstyle.org/styles/graphic-notation
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[Graphic Notation — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/graphic-notation)
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