(Fr. partition; Ger. Partitur; It. partitura).
2. Standard form of a full score.
DAVID CHARLTON (1–3(iv)) KATHRYN WHITNEY (3(vi))
The use of the word score (Old Norse skor; Old Eng. scoru: ‘incision’) derives from the act of marking vertical lines through one or more staves of music to form bars. This process was originally described, in Latin, as partire or cancellare, whence came the term partitura cancellata (abbreviated partitura), a score divided into compartments (cancelli). Morley (A Plaine and Easie Introduction, 1597/R) used ‘partition’ for the sections in score.
The noun ‘score’ means: (a) a form of manuscript or printed music in which the staves, linked by bar-lines, are written above one another, in order to represent the musical coordination visually (see §3(vi) below); (b) a page, volume, fascicle or other artefact containing a complete copy of a musical work; and (c) by extension, a piece of music customarily written ‘in score’, i.e. in the form of a score as defined under (a) above.
The verb ‘to score’ means to compose or arrange for ensemble performance, either with or without voices. ‘Scoring’ in its creative sense may thus mean either ‘orchestration’ or ‘instrumentation’. ‘To score up’ means to write out a score from a given set of parts. (See also Instrumentation and orchestration and Notation.)
A ‘full score’ is a score as in (a) above, for orchestra with or without voices, containing complete details of a work as it is intended to be performed. If printed, it is generally large enough to conduct from. A ‘miniature score’ is a printed score of pocket size (usually 13·5 × 18·5 cm) for individual use. An ‘open score’ is a score normally of more than two staves, showing each individual voice of a polyphonic composition on a separate staff. Open scores have in the past been used for solo keyboard works. A ‘piano score’ is an arrangement for solo piano of any ensemble composition; this term is sometimes used as a synonym for ‘vocal score’. A ‘short score’ is either an ensemble score in which the whole is condensed or reduced on to a small number of staves (as distinct from a full score, and also called a ‘condensed score’), or a composer’s score of an ensemble work, showing his or her intentions on a few staves, with annotations, to be elaborated and fully written out later. A ‘vocal score’ or ‘piano-vocal score’ is an arrangement of an ensemble composition including voices, in which the instrumental parts are reduced for piano (normally solo) or organ, while the vocal parts appear on separate staves. ‘Study score’ is a term used either synonymously with ‘miniature score’ or to denote a printed full score, often of a substantial or fully scored piece, reduced to a size greater than ‘miniature’ but smaller than ‘full’.
A full score is ordered in groups from the top down as follows: woodwind, brass, percussion, strings. Two or more opposing ensembles, as in music for double orchestra, are laid out in self-contained areas. Each group is subdivided in roughly descending order of tessitura: flutes (with piccolo etc.), oboes (with english horn), clarinets (with bass clarinet), bassoons (with double bassoon); horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba; timpani, side drum, bass drum, triangle etc.; first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, double basses. The untuned percussion may be written on single-line staves.
The harp, celesta or orchestral piano is usually placed between percussion and first violins; an accompanying organ part may either appear here or below the double basses. The solo part of a concerto is written immediately above the first violins. Presence of an electronic tape may be indicated by a thick independent line at the bottom of the page. Voice parts, if present, are situated either in traditional position between the violas and the cellos or above the first violins. Soloists are placed above the chorus. Within these groups of singers the descending order of voices is adopted. Precise numbers of players or singers may be indicated on the opening page or on a prefatory page opposite it.
For clarity, the staves of an orchestra score are, normally, linked from top to bottom only at the beginning of a page. Bar-lines connect only those staves belonging to each group, and keyboard instruments, concerto or vocal soloists, timpani etc., have separate bar-lines. These subdivisions may be indicated against the initial brace by means of brackets.
In scores of chamber music a piano part is normally placed lowest. The other instruments may be written either according to the orchestral conventions described above, or throughout in descending order of tessitura.
Some deviations from the standard form of the full score are dealt with in §3(v) below; for exceptional forms of score used in modern music see §3(vi) below. For wind ensemble scores see Band (i), §III, 1–4. For details of clefs and transpositions see Instrumentation and orchestration and Transposing instruments.
