Semiotic Approaches to the Representation of Music

298

Semiotic Approaches to the

Representation of Music

George Athanasopoulos This article, with minor edits, was published in Before and After Music, ed. Lina

Navickaite-Martinelli (Vilnius: Acta Semiotica Fennica, 2010), 299-308.

As tribute, I would like to present on the first page the comments of the late

Professor Monelle on this paper. I produced this at the beginning of my PhD in

2009, long before I conducted my fieldwork research in Scotland, Japan and

Papua New Guinea for my Doctoral thesis. His words ring true, as the data

collected from those sites indeed point towards cultural relativity when

considering how adult musicians approach the representation of music in two-

dimensional form. The reader may also get a glimpse of how my thought

process evolved from here to some of my later works.

[…] As it stands, this is a very interesting piece and suggest[s] all kinds of lines of development. As we have already said, the suggestion that you are seeking a universal principle of musical response to visual images implies a belief in universal cognition and thus in a psychological account. This may be perfectly OK, but I'm afraid it will lead you into frustration. 'Universal grammars' have been the bane of linguistics, because as soon as you try to universalize you find you lose all your points of reference. But if you can do it - go ahead. I'm sure you are right that Chinese and Arab people would interpret the scores differently - provided they were not 'classically trained', in which case they would be, to all intents and purposes, [W]estern. And the differences might be interesting. But we have to remember......... three years' work? And it eluded Chomsky in a lifetime? […] R. Monelle, 2009.

GEORGE ATHANASOPOULOS 299

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Semiotic Approaches

to the Representation of Music

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George Athanasopoulos

1. Introduction

John Blacking (1971, 1973) was one of the first to put forward a very

interesting suggestion: Are there universal principles governing music, and if

so, how would these principles function? Through various studies of the Venda

tribe, the conclusion was reached that a universal musical grammar might exist.

He furthermore claimed that ''there seem to be universal structural principles in

music, such as the use of mirror forms, theme and variation, repetition and

binary form'' (Blacking, 1973: 112).

If a musical language comparable to human speech exists, the matter in

question is to see whether behind all the differences in understanding music

there lay a common semiotic background leading to similar or identical

performances from a notational system. In this project,1 I attempted to see

whether individuals originating from a common semiotic background regarding

music and culture, would interpret music from graphic scores in similar fashion

to each other. The graphic scores used did not include any annotations or

restrictions to the performers and were so conceived that they could be

performed by any solo instrument.

The article is organised as follows: In the next sections, the issue of

musical scores as communicational texts is discussed, as well as the emerging

issue of the performers’ semiotic (cultural and musical) background in relation

to the scores. Then the article will examine the performances that emerged

from the graphic scores used in the study, and finally, results are presented and

1 The data were gathered in informal manner in April-May 2008 at the University of Surrey,

U.K.

ICMS10: BEFORE AND AFTER MUSIC 300

discussed, focusing on the impact of specific elements within the scores that

may directly affect the performers' conception of representing ''abstract'' ideas,

and that may in turn provide a semiological background wide enough to

include conceptual representations of music different than those examined.

1.1 Representing music on paper.

Notation is one way of visually representing sound. It can be argued

that notation (of any form) is one of the most highly developed, intriguing and

straightforward methods of communication; an image/picture is associated to a

sound/direction in similar ways that some forms of written language systems

function. As in written language, notational systems did not come into being as

they are, but have naturally evolved through common practice and

experimentation (Schwarz, 1993). André Jolivet took the significance of

western classical notation a step further by stating that in the 19th

century,

musical writing in the west had acquired enough flexibility and detail to

become the only international language. ''Moreover,'' as he states, ''it has such

plasticity for an eye only slightly practised, it is not only the perfectly

expressive graphic image of music, it is its luminus symbol'' (Jolivet, cited in

Cage 1969: 208). Kari Kurkela's (1986) analytical approach on western

notation demonstrates how, through common consent, symbols within the

western standard notational system work. The relationship between image

symbolism and notation is celebrated in Frederic Rjewski's statement that if

music is presented to mankind through notation, it is only because people

worshipped images‒and images are not dead: they have a life and voice of their

own. ''Image worship permeates our lives. Notation becomes superfluous when

images are put away.'' (Rjewski, cited in ibid,: 120). Yet notation is not the

music itself (Boorman 1999) ‒in the same way that a screenplay is not the film,

or the architect’s sketch is not the building. It is a method of communication

between the composer of the work and potential listeners, through a linear

process. The recipients of the initial message are receiving a personal

''interpretation'' by an intermediate transmitter-performer, who is giving an

output of what was decoded from the information given to him. In Figure 1 we

can see Philip Tagg’s communication model (1999) which ideally demonstrates

this linear process.


