Notation Cultures: Towards an Ethnomusicology of Notation

Abstract

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.

Hearing Early Modern Music Through the Contemporary

“…Derrida's performativity is vastly underrepresented in the surveyed journal articles, at least beyond providing mere transition leading to Butler. A few draw on Derrida in general (Mathew, 2018;Moseley, 2015;Schuiling, 2019), but only Venn (2015) does so (at least explicitly) in terms of his concept of performativity.…”

Performing Beethoven’s musical dynamics

“…From the traditional perspective of musicology that regards notation as a repository for the composer's intentions, and as the locus of the musical art work, the idea that notation can involve enhanced performer agency might appear paradoxical, since the performer would be able to exercise her agency only by realizing the composer's intentions -in this case, Beethoven's unusual dynamic markings. However, the paradox disappears once we understand musical notation not as a fixed text produced in order to represent the composer's intentions and finalized creation, but as one musician's written invitation to other musicians to "mobilize" (Schuiling, 2019) their bodies, feelings, practical skills, musical knowledge, artistic taste, sociality, curiosity, critical attitude, musical instruments, knowledge of and attitudes towards musical traditions, and sensual experiences in order to enable the emergence of an intersubjectively constructed sounding phenomenon. 39 Within the new paradigm of music performance studies that disavows traditional ontological, epistemological, aesthetic and institutional-political hierarchies, Beethoven would not be constructed as an authority figure domineering over performing musicians, nor would his scores be taken to represent a complete art work.…”

(Re-)Assembling Notations in the Performance of Early Music

“…Cook has argued that the work-concept entails a 'paradigm of reproduction' when it comes to performance: the performer reproduces the music that is contained 'in' the score. I have argued elsewhere that this paradigm implies a discourse of lack (Schuiling 2019). As long as notation is understood as the representation of a preexisting musical work, this representation can only ever be incomplete; the score therefore becomes defined as a site of absence.…”