Profound differences in composing, teaching and performing music at this period, relative to our own, meant that permanent scores in our sense were largely redundant. Memory played a large part in all the above processes: paper was very expensive; the erasable pencil had not been invented. Teaching and sketching of music that required the functions of a score made use of an erasable slate (a cartella, or tabula [compositoria] or tabella) provided with permanent staves (see Owens, 1997, for complete accounts of all these and other related considerations, fully illustrated). The treatise known as Musica enchiriadis (anonymous, end of 9th century; D-BAs Var.1) contains the first known notation of polyphony. The pitches, but not the rhythms, of a four-voice organum are indicated by their text syllables (fig.1). Organa, conductus and clausulas were later written on staves of varying dimensions; 12th- and 13th-century manuscripts show two or three staves of four or five lines each, set one under the other, sometimes separated by a red line (E-SC Codex Calixtinus; D-W 677 and 1206; GB-Lbl Harl.978 and Arundel 248; see also other manuscripts with single staves of many lines carrying two or three voice parts). There is a continuous tradition of quasi-score notation of this type in English sources through to manuscripts containing carols of the 15th century (GB-Ob Selden B.26).
From about 1225, the development of the motet prompted a different, choirbook layout, in which each voice occupied a different area of the page; such principles were still to govern the design of Dowland’s First Booke of Songs or Ayres in 1597.
However, the modern concept of a score is shown to have been in existence as early as the 14th century by surviving manuscripts of instrumental music which employ two staves and regular bar-lines (fig.2). The Reina Manuscript (F-Pn n.a.fr.6771, f.85) contains two pages in score of a 14th-century instrumental version of a ballata by Landini, Questa fanciulla; there are two staves of six lines each. Furthermore, the Faenza Codex (I-FZc 117; c1400) contains 104 pages of score notation, and is in effect a unified collection of instrumental music. Although no instruments are specified by name, it is thought that most of the pieces were for a keyboard instrument, with some possibly intended for two or more suitable melody instruments, such as lutes. In vocal music, however, no manuscript scores have been found that date from before 1500: the first known example is datable not later than 1560 (I-Rvat Chigi VIII.206, ff.156–67).
Polyphonic music for voices continued to be worked out and performed using separate partbooks, but teaching and composition made seemingly ever-greater use of score formats during the course of the century. An ‘important principle’ revealed by Owens is that ‘composers generally employed the same kinds of notation and format for composing that they would use for preparing the final version for performance or transmission’ (p.113) – that is, separate parts for vocal music, but in score (on two or more staves) for keyboard music. Around 1520, music for keyboard performance was first printed, using two staves each with a variable number of lines. Most notable were Antico’s Frottole intabulate da sonare organi (Rome, 1517), M.A. Cavazzoni’s Recerchari, motetti, canzoni … libro primo (Venice, 1523; see Leger line, illustration) and Attaingnant’s Parisian editions from early 1531. In appearance, these anticipate the first known example of a regular score for voices. This too is printed, being simply a short example in the treatise Compendium musices by Lampadius (Berne, 1537). It consists of the opening bars of Verdelot’s motet Sancta Maria succurre miseris as it would appear on a tabula compositoria (fig.3).
In the second half of the century, the fairly numerous surviving examples of manuscript music in score show regular bar-lines, frequently ruled from top to bottom of the page and thus able to serve more than one system of staves. In vocal music, manuscript scores always took the breve as bar unit. The number of lines per staff could be more than five, especially in keyboard music. Little or no information appeared beyond any superscription, the notes and the words, if any. Scores, with bar-lines, of music for voice and lute (in tablature) were widespread from the beginning of the 16th century.
A ten-line staff became a common aid to teaching at this time, evidently conceived of as a form of score which served ‘as a visual image of the tonal system of early music’ (Owens, p.39). Examples include Andreas Ornithoparchus, Musice activae micrologus (Leipzig, 1517). Composing in orthodox score format became a regular recommendation near the end of the century. In 1577 the first two surviving score publications with more than two staves were issued in Venice: Musica de diversi autori and Tutti i madrigali di Cipriano di Rore a quattro voci. The latter was ‘scored and arranged for performance on any keyboard instrument and for any student of counterpoint’ and so was not primarily designed to be sung from.
