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Visible Music (The Score as a Sore to be Rubbed)

Visible Music (The Score as a Sore to be Rubbed) PERFORMANCE DRAWINGS William Hellermann, To Brush Up On, 1976, ink on vellum. Photo: Courtesy the composer. © William Hellermann. VISIBLE MUSIC (THE SCORE AS A SORE TO BE RUBBED) William Hellermann he question was “what to do about form?” In the early 1970s many composers—myself included—were experimenting with graphic notation, improvisation, electronics, etc. Still, the new techniques were often reiterating old forms. In 1974, I began a series of pieces I came to call Visible Music. All the scores in this series are based on using representational visual structures as the bases for abstract musical compositions. Unlike a lot of graphic music—including my own—employing circles, triangles, and all manner of symbols typically deployed on freeform wavy lines, these pieces are all meticulously written using musical notation that is conventional in every respect, except for the deployment of the musical staves themselves. These staves are drawn in various geometric arrangements in which the shapes of everyday objects (keyholes, doorways, flyswatters, etc.) and/or activities (pouring water, brushing on paint) were used as the framework for a piece of music. The compositions work, I hope, in some inspired way to follow the dictates of the form of the visual image being http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

Visible Music (The Score as a Sore to be Rubbed)

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References (2)

Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2010 William Hellermann
Subject
Performance Drawings
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/PAJJ_a_00026
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

PERFORMANCE DRAWINGS William Hellermann, To Brush Up On, 1976, ink on vellum. Photo: Courtesy the composer. © William Hellermann. VISIBLE MUSIC (THE SCORE AS A SORE TO BE RUBBED) William Hellermann he question was “what to do about form?” In the early 1970s many composers—myself included—were experimenting with graphic notation, improvisation, electronics, etc. Still, the new techniques were often reiterating old forms. In 1974, I began a series of pieces I came to call Visible Music. All the scores in this series are based on using representational visual structures as the bases for abstract musical compositions. Unlike a lot of graphic music—including my own—employing circles, triangles, and all manner of symbols typically deployed on freeform wavy lines, these pieces are all meticulously written using musical notation that is conventional in every respect, except for the deployment of the musical staves themselves. These staves are drawn in various geometric arrangements in which the shapes of everyday objects (keyholes, doorways, flyswatters, etc.) and/or activities (pouring water, brushing on paint) were used as the framework for a piece of music. The compositions work, I hope, in some inspired way to follow the dictates of the form of the visual image being

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and ArtMIT Press

Published: Jan 1, 2011

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