To wade in again, as I am still writing my objects...

I think we need to think of opening up possibilities that encompass others, rather than restricting any new objects to "traditional" tonal/rhythmic music(s).

The reason why I chose GEM as the platform for my notation experiments was that it can be augmented (a la Busoni) with standard GEM objects (i.e. non-standard notation) so that if a composer (me) wishes for the lines of the stave to go haywire, it is a possibility. But this sort of graphical manipulation of the objects falls outside of what I would deem "standardised" music notation - Busoni/Busotti is for poetic interpretation by someone like David Tudor, rather than proscriptive execution of symbols with definite meanings.

However, any new object specifically designed for standardised music notation must at least have the capability to represent possibilities that can be well-defined e.g. 1/4 tones, glissandi, different stops, noteheads, beam styles, proportional notation, non-standard key signatures (armature? See Messeian's Mode 2 for an 8-note scale) etc. Non-standard (i.e. deliberately ambiguous) elements of notation should be left out of such a system I think.

...But this is also why I've chosen to represent the notation elements using truetype fonts, which can be easily edited and augmented. Meanwhile, just organising rhythmic groupings within a bar is enough of a perplexing problem, especially when one is using dynamic patching to achieve this!

There is my 2 crotchets worth for today :) Ed

Metastudio 4 for Pure Data - coming soon! Metastudio 3 still available at http://sharktracks.co.uk/puredata

----- Original Message ---- From: João Pais jmmmpais@googlemail.com To: patko colet.patrice@free.fr Cc: pd-list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Wed, 10 November, 2010 11:55:17 Subject: Re: [PD] Musical notation object on Pd

we can have a few examples in here:

http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/stockhausenScores.html

ah, didn't know he had these examples, weren't there last time I visited this site.

particulary Xi for flûte, http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/Xi/sxia1l.html

he use exactly the same notation shown in your preview picture, thank you for showing it.

Those are samples of papers written by the master, but the pieces I played at school contained also explanations about symbols used all along the scores, maybe be that's why I confused the issue by saying he used his own standard.

master indeed, but not about microtonal music or notation. these pieces I don't know (am not very interested in the Licht period), and if you look at the Licht formula (http://www.analogartsensemble.net/blog/licht_superformula.jpg), it's basically chromatic. The Klang cycle I also don't know, it can be that there are more microtonal works there. In current day notation there are also huge amounts of symbols for all kinds of actions (and as with pitch notation, some composers share symbols, other decide to make new ones), but that's not important for this discussion.

Also, how a composer would do when he need to build his own scale, from empiric harmonic rules? Let me try to explain, music composition has evolved a certain way technically that one composer could build up a scale for each different piece he makes. How could he write scores that could be read by any genuine musician any time?

[warning for anyone else, the rest of the paragraph has nothing to do with Pd]

I'm going backwards on the sentences:

Absolutely, he can't (and that can be a good thing). How do you know how a staccato in a Beethoven piano sonata really sounds? Even if you get the right instrument (not a piano, but a pianoforte, and a specific model at that), you would have to go to the propper room where it should be performed (not a concert hall, but some ballroom at some aristocrat's castle), where the people with huge dresses [that probably absorb more frequencies than nowadays jeans and t-shirts] sit or stand around, some of them talking (planning a war or a love escapade) or eating, or even pissing in a corner or behind a door (if it would be played at Versailles).

For a 20th century composer (with Cds and other technologies around), he can notate his score as clear as possible - if the music is notateable, which isn't the case with e.g. Bussoti (http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/materials/D&G...)

and many others -, but the rest is related to performance practice, and theoretical documentation. Speaking of Stockhausen, he's done a good job at that, because he always worked with specific performers who specialized in his music (and were even prohibited from playing anything else than Stockhausen), who now teach in his music courses. He also recorded all his works himself (tradition started by Stravinsky), so there is a concrete reference that is accessible, and many theoretical articles about his works and his views on music etc.

The composer can choose any system he wants to, as long as there is enough (fixed and aural / written and recorded) documentation, and everything is explained somewhere quite clearly. Going back to the notation examples, the symbols I sent are "mainstream", but in some pieces they don't make sense musically, so they won't fit 100% of music around. But they fit lots of it, and many composers think on those "scales" when working. Nowadays, mostly, a "scale" is just a pitch reservoir without hierarchies (which in a traditional scales are important), what most composers do is to choose the highest definition they want/can hear (usually being 1/4 tone, but also going up to 16th or 32th tone) and/or makes sense musically for the piece in question.