Printed music was, however, expensive; many musicians therefore needed to score up music for their own use, but they did not always include the text underlay. If the musical intervals made keyboard performance impossible, the score might be studied or sung from using solmization syllables. The Baldwin Manuscript (GB-Lbl R.M. 24.d.2, compiled between 1581 and 1606; fig.4) is a personal anthology in which the scribe, John Baldwin, wrote out in score music composed by himself and by others, ‘the scyence to sett foorthe’. (Other English scores include Lbl Eg.3665; US-NYp Drexel 4302.) Some compact Italian copy scores do contain textual underlay, but they are rather small to sing from (I-Bc Q28–9, Q33, Q35, Q42, U92–3, T105). Italian scores were sometimes prepared (presumably from parts) with the bass part at the top: this was to enable them to be made into Italian lute tablature.
Two large German manuscripts owned by Adam Gumpelzhaimer (1559–1625) contain evidence of use in musical performance and rehearsal (D-Bsb 40027–8). They show numerous added accidentals and marginal comments, but their general appearance is close to that of other contemporary scores. It is sometimes wrongly stated that the 1582 publication of the Balet comique de la Royne, with music by Jacques Salmon and either Girard or Lambert de Beaulieu, was the first ‘orchestra score’. In fact it does not contain any music in score. The four-staff 1577 open score of Cipriano di Rore’s music, noted above, was particularly designed for study at the keyboard; manuscript scores on four staves intended for the organ have been found in Brussels (B-Bc 26660–61). The music, by Annibale Padovano and Florentio Maschera, had originally been printed in parts in 1582 and 1593. The practice of writing out and printing keyboard music in open score lasted into the 18th century.
Apart from composition itself, the three primary functions of 17th-century ensemble scores were to make possible: the direction of larger vocal performances, particularly opera; the supply of material for the copying or printing of parts; and the study of music either mentally or at the keyboard. Secondary functions dependent on publication included the advertisement of a patron and the production of a commodity for profit.
The five-line staff became standard, except in some keyboard music. Performance details apart from the mere notes were added sparingly, but not invariably. Whereas in the score of Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (fig.5) (published 1601: the second complete opera score issued in print) there is no instrumental or expressive labelling and the instrumental parts are never notated when the chorus sings, a score such as Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate (1694) presents a relatively modern appearance. Expressive marks are in words rather than letters or symbols (e.g. ‘play soft’, ‘fast’). Detailed instrumental and vocal labelling is included, though at times the chorus still occupies all the available staves and the orchestra is simply assumed to play the same notes. The nature of such doubling is sometimes expressed in words, as, for example, ‘Leuti, Tiorbe, Arpe, 3 Violini suonino sopra i soprani che cantano’ (Stefano Landi, Sant’Alessio, 1634). If the score had a preface, this might indicate some or all of the possible instrumentation (as occurs in the preface to Peri’s Euridice).
The continuo bass in all scores represents in its notes and figures the most freely interpreted part. This single line formed the basis of music played by a flexible subgroup centred on the chord-playing instruments such as the harpsichord or organ. It could thus be labelled in a variety of ways, or split between two staves, separating keyboard from plucked and bowed instruments.
The layout of a full score was regular only in two respects. First, any vocal parts were placed immediately above the continuo line, which always occupied the lowest staff. Secondly, the strings were always ordered with violins above violas. It was common for any brass instruments to be placed at the top of the page.
Scores could now be substantial or small (Sant’Alessio is 182 pages). Additional space could be saved by showing the repeat of a ritornello merely by repeating the word.
The basic scoring of many 17th-century pieces was for strings and continuo, in a total of three, four or five parts. It is thought that in some places (e.g. Paris) fewer staves meant the use of smaller forces, while in others (e.g. Venice) no such proportional relation existed. Lully’s five-part textures, with their origins in Italian opera, spread in printed scores to the German-speaking nations, where they were adopted for orchestral suites. A three-part score sometimes disguised the fact that the violas might double the bass: as McCredie (1964) has asserted, ‘the absence of one or more middle parts in a score did not necessarily imply that these were absent in a performance’, since the filling out of the middle parts of scores for the Baroque theatre was often left to the composer’s assistants.
