A Semiotic Approach to Open Notations
Ambiguity as Opportunity
Series: Elements in Music since 1945
Publisher: Cambridge University Press Along with twentieth-century developments in playing techniques, technologies, and concepts of musical sound, the notations employed by composers have also changed. Composers of what Umberto Eco calls 'open works' often employ intentionally ambiguous music notations. These open notations ask the performer to play a radical and active role in co-creating the musical work. Scores that feature open notations have been part of the Western classical music landscape since the mid-twentieth century, and continue to have a vibrant community of practitioners today. In this Element, Tristan McKay considers intersections of ambiguity, authority, and identity in works with open notations. He develops a semiotic approach to open notation analysis and puts it into practice with in-depth analyses of openly notated works by Earle Brown, Will Redman, and Leah Asher. |
Journal Articles"Conceptual Palettes as Sites of Creative Negotiation in Leah Asher's TRAPPIST-1" in The American Journal of Semiotics (forthcoming; 2023)
"Piano Sonatas by the Romanian Spectralist Horatiu Radulescu" in NOTES: Quarterly Journal of the American Music Library Association (2022) "Graphic Notations as Creative Resilience in Will Redman's Book (2006)" in Semiotics 2018: Resilience in an Age of Relation (2019) |
Music Criticism
I am a Contributing Writer at I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, an award-winning multimedia hub for living music creators. Check out some of my recent concert reviews, album reviews, and interviews below!
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