The ubiquity and diversity of notational practices in music suggest that notation is a significant part of human beings' musicking behaviour. However, it is difficult to address its function since the usual conception of notation in music scholarship is at odds with studying performance in the first place. This article presents a methodological outline for an ethnomusicology of music notation by investigating the musicality of notation not in terms of its representation of musical structures, but in terms of its mediation of the social and creative agency of musicians. It is suggested that, rather than detracting from musical reality, notation composes musical cultures. This constructive work is simultaneously ontological and ethical. It is described in terms of three distinct processes, namely mobilization, entextualization and remediation. In doing so, this article presents an interdisciplinary approach to a topic that has traditionally defined the disciplinary centre of music scholarship.
Musicology's performative turn was formulated in opposition to the disciplinary dominance of music notation in favour of a focus on the creativity of performers. However, scores are a central part of many musicians' creative work, and a complete conception of creativity in performance should take this centrality into account. This article investigates performers' uses of notation, particularly annotation, in both composed and improvised musical practices.Using observational methods, we examine how performers engage with their notations and how this engagement resonates in their creative processes. By approaching the score as a concrete material object rather than a representation of an abstract structure, we move beyond a paradigm that opposes notated permanence to performed and/or improvised transience.Drawing on anthropological work on artistic production, creativity, and improvisation, we propose an understanding of (an)notation as integral to the forms of imagination, creativity, knowledge, interaction, and even improvisation that occur in music-making.
This article presents results from fieldwork with two groups of improvisers using different forms of notation in their creative practice. Such practices raise fundamental questions about the relation of notation to performance. Drawing on theories of entextualization in linguistic anthropology, I argue that, contrary to many arguments for a performative understanding of music, performance is partly about creating something that has an identifiable existence, transcending space and time. The notations and compositional systems used by improvisers are a means of achieving this entextualization of their musical utterances. One of the main findings of my fieldwork was that improvisers frequently speak of acting ‘in service of the music’, a phrase commonly associated with composition-centred musical discourse. Drawing on the work of Karin Barber and Alfred Gell, I argue that this idea represents a process of entextualization that is not a negation of performers’ creative agency, but an extension of it.
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