Keyboard music was written either in open score on four staves (e.g. Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali, 1635; see Sources of keyboard music to 1660, fig.2) or on two staves (his Toccate e partite, 1615). For clarity and for study purposes, the contrapuntal forms of ricercare, canzona and fantasia normally appeared on four staves, especially in Portugal (Manuel Rodrigues Coelho’s publication of 1620), France (Titelouze, 1623) and Germany (Scheidt, Tabulatura nova, 1624, and Tabulatur-Buch, 1650).
Scores were far from universally used in directing, and least of all in purely instrumental pieces. Andreas Werckmeister (in the Musicalische Paradoxal-Discourse, 1707) declared that, in Germany, ‘Directors put their scores into German tablature and conduct[ed] from this’, and for some time the practice continued whereby sacred music was directed from a continuo partbook. But the obvious utility of the score in general performance was recognized by composers like Jacobus Handl (Opus musicum, iii, 1587) and Scheidt (1624); the opposition of some musicians to the figured bass (G.D. Rognoni Taeggio, 1605) may also, though less directly, have helped the cause of the score.
A score was not, however, an unchangeable mandate from composer to performer. Even if printed it represented a basis for performance rather than a rigid template, if the composer was not present in person. Some printed scores with a slightly different function sought to perpetuate information about one particular performance. These were scores produced (especially in Italy in the first half of the century) as valuable souvenirs either for the benefit of the composer or, more usually, for his patron who had sponsored the original performance. Like the performances themselves, such scores were not necessarily designed to be models for imitation.
By the end of the century a full score could be printed for direct profit by a composer or publisher. This was done in England by soliciting subscriptions in advance. In such cases the musical information in the score might be a highly accurate statement of the composer’s intentions: ‘Advertisement: … I have … been very carefull in the Examination of every Sheet … I find, too late, the Subscription-money will scarcely amount to the Expence of compleating this Edition’ (Purcell, score of Dioclesian, 1691). Purcell’s Te Deum of 1694 was published three years later by his widow, ‘that I might … gratifie the Desires of several Gentlemen to see the Score’. On the other hand, scores of smaller-scale music, especially the gamut of sung music, were produced in increasing quantities for sale and domestic ‘consumption’.
The 18th century saw the definitive adoption of engraving as the chief method of music printing, and movable type fell into disuse (see Printing and publishing of music, §I, 3(iii)). Engraving could reproduce passages of rapid notes with ease, and the increasing use of punches assisted the enormous expansion in the production of large and small scores. Some printed scores datable around 1800 appear scarcely at all archaic typographically; others are of inferior quality and accuracy. 18th-century scores also reflect the desire of composers to impart their intentions precisely. The quantity of verbal and symbolic information in scores grew considerably, both in manuscript and print; as the expected circulation increased, so the temptation to add written instructions also grew. A few late 18th-century scores from Paris even have mathematically fixed tempo indications to be used in conjunction with a ‘chronomètre’, a primitive form of metronome. The issue of purely instrumental scores (trio sonatas, concerti grossi) was a mere fraction of the quantity of music produced in parts. However, the last three decades of the century saw a prodigious output of engraved opera full scores from Parisian publishers.
The strings in any orchestral ensemble score displayed a normal constitution of first and second violins, violas, cellos and double basses (or violone). But the order of staves in a full score was still subject to only those uniform principles described above for the 17th century. Three main types of layout prevailed, the first two of which were used throughout the century: brass, woodwind, strings, bass (fig.6); upper strings, woodwind, brass, bass (used, for example, by Mozart; fig.7); and woodwind, brass, strings, bass. The last plan, which was eventually to become the standard one, is found at the end of the century, for example in Die Zauberflöte. However, when brass was absent, the normal order in the earlier 18th century was woodwind, strings, bass, although the presence of oboes (doubling violins) is often implicit, not explicit. Within these possibilities infinite variations were adopted, and composers, copyists and engravers were often inconsistent between pieces. Other principles of staff ordering were by register or orchestral ‘colour’.