There are always exceptions. One example, a friend of mine did a piece where at some point the amplified instruments should generate beatings between each other. So one instrument stays put, and the other has an accidental with an arrow (like in the picture) and a number with the beating frequency he should try to get at (very difficult to play). This moment in the piece needs another system than the normal tempered notation, because it hasn't much to do with tempered music. He explained it clearly in the notes, so it should be clear what the piece should sound like.

João

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...

Absolutely, he can't (and that can be a good thing). How do you know how a staccato in a Beethoven piano sonata really sounds?

Do you mean "how a staccato in a Beethoven sonata sounded to an audience member listening to the composer himself play it"? Because I don't at all understand what it means to say what a notated piece of music "really" sounds like.

the original question had to do with how a composer expresses his wishes
as well as possible so other performers interpret it correctly. What a
pieces "really" sounds like is another question, most likely much more
complicated, I guess.

Right. And, for the sake of argument, let's assume that we can precisely reproduce the sonic/cultural setting you were referring to in your Beethoven analogy, and we hear the staccato in that setting.

What's the relevance of that experience for a performer who wants to interpret that staccato in a performance? I think the answer depends on issues surrounding the rest of around 200 years of reception history of that piece, as well as various other historical/cultural /musical factors that the performer keeps in mind. It could be anywhere on a spectrum from completely irrelevant, as it is in many performances in the early 20-th century on modern instruments, to the sole factor in some other performance. But it doesn't make sense to call any point on that spectrum "correct" interpretation just because it jibes with the "original" sound of the staccato (still assuming that could be known). It does, however, seem fitting to call some interpretations "boring" because the performer limits his/her imagination to fit whatever models of interpretation are fashionable at the time.

Also, when speculating about original intentions, it seems curious that people tend to assume such knowledge would clear up issues of interpretation. It seems equally possible that, upon magically hearing Mozart or Beethoven play some enigmatically notated articulation or slur, that one would come out more confused than when they entered.

well, my paragraph was a fast reply to point out that what many people
take for granted (in this case a Beethoven staccato) isn't that simple of
a question at all. if I was to write something larger I might have written
a paragraph like yours. I don't have the time now to sit down and put this into words, so I'll
just leave a couple of lines as reply:

• correct or incorrect doesn't exist, just different degrees of depth. how

to scale the details (e.g. the staccato) depends on your imagination and
the acustic/physical characteristics of the room and your instrument.
knowing more about these and your piece shouldn't hinder you from making
an interesting work, only knowing less.

• I don't believe the "boring" interpretation argument. A very boring

recording I have are the last symphonies of Mozart played by the Berliner
Philharmoniker with Karajan, a brilliantly engineered (and fast and loud)
recording. It's so impressive that it gets cheap. Compare with Bruno
Walter (on modern instruments) or Gardiner (on period
instruments/replicas) and you'll get much more detail of interpretation.

• read the writings of Harnoncourt, or statements from any good

"historically informed musician" (Gardiner, Herreweghe, R. Hill, ...), and
the point of knowing the history, the original instruments and contexts,
is to make sure you know more about the piece, and not just what the
interpretation schools of the latest 100 years (some of them coming from
russian ascent, as far as piano and string instruments are concerned) tell
you. Then you can use that knowledge to connect with the present (e.g. in
how many different ways a staccato could sound back then and how you can
make it sound like that on todays halls, to keep on topic), and not just
to "reproduce a photocopy". Like everywhere else, information is power.

• here is a small list of recordings which are much more interesting for

me to hear than modern ones, where the musicians clearly don't play just
what's the tradition nowadays, but are informed about the original
context: Gardiner and his orchestra, Beethoven Symphonies (or pretty much
everything both together do) / Mullova, Bach Chaconne
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VL9TFvYyKI, on a modern instrument.
compare this to any "traditional virtuoso" interpretation like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm1q3gadv50, and tell me which you find
rigid and "boring") / Herreweghe, Bruckner Symphonies (sound much more
clear, balanced and detailed with period brass instruments, for example
the Tuba was almost 2x smaller in the 19th century) / pretty much anything
up to early barroque (or some Bach) cannot be played in piano, this
instrument doesn't have the amount of colors and articulations that a
harpsichord has (unless it's a master like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glg99Zc0JjU playing). E.g. particularly
recordings by Robert Hill demonstrate this, specially the way he plays
with rubato/metrical time in his interpretations
(http://www.youtube.com/user/earlymus#p/u/69/z6yCXequhUw).

