Word Events

Verbal notation is commonly used in experimental music, as well as related areas of arts practice involving performance or object making. This book focuses on an approach to notation that uses the written word, as opposed to symbols, to convey information to whoever chooses to interpret the notation.

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This is an outstanding collection of text scores from key composers and artists, as well as original essays and interviews offering guidance and lucid analysis. "Word Events" focuses on an approach to notation that uses the written word, as opposed to symbols, to convey information to whoever chooses to interpret the notation. Verbal notation is commonly used in experimental music, as well as related areas of arts practice involving performance or object making. Practitioners point to a number of reasons for using it: notation with written words is accessible to a wide range of people, including those who cannot read traditional Western stave notation; it can express temporal relationships between elements of a composition in a flexible way; it makes association with other writing contexts, such as poetry, prose, instructions, recipes, koans and aphorisms; it can express ideas with great precision; it can express generalities; it can determine many different types of relationships between the scorer and reader; and, it can express ideas and concepts as well as providing prescriptions for action.
The aim of this book is to present a broad range of perspectives on how and why scorers use verbal notation.