A constant factor in 18th-century scores of many types before the high Classical period is the principle of orchestral subdivision. The terms ‘solo’ and ‘tutti’ appeared against a single line of music in, for example, a concerto grosso, to indicate alternating performance between one player and several players. This form of notational shorthand also operated in other genres, more particularly opera and oratorio, wherever numbers of players permitted. (In French music the terms were ‘petit choeur’ and ‘grand choeur’.) Although it is not always evident from the score, the use of a small concertino band to accompany solo singers and the tutti to accompany the choruses and play the overture and dances was universally understood.
Publication of keyboard music in open score was effectively concluded by Bach, who published one movement each in the Musical Offering (1747) and the canonic variations Vom Himmel hoch (1748), and the whole of the Art of Fugue (1751), in open score. That the last of these was a keyboard work was not doubted at the time, since the layout was traditional.
By the close of the 18th century scores possessed as many varied uses as they do today, as if in response to a greater sense of discipline. Several writers had urged more comprehensive use of scores. For Walther (1732) the purpose of the score was ‘to avoid mistakes the sooner’ in performance, and the Encyclopédie (1765) edited by Diderot and d’Alembert concluded: ‘He who conducts a concert must have a score in front of him’. The publication of instrumental scores in England shows the progression in function from study to practical utility. Pepusch’s score edition of Corelli’s trio sonatas (London, 1732) is unwieldy to play from and in any case was issued ‘that the Eye should have the Pleasure of discovering, by what unusual Methods ye Ear is Captivated by this Most Celebrated Authors Compositions’. The ‘Advertisement’ in Avison’s score of his own Twenty Six Concertos (Newcastle, 1758) says, however: ‘a complete and legible score is the best plan for any musical publication, not only as it renders the study of music more easy and entertaining, but also the performance of it more correct and judicious’. Moreover the whole score could be rendered at the keyboard: ‘a skilful hand on the organ or harpsicord, may give a pleasing idea of a general performance in concert’. Additionally, the printing layout contained no turnovers in the course of individual movements, so that even a violinist could play from the score, as Avison pointed out.
The traditional hazard of piracy affected the livelihood of the 18th-century composer, who stood to lose or gain more by it than was the case before. This was a natural result of the progressive tendency in Western music for ensemble performance to take place without the presence of the composer and for profit. Some composers, like Handel, held back most of their larger pieces from publication, which carried no copyright protection. The flourishing trade in music resulted in innumerable cases of mistaken identity and misattribution. The first legal steps towards grappling with the complex problems of copyright in printed scores and music generally were taken in France during the Revolution and First Empire.
Thus while manuscript full scores were in general only as accurate as the circumstances allowed, the authority of the printed score as a source for performance according to modern principles (i.e. with emphasis on literal fidelity rather than embellishment) was slowly but gradually gaining ground. A herald of this is seen in a letter by Grétry published in 1791 in the Journal de Paris: ‘I beg the directors of the said theatres to use the printed score to correct the manuscript score of Raoul Barbe-Bleu, which was given them by disloyal hands: it is the only recompense I ask them for having performed my works without my consent’.
In this period the use of mass-circulation printing methods, and the invention of lithography, transformed the dissemination of music. The great moves towards higher standards of public education resulted in the production of a sizeable body of smaller forms of score, such as vocal scores, piano scores and small-format full scores. Treatises were published on how to score for ensembles and how to play full scores at the keyboard. Educators proclaimed the need for scores to study: ‘Foreigners are before the English, I am sorry to acknowledge, in two points, viz. They certainly do not print much musical trash; and what they do print is, generally, in full score’ (J. Kemp: The New System of Musical Education, London, c1819). Linked to the education movements was the publication early in the century of scores of older music and sets of scores of the works of leading Baroque and Classical composers (e.g. Bach, Haydn) never perhaps before seen in printed score; this culminated in the German historical editions (see Editions, historical).
The expansion of the orchestra and the changes in musical style similarly led to increased sophistication in the design of orchestral scores. The layout of staves often followed the standard outline (see §2 above), although some composers (e.g. Spontini, Schubert and Schumann) at times departed radically from it and used one of the earlier 18th-century formats. Wagner, preceded by Spontini, Berlioz and others, placed the horns between the clarinets and the bassoons. There was no fixed place for instruments like the harp, the bass clarinet and (in France) the saxophone, or for the rarer instruments (fig.8).
