Signs of sound: notation and musical culture

A provocative look at the impact of notation on musical life

Into music? You are? I guess that means one of two things. You either 'do music' yourself, or you get a kick out of other people doing it. (Or possibly - if you're a real hard-core 'muso' - both.) Let's look at each in turn. If you 'do music' yourself, you have two options. You can just go and do it - pick up your instrument and play, or sing your heart out. Or alternatively you can write it down. This second option allows you to come back and play your music at a later date, or even to give it to someone else to play. The same choice presents itself to those who simply get a kick out of others' music-making. You can make the effort to go and hear the music (live or recorded). Or you can save yourself the bother and just get hold of the musical score - whether it's Beethoven's First or Britney's number 1.

Of course this option - of engaging with music through written signs rather than sound - is not a feature of all musical cultures. In other parts of the world, the transmission of music remains a predominantly oral phenomenon: you only ever encounter music when it's actually being played. In the eyes of some, this has given Western music a distinct advantage. The imposing works of art and unparalleled geographic spread that characterise Western musical culture are in no small part due to the development of staff notation. Notation has allowed Western music to achieve unprecedented scope and sophistication: it is, in other words, a Good Thing.

Consider the advantages of notation. For those who 'do music', a world of new possibilities is opened up. Before notation, music was constrained by the limits of memory and ingrained habits, and was liable to be misremembered. Notation suddenly makes it possible to script elaborate, imaginative works of great length and structural complexity. Every musical act can be individual and different, in a way that is difficult to ensure if you don't take the precaution of writing it down first.

A similar transformation is offered those who enjoy the music of others. Previously, it could be difficult to remember all that had happened in a piece: sound just won't stand still! It's far easier to relish the detail of the music - the intimate minutiae - if it's all written down. What's more, notation allows you to encounter music that wouldn't be accessible face to face. Before the spread of recording, notation was the only way of getting an idea about the music of distant places and times. Even today, there exists music untouched by performers or microphone: you need the notation to find out about it.

So far so good: there are reasons why we should celebrate the possibility of engaging with signs rather than sounds - with paper rather than people. But is this the whole story? Some consequences of notation present a rather different picture. Remember how it was without notation. One day you might hear someone humming a catchy tune. There's no way of telling whether that person invented the tune or picked it up from someone else: it doesn't matter, because you like it, and anyway you're probably humming it slightly differently. You're not stealing somebody else's music: rather, you've made it your own. The situation is rather different if you learn the tune from notation. It's now very evident that you're singing someone else's song: look, there's a name at the top of the page! You are making music, but it's not your music. And deviations from the model, rather than being seen as a reflection of your creative input, now form regrettable blots in your rendition. The score is always there to remind you, in black and white, just how wrong you got it.

In this way, notation tends to enforce a rigid differentiation in musical production. There are those who conceive works, and those who simply realise them. True creativity is seen as the preserve of a select few, rather than a potential of anybody who can make sounds. This affects your enjoyment of others' music-making as well. Without notation, you - or more accurately the audience of which you are a part - were able to establish an intimate one-to-one with the musician. The musician recognised your presence and enjoyed adapting the performance in response to it. Notation changes all this. Suddenly the musician's primary responsibility is someone else's notation; and it's that notation, not you, that s/he's determined to satisfy. You're relegated to being a mere spectator - an envious onlooker at the relationship formed between two other parties. In this way notation disturbs and complicates the process of musical communication.

In fact, even the most faithful performer can never achieve total union with the composer. Notation pretends to record the detail of a composer's conception, but in the event it always falls short. Precise levels of loud and soft, or of slow and fast, have to be guessed at; tone quality, tempo inflections, articulation and expressive ornamentation, meanwhile, are often left totally unspecified. These problems are felt even in Western classical music, around whose needs and agendas staff notation evolved. And, unsurprisingly, notation flounders completely when it comes to much else of the world's music, where the sonic and interpretive qualities of particular performers can be more important to the music's identity than matters of pitch and rhythm. Staff notation's not going to leave you with much insight into music of this sort: don't be deluded into thinking that it will.

Of course, some musicians' activities have come to revolve around notation. Notation dominates their music-making. For these people, notation is no longer a record of heard or imagined sounds: rather, it has become the basis for composition. They construct music that would be inconceivable without graphic intervention - music full of proportional structures, complex motivic networks, material played backwards as well as forwards. As a result, notation eats further into musical culture. Not only is notational expertise considered necessary in order to do music 'properly', but it is now held by some to be a prerequisite for listeners as well. Without such expertise, composer and listener will remain worlds apart.

Notation has made possible some of the great achievements of Western music. But it is also arguably responsible for the divisiveness of musical life in our society - a society in which the majority would say that they don't 'do' music at all, and in which many feel ill-equipped even as listeners. If we really want society as a whole to be 'into music', is the first step to dethrone notation as a central pillar of musical life?