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Figure 1. Tagg’s communication model

In the case that the intended message is a set of guidelines for the creation of a

musical piece, western standard notation is one way, but not the only way.

When it comes to music outside the norm, whether it may be avant-garde ''art''

music, artificial FX sounds or music from non-western cultures instrumented

for non-western instruments, western standard notation may prove to be an

obstacle. Yet practicality might not be the only reason. Kurt Stone presented

more than 12 classifications of notational systems that in some cases overlap as

well. One system which has seen much development in the last fifty years, and

has also been the subject of much controversy, is Graphic Scores. In the next

paragraph I will demonstrate why this system of communication was chosen to

see whether Tagg's model would be applicable in the case of translating basic

signs as sounds.


1.2. Graphic scores and the case of Potential Music.

Raymond Monelle states that an individual copy of the score is a

sinsign2 (individual object or event functioning as a sign), in the same way that

a performance of a musical piece is, in addition to questioning that a score is a

copy of only part of the work, as it is often claimed, or that a piece is ''really''

present only in a performance (Monelle 1992: 214-219). Notated music is, in

any case, potential music, no matter how this notation may be. For instance

John Cage (1969) and Gardner Read (1976) offer a vast selection of innovative

ways to visualise music in the form of graphic scores.

One common statement from fans and pundits alike concerning graphic scores

with no specific guidelines is that the performer is free to do as he or she

wishes. It is this reason that led me to investigate the above statement

empirically in an informal study, and attempt to see how free within the

limitation of an abstract symbolic pattern of lines classically trained performers

really are. It is this trait that is in question. A large portion of the ''potential''

music originates from the performer, and the less information passed from the

score, the larger this portion is. My hypothesis is that musicians with a

common cultural and musical background would approach and interpret a

graphic score in similar fashion to one another, even though there are no

conventional music symbols in any of the scores, nor any guidelines even as to

how to place the score on the stand. ''Potential'' music in this case is the

outcome of our cultural and musical semiotic blend. In the next few paragraphs

the process as well as the results follow.

2. Study.

2.1 Participants

The participants whose results were taken into account were 20, though

a larger number was approached at the initial stages of the study. The group

consisted of 8 males and 12 females of British nationality who were studying

music performance at university level, or had achieved at least Grade 8 by U.K.

national standards at any musical instrument. Their age range was 19-26 years

2 ''…a copy of the score is a rhematic indexical sinsign'' (Monelle 1992: 219).


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old. The mean duration for which the participants had been practising was 13

years. In order to have a healthy sample, performers of different musical

instruments were chosen (9 pianists, 4 flutists, 4 guitarists, 1 clarinettist, 1

violist and 1 violinist). Due to their studies, all of them were familiar with what

graphic scores were, yet none of them had any experience of performing music

from a graphic score before. A summary of the participants’ details can be seen

in Table 1.

N 20

Age Range 19-26

Sex 8M/12F

Mean years of studying music 13

Knowledge of Graphic scores 100%

as a notational system

Familiarity with other notational systems 60%

(tablature, others)

Table 1. Summary of music students' details taking part in the Study.

2.2 Materials.

The stimuli used for the study were two graphic scores of my own creation.

The first one was called Bar Code and was created in a manner that approached

Western traditional notation in the sense of its overall setting. The second score

was Spiral and was set up as a picture-score. It did not resemble any notational

or set language system. Both scores can be seen on Figure 2.

Figure 2. Bar Code-Spiral


2.3. Procedure

Participants were seated in a rehearsal room with their instrument of

choice and were given one score at a time with the request to place it in front of

them as they thought would make sense. They were asked to look at the scores

for up to five minutes and to perform primavista for a maximum of five

minutes for each score. The overall duration was less than 15 minutes. At the

end of the test participants completed a small personal information

questionnaire.

3. Results.

For the first graphic score (Bar Code) all participants placed the score as it is

shown on Figure 3, and followed a zig-zag pattern starting from A until

reaching C. The proximity of vertical lines, as they appear on B, was

interpreted as an increase in tempo by all. This pattern was followed by 60%

(n=14) of the participants roughly until the end of the score. What is also

interesting is that again 100% of the participants associated pitch with the

relative height of bars within their line as it is seen on D and elsewhere within

the score. What's more, again 100% the participants interpreted density of

colour as it is seen on F and G as an increase in volume, and 50% (n=10) in

dissonance as well (especially in the case of participants who were pianists.