(this turned out to be longer as I thought.)

Maybe a shorter way to say all this is that clear, well thought-out scores in the 21st century made by considerate composers have a very high likelyhood of receiving a serious and considerate performance.

logically, yes. if the piece isn't uninteresting (one example is the cited
Stockhausen engraver, who is one of the best in doing scores, but not
known as a composer at all, and his excepts on the site looked a bit dull
to me).

Really, who are these composers whose scores are so misunderstood that their complex poly-rythms get played back as homophony?

that would be a award-winning bad performance. but complex poly-rhythms
being just let loose and not taking care of subtleties (if there are any)
does happen lots of times. speaking particularly of new music, it's
usually more a question of shortage of time than incomprehension.

...

What a pieces "really" sounds like is another question, most likely much more complicated, I guess.

It's actually quite simple: the piece really sounds like what one hears when listening to the piece. What else could possibly be the case?

that's the "zen" answer (simple or not), and is correct. if you throw e.g.
some Adorno or Lúkacs (any leftist- or art philosopher) into it, it gets
much more complicated. And also correct.

On Wed, 10 Nov 2010, João Pais wrote:

Absolutely, he can't (and that can be a good thing). How do you know how a staccato in a Beethoven piano sonata really sounds? Even if you get the right instrument (not a piano, but a pianoforte, and a specific model at that), you would have to go to the propper room where it should be performed (not a concert hall, but some ballroom at some aristocrat's

Yes, but would Beethoven give a damn ?

If he were still alive today, Beethoven would say you're crazy, and he would download pd and make cool patches. :)

| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC

--- On Tue, 11/16/10, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:

From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] Musical notation object on Pd To: "João Pais" jmmmpais@googlemail.com Cc: "pd-list" pd-list@iem.at Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 7:20 PM On Wed, 10 Nov 2010, João Pais wrote:

...

Absolutely, he can't (and that can be a good thing).

How do you know how a staccato in a Beethoven piano sonata really sounds? Even if you get the right instrument (not a piano, but a pianoforte, and a specific model at that), you would have to go to the propper room where it should be performed (not a concert hall, but some ballroom at some aristocrat's

Yes, but would Beethoven give a damn ?

If he were still alive today, Beethoven would say you're crazy, and he would download pd and make cool patches. :)

Judging from his scores... He would probably depend on the order in which the connections were made for the order of events, have wires over, underneath, and on top of each other, and never use subpatches or abstractions. And there would be a big broken part on his screen where he tried to "delete" a comment.

-Jonathan

---

| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC

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--- On Sun, 11/14/10, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:

From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] Musical notation object on Pd To: "patko" colet.patrice@free.fr Cc: "pd-list" pd-list@iem.at, "João Pais" jmmmpais@googlemail.com Date: Sunday, November 14, 2010, 8:54 PM On Wed, 10 Nov 2010, patko wrote:

...

particulary Xi for flûte, http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/Xi/sxia1l.html

I just noticed the parts in IPA (phonetic alphabet). [y] [ø] [œ]

First time I see those on a score. Interesting.

...

Also, how a composer would do when he need to build

his own scale, from empiric harmonic rules? Let me try to explain, music composition has evolved a certain way technically that one composer could build up a scale for each different piece he makes. How could he write scores that could be read by any genuine musician any time?

What's a genuine musician ?

genuine musician - a musician who is 100% leather non-linear form - music where the audience can scrub (and ultimately overwrite) moments of pretension and/or rigidity during the performance of a piece. organic harmony - harmony that a) has not had its motives genetically modified, b) contains no chemical pesticides, c) produces no sewage sludge, and d) has not been irradiated. emancipation of dissonance - making harmony free for future generations so they can devote their time to less pressing issues, like civil rights, women's suffrage and all that jazz...

-Jonathan

...

particulary Xi for flûte, http://james-ingram-act-two.de/stockhausen/Xi/sxia1l.html

I just noticed the parts in IPA (phonetic alphabet). [y] [Þ] [œ]

First time I see those on a score. Interesting.

not that new, has been around since the 60s. for the few composers that
work with that and not with language text.