Such complexities of score notation naturally prompted calls for its reform (see ‘Score, Playing from’, Grove1) which still persist. In particular, the idea that transposing instruments should be written at sounding pitch has been hard to relinquish.
However, the development of atonality has led to the rejection of transposing notation (other than the usual octave transpositions) in many scores. This practice is seen in Schoenberg, for example, from the Variations for Orchestra op.31 (1927–8) onwards. Experimental traits of many kinds are anticipated in the score of Skryabin’s Prométhée (1908–10), whose part for a colour organ (‘tastiera per luce’) appears as a horizontal line.
In editing old music, the scoring of music of which no original score survives has sometimes accommodated new principles in editing: the use of dotted or broken bar-lines; ‘bar’-lines linking staves but not passing through the staves (Ger. Mensurstriche); and the abandonment of bar-lines and adoption of a symbol representing the tactus. There is no consensus of opinion as to the most satisfactory of these barring systems.
The period from 1945 brings the history of the score full circles. Although a great number of contemporary scores follow the format of traditional orchestral, instrumental and vocal scores, experiments in musical language after serialism have resulted in a proliferation of score variants that range from unprecedentedly precise scores to scores exhibiting non-specific notation that recall the mnemonic systems of the earliest extant musical sources. In general, it can be said that the diversity in scores and score-types after 1945 reflects the widespread pluralism of postwar culture, as well as the tendency of the postwar generation to equate structure and form with musical expression and the ‘idea’ of a musical work.
Scores of the later 1940s reflect composers’ developing interest in the organizational potential of each of the parameters of sound. Messiaen’s Modes de valeur et d’intensité (the second of his Quatre études de rythme, 1949–50) introduces a third staff to emphasize the structural importance of the low, middle and high registers of the piano, while John Cage’s scores for prepared piano, such as Sonatas and Interludes (1946–8), include directions (‘preparations’) for inserting objects into the piano to expand its timbre. From 1951, the role of the performer and listener became increasingly central to the conception of some works. Cage’s interest in ‘non-intentionality’ led him to toss coins in conjunction with the I Ching in writing Music of Changes (1951), a procedure that resulted in some highly complex musical structures. Cage introduced ‘time-space notation’ (crotchet = 2·5 cm = 1 second) to compensate for the rhythmic complexity, and he allowed the performer to ‘employ his own discretion’ when combinations become unplayable, an act that marks the beginning of the relaxing of the connection between the specific notation of the score and the general intention of a piece in the postwar period. Interest in the ‘white paintings’ of Robert Rauschenberg, the aesthetic of ambient sound and a belief that duration was the basis of all music led Cage to create the provocative 4' 33'' (1952), arguably his most profound work. The single-page score encourages a tripartite structure overall (‘I Tacet; II Tacet; III Tacet’) but otherwise consists of only a set of written instructions about the performer’s (silent) role in creating a performance context, and an account of the work’s first performance. The final sentence in the score – that the piece ‘may be performed by any instrument and last any length of time’ – is thought by some to be heretical, by others, a stroke of genius. Whichever may be the case, 4' 33'' continues to generate discussion about the centrality – some would say essentiality – of the score to the idea of a musical work in performance.
The substitution of written directions for musical notation coincided with the rise of the graphic score in works such as Morton Feldman’s Projection I (1950; see Feldman, Morton, ex.1) and Earle Brown’s December 1952 (1952; see Brown, Earle, illustration). Despite the difficulty in establishing a consistent performing tradition for these works the production of graphic scores persisted until the mid-1960s, and later composers have periodically indulged in the flexibility offered by graphics (e.g. Stephen Montague, String Quartet no.1, 1989–93). The introduction of transparencies to scores like Cage’s Fontana Mix (1958; see Aleatory, fig.4) was an interesting development in the otherwise somewhat repetitive early graphic period. By the early 1960s, much of this interest had become subsumed in scores that blur the boundary between music and theatre, such as Cage’s 0' 00'' (4' 33'' no.2; 1962) – the score consists of the instruction ‘In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback) perform a disciplined action’ – and his later text-only works, for example Sixty-Two Mesostics re Merce Cunningham (1971).
