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The forms of musical notation in Europe developed
in correspondence with ecclesiastic forms of music and not with the secular
music of a dance-song; the notation of durations evolved in reference to
music of the utmost rhythmic simplicity. We are even today handicapped
by the arithmetical crudeness and inefficiency of our notation of durations.
Any music which does not derive from the ecclesiastic forms of European
music looks forbiddingly complicated on our musical staff.
. The scientific system of recording known as nomography deals with different methods of graph notation. While various forms of recording events scientifically exist in all statistical fields, music continues its semi-happy existence in a state of affairs in which nothing can be too wrong—and nothing can be too right! Centuries of the isolation of music from science brought about this unfortunate and chaotic situation. It is about time to acknowledge the inefficiency of our system of musical notation and take a grown-up attitude towards a field which is now unfortunately a back-yard of human thought. . The adoption of the graph method for the recording of musical composition and performance has obvious advantages over the present system of musical notation. In the first place, it offers as much precision as is desired; in the second, it stimulates direct associations with the pattern of a given component. A physical record of what is audible, such as an oscillogram or a photogram of a sound track, is too complicated to be used as musical notation. But the geometrical notation offered in this theory is the general method of graphs, the same as that commonly used for the statistical recording of events, i.e., a record of the variation of special components in time continuity (general component). Graph notation records individual components through individual curves. The special components of sound are frequency, intensity, and quality—and they may be recorded through the corresponding individual graphs. By means of such notation the composer can define his intentions with the utmost precision; the performer can then decipher the desires of the composer to the latter’s full satisfaction. In the future, with the elimination of the living performer, the graph method will still be valid for use with automatically performing musical instruments. Curves of composition and curves of execution will then merge into one.
Joseph Schillinger
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