How the conventions of music notation shape musical perception and performance

2005 ◽  
pp. 143-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne Bamberger
Keyword(s):  
Music Notation ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
And Performance

Notating Action-Based Music

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 65-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juraj Kojs
Keyword(s):  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Graphic Scores ◽  
Physical Gestures ◽  
And Performance

The author discusses the notation of action-based music, in which physical gestures and their characteristics, such as shape, direction and speed (as opposed to psychoacoustic properties such as pitch, timbre and rhythm), play the dominant role in preserving and transferring information. Grounded in ecological perception and enactive cognition, the article shows how such an approach mediates a direct relationship between composition and performance, details some action-based music notation principles and offers practical examples. A discussion of tablature, graphic scores and text scores contextualizes the method historically.

Profiles of Processing: Eye Movements during Sightreading

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Goolsby
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Performance Support ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Skilled Reader ◽  
Perceptual Span ◽  
Visual Detail ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
Visual Notation ◽  
Processing Language

Temporal and sequential components of the eye movement used by a skilled and a less-skilled sightreader were used to construct six profiles of processing. Each subject read three melodies of varying levels of concentration of visual detail. The profiles indicates the order, duration, and location of each fixation while the subjects sightread the melodies. Results indicate that music readers do not fixate on note stems or the bar lines that connect eighth notes when sightreading. The less-skilled music reader progressed through the melody virtually note-by-note using long fixations, whereas the skilled sightreader directed fixations to all areas of the notation (using more regressions than the less-skilled reader) to perform the music accurately. Results support earlier findings that skilled sightreaders look farther ahead in the notation, then back to the point of performance (Goolsby, 1994), and have a larger perceptual span than less-skilled sightreaders. Findings support Slobodans (1984) contention that music reading (i. e., sightreading) is indeed music perception, because music notation is processed before performance. Support was found for Sloboda's (1977, 1984, 1985, 1988) hypotheses on the effects of physical and structural boundaries on visual musical perception. The profiles indicate a number of differences between music perception from processing visual notation and perception resulting from language reading. These differences include: (1) opposite trends in the control of eye movement (i. e., the better music reader fixates in blank areas of the visual stimuli and not directly on each item of the information that was performed), (2) a perceptual span that is vertical as well as horizontal, (3) more eye movement associated with the better reader, and (4) greater attention used for processing language than for music, although the latter task requires an "exact realization."

scholarly journals Performers, Composers, Scores and Editions: Commentary on Huisman, Gingras, Dhondt, and Leman (2017)

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Dorottya Fabian
Keyword(s):  
Western Music ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Performing Editions ◽  
Performance Errors ◽  
Historically Informed Performance ◽  
Compositional Styles ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Learning And Performance

Reflecting on a study that examines the impact of various editions on the speed of learning and performance errors, this short paper notes the crudeness of western music notation and how musicians cope with deciphering the composer's musical intentions. Drawing on parallels with practitioners who specialize in historically informed performance and tend to favor playing from manuscripts and facsimiles, I argue that although performing editions are useful, proper education regarding the meaning of notation practices and compositional styles might better serve musicians. This enables each generation to construct its own understanding of the music, and of the contradictory and insufficiently specified demands of the score.

Marching backwards into the future: the introduction of the English creative music movement in state secondary schools in Victoria, Australia

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Harry Burke
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Education ◽  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Music Education ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Music Teachers ◽  
Progressive Education ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Education Department ◽  
Creative Music ◽  
And Performance

In 1910, Victoria established an elite form of state secondary education that remained essentially unchanged until the introduction of a progressive curriculum during the late 1960s. This radical and voluntary curriculum introduced child-centred learning and personal development skills to state secondary schools. Many state secondary music teachers took advantage of the reform and introduced the English creative music movement (Rainbow, 1989). As music teachers were unfamiliar with progressive education they would require extensive retraining. Continual disruption to state secondary education during the 1970s, together with the lack of expertise in progressive music education in the Victorian Education Department led to music teachers being given little assistance in developing strategies for teaching creative music. No rationale was developed for creative music education until the late 1980s. As research in music education was in its infancy in Australia during the late 1960s, teachers had little understanding of the difficulties faced by many creative music teachers in England in regard to students developing traditional skills, for example music notation and performance-based skills. Dissatisfaction with progressive education led to the introduction of standards-based education in 1995. Progressive educational theories were no longer considered an important goal. Similar to the late 1960s Victorian education reforms, music teachers received little assistance from the Victorian Education Department. The introduction of standards-based Arts education has seriously reduced the teaching of classroom music throughout the state, leaving many classroom music programmes in a perilous position that is analogous to state music education before the introduction of progressive education in the late 1960s.

scholarly journals Musical Complexity and "Embodied Notation": A Study of the Opus Clavicembalisticum (K. S. Sorabji)

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Lukas Huisman ◽  
Bruno Gingras ◽  
Geert Dhondt ◽  
Marc Leman
Keyword(s):  
Extreme Case ◽  
Performance Edition ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Study Time ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Solo Piano ◽  
Error Ratio ◽  
Study Process ◽  
And Performance