Boulez, who was ‘not interested in giving the musicians cartoons to improvise’, produced mobile-form scores not unlike those of Cage but vehemently rejected the idea of ‘non-intentionality’. In his unfinished Third Piano Sonata (1955–7), ‘Parenthèse’ includes optional – ‘parenthetical’ – musical material, while ‘Constellation-Miroir’ features colour-coded notation and a detailed network of arrows leading the performer through a complex (but limited) pattern of directed permutations. The formal premise of ‘Constellation-Miroir’ relies heavily on the spatial distribution of material possible in a two-dimensional score and trades on the belief that the composition ‘exists’ only in a series of interpretations of the score across the dimension of time. Boulez’s inspiration was purportedly Mallarmé’s Livre, which uses language in a similar way, but the piece closely resembles works like Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956), which differs only in that the performer may move randomly between sound blocks, and that tempo, dynamic and touch are notated independently of pitch.
Musique concrète (developed from the early 1950s), and its later counterpart computer music, eradicated the relevance of performance and hence the score. Electronic pieces like Elektronische Studie II (1954; fig.9) and Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–6) by Stockhausen preserve the score, employing a notational system that translates the spatial, timbral and dynamic aspects of sound to corresponding visual images. The inorganic nature of the combination of electronic with acoustic sound has perplexed some composers, not least Boulez, who abandoned early electro-acoustic projects ‘until better methods were discovered’. His Répons (1981) is said to vindicate his reticence, although the published score still lacks any reference to the electronic transformations in ‘real time’ that are central to its realization. This fact illustrates both the importance of the spontaneous association of sounds in performance to the form of electro-acoustic works and the difficulty in achieving a representative notation. Contemporary composers continue to marry the two media, as scores like James Dillon’s Introitus (1990) and George Benjamin’s Antara (1985–7) show. In recent years, however, composers have returned readily to traditional scores in works such as Harrison Birtwistle’s opera Gawain (1991), Judith Weir’s The Bagpiper’s String Trio (1985) and Peter Maxwell Davies’s Time and the Raven (1995) or combined traditional and graphic notation, as in Stephen Montague’s organ piece Behold a Pale Horse (1990–91; fig.10). Perhaps the most vivid scores from the end of the century are those of Stockhausen, who has included in his scores extensive directions and elaborate photographs of past performances (Jahreslauf vom Dienstag aus Licht, 1977) and has placed complete transcriptions of individual performers’ interpretations of his pieces alongside the notation of the original work (Ypsilon, 1989; fig.11).
For further illustration see Notation, §III, 6.
KingMP
WaltherML
F.J. Fétis: Traité de l’accompagnement de la partition sur le piano ou l’orgue (Paris, 1829)
W. Tappert: 900–1900: Tausend Jahre Entwicklungsgeschichte der musikalischen Zeichenschrift (MS, 1901, enlarged 1903, D-Bsb)
J. Wolf: Musikalische Schrifttafeln (Bückeburg and Leipzig, 1922–3, 2/1927)
W. Apel: The Notation of Polyphonic Music, 900–1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1942, 5/1961; Ger. trans., rev., 1970)
S. Hermelink: ‘Die Tabula compositoria’, Festschrift Heinrich Besseler, ed. E. Klemm (Leipzig, 1961), 221–30
K. Haller: Partituranordnung und musikalischer Satz (Tutzing, 1970)
H. Besseler and P. Gülke: Schriftbild der mehrstimmigen Musik, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, iii/5 (Leipzig, 1973)
K. Haller: ‘Partitur’ (1976), HMT
Notenschrift und Aufführung: Munich 1977
J. Chailley: ‘Tabulae compositoriae’, AcM, li (1979), 51–4
I. Barsova: ‘Iz istorii partiturnoy notatsii’ [From the history of score notation], in A. Klimovitsky, L. Kovnatskaya and M. Sabinina: Istoriya i sovremennost' (Leningrad, 1981)
P. van Nevel: ‘Historiek van de partituurvormen’, Adem, xxiv (1988), 141–8
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