100% of the performers interpreted single dots within the score as single notes,

with 95% (n=19) of them as notes of the same pitch as they had been using

before.

Figure 3. Analysis of Bar Code.


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For the second graphic score (Spiral) all the participants placed the

score as it is shown on Figure 4, and started reading in a left to right fashion

following the spirality of the shape. 95% (n=19) of the participants associated

relative height within the score as pitch; this resulted in an attempt by the

majority of the above percentage to alter pitch in order to imitate the spiral

shape. In C, 100% of the participants interpreted density of colour with

volume. It is also worthy to mention that all pianists and guitarists who took

part in the study played a dissonant chord for C, while the rest of the

performers (flutists, clarinettists, violists and violinists) played a semitone trill.

Figure 4. Analysis of Spiral

4.Discussion.

The patterns that emerged from the performances of both scores can be seen in

summary below:

� Classically trained musicians read graphic scores in a left to right

fashion. This could be easily explained since traditional notation is read

in such way, mimicking Western alphabets which also follow the left to

right pattern (Thomas 1995). Although only a hypothesis, it would be

expected that music would be read in a similar fashion to the language

spoken by the performer. This tentative link between music and


language may be indicative of a broader tendency associated with

Western cultures for events to occur in a linear, left-to-right fashion. On

the other hand, some East Asian cultures (e.g. traditional Chinese) tend

to refer to events along a vertical top-to-bottom axis (Boroditsky 2001),

resembling the directionality of their traditional writing systems, as for

example Chinese may now also appear with a horizontally left-to-right.

Cognitive science has more to offer in this area, yet it does not fall

within the scope of this paper to show how performers think.

� The position (relative height) of notes/graphemes in the scores were

directly linked to pitch. This could be that in Western music a higher

pitch always has the notion of ascending.

� The depth/intensity of the colour/graph was associated with volume.

� Widely spaced material was interpreted as slow tempo, whereas closely

spaced material was perceived as quick tempo.

An imitation of the shapes within the score was attempted whenever

possible, as in the case of Spiral. Yet more shapes need to be studied in order to

see whether this was an isolated event or a general tendency.

From the above results there is strong evidence to suggest that classically

trained performers with a U.K (Western) semiotic background approach

graphic scores meant for performance in a similar fashion to each other, and so

seem to support the initial hypothesis. Further comparisons of the

performances reveal common responses even with different instruments. It

appears that some semiotic traits of the signs within the scores are recognised

and expressed even as the participants often claimed that what needed to be

played was not specific.

5. Conclusion

This study strongly suggested that performances of graphic scores from

musicians sharing a common western musical and cultural-semiotic

background appear to show similarities. The question remains whether

performers who are completely ignorant of the Western notational system

would approach the scores in a different fashion, and if so, then how. It can be

argued that since graphic scores are a Western conception, exposing musicians

from different cultures to this conception and asking them to perform music


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from them might be nonsensical. Yet graphic scores as in the case of Spiral

function more as images than scores, as a ratio facilis (Eco 1979). On the other

hand, for a remote culture who have not yet developed the idea (or the need) to

notate music in any way, their notion of a musical sinsign cannot take the form

of an object-icon but only that of an event. Therefore it might seem strange to

ask of them to perform music from an icon-symbol, if music has not been

represented in that way yet.

In the case of performers unfamiliar with the traditional Western

notational system and who use systems of their own (as in the case of non-

Western folk musicians, for instance East Asian performers unfamiliar with

western notation, and others) the study could be carried out in order to see if

written language that does not follow a left-to-right pattern influences

interpretation of a sign as a musical symbol, as in the case of graphic scores.

Also, the aspects of colour density, pitch association to height and spacing

within the material could provide further information as to how performers

interpret visual signs as sound. In conclusion, further and more controlled

research needs to be conducted in order to test musicians' translations of signs

(in the form of graphic scores) into music. If inter-cultural similarities appear,

we could indeed be talking about universal and unarticulated music semiotics

of the most primal from, as suggested by Eero Tarasti (2002).

References

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(ed.), Man: Anthropological Essays presented to O. F. Raum. 19-34. Cape

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--- (1973). How Musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.

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Semiotic Approaches to the Representation of Music

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