Scores of complex, 20th century, solo piano pieces can be difficult to perform and may even include elements that are physically impossible to play. This article investigates the role of music notation in the Opus Clavicembalisticum of Sorabji, which is a rather extreme case in terms of virtuosity and length. To analyze the effect of score notation on learning and performing, 9 pianists were asked to practice music fragments in 3 different score editions, namely the original Urtext edition (a 4-staff score), performance edition (same notes but organized according to an "embodied" performance viewpoint), and study edition (further simplified and with added analytical reading aids). The hypothesis was that the "embodied notation" would have an effect on study time (shorter study time) and errors (fewer errors). Objective features of the study process and performance, such as study time, error ratio and markings on the score (fingerings, hand distribution, synchronization) were compared. Subjective remarks the performers made about the scores were also analyzed. Findings indicate a significant positive influence of the score type on the study time. These results suggest that players draw on ideomotor principles, which include processes based on learned and "embodied" associations between perceived images of the scores and the motor activity that is directly associated with it.

scholarly journals Notating disfluencies and temporal deviations in music and arrhythmia

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 205920431879515
Author(s):  
Elaine Chew
Keyword(s):  
Cardiac Arrhythmias ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Mean Square ◽  
Quantitative Measurements ◽  
Pulse Stream ◽  
Time Structures ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Performed Music

Expressive music performance and cardiac arrhythmia can be viewed as deformations of, or deviations from, an underlying pulse stream. I propose that the results of these pulse displacements can be treated as actual rhythms and represented accurately via a literal application of common music notation, which encodes proportional relations among duration categories, and figural and metric groupings. I apply the theory to recorded music containing extreme timing deviations and to electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings of cardiac arrhythmias. The rhythm transcriptions are based on rigorous computer-assisted quantitative measurements of onset timings and durations. The root-mean-square error ranges for the rhythm transcriptions were (19.1, 87.4) ms for the music samples and (24.8, 53.0) ms for the arrhythmia examples. For the performed music, the representation makes concrete the gap between the score and performance. For the arrhythmia ECGs, the transcriptions show rhythmic patterns evolving through time, progressions which are obscured by predominant individual beat morphology- and frequency-based representations. To make tangible the similarities between cardiac and music rhythms, I match the heart rhythms to music with similar rhythms to form assemblage pieces. The use of music notation leads to representations that enable formal comparisons and automated as well as human-readable analysis of the time structures of performed music and of arrhythmia ECG sequences beyond what is currently possible.

Between Composition and Transcription: Ferruccio Busoni and Music Notation

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERINN KNYT
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Music ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Ferruccio Busoni ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Main Criticism

Abstract‘The new art of music is derived from the old signs – and these now stand for the musical art itself.’1 With this statement, Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) summarized his main criticism of traditional music notation – that it was lifeless and outdated. Based on an analysis of Busoni's organic method of keyboard notation (1909), an examination of composition sketches and performance scores, and an investigation of his writings about notation in aesthetic texts – in particular the Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music (1907) – this article shows how Busoni's multifaceted views about notation forged a middle ground between the work as text and the work as performance in an age enthralled to the idea of Werktreue. In addition, it traces the continuing influence of Busoni's ideas about notation on Arnold Schoenberg and other contemporaneous theorists and composers.

scholarly journals PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF THE FUTURE MUSIC TEACHER FOR CONCERTMASTER ACTIVITIES IN THE CLASS OF CLASSICAL DANCE

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (43) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Ao Dengaova
Keyword(s):  
Professional Training ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Classical Dance ◽  
Functional Connections ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
Performance Barriers ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Concert Pianist ◽  
Selection Of

The article is devoted to the questions of a number of aspects of formation of skills of concertmaster activity as a component of piano preparation of the pianist-beginner in the class of classical choreography, revealing of the functional connections of the tandem teacher-choreographer – pianist-concertmaster, determination of the level of psychological-pedagogical students and performers interaction with the choreographer. The data are analyzed in the context of consideration of the general laws concerning the selection of the performing repertoire for musical design of classical choreography lessons, their importance, expediency and correspondence to the students' age characteristics, their level of musical perception.  Key words: concertmaster activities, beginner concert pianist, choreography art, classical dance, psychological and performance barriers, musical design.

Writing about music: The selection and arrangement of notation in jazz students’ written texts

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodie L. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Music Educators ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Code Theory ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Legitimation Code Theory ◽  
And Performance

Music notation is intrinsic in the composition and performance of Western art music and also in its analysis and research. The process of writing about music remains underexplored, in particular how excerpts of music notation are selected and arranged in a written text, and how that text describes and contextualises the excerpts. This article applies ‘semantic gravity’ from Legitimation Code Theory to characterise notational excerpts and their integration in a written text, by focusing on how closely they are connected to a particular performance or generalised across performances. It illustrates these concepts with case studies of tertiary students’ research projects to reveal how different purposes drive different notational usage when writing about music. This provides insight for music educators on how to support writing about music and the use of notational quotes.

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