The Origins of the Formation of Graphic Notation in John Cage’s Works

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

student/tarbiat modares

Abstract

The present study surveys the origins of the formation of graphic notation used in John Cage’s works, and the reasons for the replacement of traditional notation, for the visual and prosy approach to composition. These changes to the musical notation system begin in this twentieth century avant-garde composer’s works from the early 1950s as well as his landmark example in the late 1960s and in his “Song Book”. Although, Cage’s famous composition, “Silence” or“4′33″ written for any instrument or combination of instruments, is the beginning of very important changes in the composer’s music and musical language, in his notation methods, we can distinguish two major aspects: the first aspect, there is still the traditional notation, such as the staff, beat, time and duration, but, he has changed it in his notation methods, so, a performer is able to decide on some parts and to perform his/her own interpretation of the scores. But, in the second aspects, started with time delay to his early notation, he relinquishes all methods of the traditional notation and replaces them with pictures or text elements. In this aspect, a performer interprets the totality of the scores. This paper outlines John Cage’s attention to contemporary and previous artists in the field of “Graphic Notation” and collects them in “Notation,” and his reference to the impact of the painters, poets and artists in the formation of his music in the collection of his writings and lectures. The purpose is to clarify the chronological trend of this impact and the achievement to the reasons of his tendency to the new ideas of his contemporary and previous movements. This research uses two methods: Chronological and Descriptive-Analytic methods, based on library resources, especially, reference to the writings and recorded interviews of Cage. The chronological trend depicts Cage’s influence of Futurism, Dada, and especially, Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto, called ” Destruction of Syntax- Imagination without strings-Words-in-Freedom” and his poetry book ,“Zang Tumb Tumb”, and the ideas raised by Russolo in his manifesto “The Art of Noises”, as well as, Mallarmé’s Concrete Poetry , Apollinaire’s ideas in Visual Poetry, the experiences of Sonia Delaunay and Blaise Cendrars, and his collaboration with the Fluxus movement that tried to eliminate the boundaries between the arts. This paper provides reasons why the composer followed this trend, which is ultimately due to the facts that Graphic Notation achieves the expressive manners proportional to his new musical ideas, reflected in the Futurism movement and the changes that it had made to modern musical perspective. So, the changes of his notation can be divided into two periods: the first period represents the visual expression that is reflected in the attitude of Mallarmé and Marinetti and includes the collection of scores that have distorted graphically in order to convey the feelings. The second period, in addition to complete the first period, declares the concept of “Simultaneity in Visual Poetry,” that was influenced by the attitude of Apollinaire, and tries to reflect the concept of music in a visual manifesto.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Fine Arts: Performing Arts & Music
Volume 23, Issue 4
December 2018
Pages 17-28

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