As shown in Chapters 7 and 8, signs with relatively fixed intended meaning and less latitude in interpretation may function less effectively in mixed-experience contexts due to diverse levels of practice-specific cognitive and performative ability. Yet, within these contexts, strategies can be employed to instigate and aid the development of relatively fixed semiotic interpretant relationships.
Forms of notation that are predominantly icon or index may be predicted to operate more effectively within mixed-experience contexts. Forms of notation that are predominantly symbolic are less likely to operate effectively, as they require each user to have knowledge of musical conventions and laws, or to have the time and resources to build up this knowledge. However, such predictions must be approached with caution. If a composer expects any form of notation to be interpreted in a particular uniform way by all players, relatively fixed interpretant relationships must be constructed: instigated, taught, and/or built up, within their context of use. That is, there is a potentially symbolic dimension to all forms of notation.
For example, as shown by the experiments of Walker, unaided, mixed- experience players do not interpret notation uniformly. In one experiment series, Walker conducted a test with 155 subjects who had little or no musical training, and ranged in their culture and in their age from 9 to 25 years (207). Subjects were shown four visual stimuli extracted from non-standard twentieth-century notation. Subjects were asked to “make the sounds the shapes suggested” (207). Three musicians
independently judged which musical parameter (dynamics, pitch, duration, or timbre) players interpreted from each graphic. If judges could not agree, or could not
determine if the subject was affecting one of the four parameters, the result was categorised as “other” (207). None of the visual stimuli were interpreted with
uniformity. The graphic that “evoked dynamics more than any other sonic parameter” was a filled, wedge-shaped ‘hairpin’, increasing in thickness from left to right. This graphic attained 105 responses judged as “dynamics”, but 19 responses were judged as changes in “pitch”, and 31 responses fell into the category of “other” (207).
In the case of this hairpin graphic, more so than all others tested, a tendency can be seen towards a particular interpretation. However, there was also great
variation in interpretation. Throughout Walker’s experiments, the sheer variability of interpretations strongly supports the semiotic premise that the relationship of sign- vehicle to object is not a characteristic of the sign itself. Across all semiotic modes, it is through the development of context that the intended referent and purpose of a sign becomes less ambiguous.
Instigation of semiotic interpretant relationships
Scores that introduce new, unconventional notation, or request an uncommon performance action, often include a set of textual performance notes. Performance notes may act as a key, describing the referent of each uncommon graphic and
unpacking the sign systems used. Effective performance notes, and programme notes, which are read both by performers and audience, can seed the growth of an
interpretant context specific to the work. There is therefore, in such cases, a pedagogic quality to the performance notes and often to the notation itself: “Where instructions are issued for all comers, a certain basic standard of skill and knowledge is presumed to exist … [If not,] then a special teaching notation must be used” (Cole 15).
In working with a particular score over time, every reader learns, building up experience and developing relationships with the specific signs and systems of that score. This is an evolving semiotic fluency: a mutable skill that is both unique to that score and affects the reading of all other scores.
Cross-domain knowledge
As well as being seeded by the composer and developed through score use, semiotic relationships form through the reader’s application of past experience. Applicable experience can be found from within both musical and non-musical contexts.
Although prior knowledge and experience is an unpredictable feature of mixed-experience contexts, the likelihood of a form of notation operating effectively is increased if cross-domain knowledge can be applied by readers, a situation
described by Hatano and Wertsch as contextual skill acquisition “on the basis of experience with different practices”:
“[S]ome activities occur across so many different settings that they may have cognitive consequences well beyond particular. Narratives,
orthography, and measurement are just a few examples of such activities. [As well], what is acquired in one domain may be used in others through analogies, abstraction, and the like.” (79-80)
In musical terms, experience gained from non-musical experience may be applicable and utilised within a musical domain. This insight provides an important strategy to consider when developing notation strategies for mixed-experience performers. Where participant cognition may or may not be specifically relevant to notation use within the musical domain, there is a case to be made for use of forms of notation that utilise rules, systems or conventions from other, more general domains, either
directly, or through analogy and abstraction, as shown above by Hatano and Wertsch.
Verbal scores
A key example of a notational form that utilises a large degree of cross-domain knowledge is that of the verbal, instructional, or event score, as described by Dadson in Chapter 2. The verbal score is a form first attributed to George Brecht (Higgins 2) and is utilised predominantly within experimental music practice, including by La Monte Young, Yoko Ono, and John Cage (Bryars xiii). Verbal scores are particularly suited as works considered accessible to interpretation and realisation by performers of mixed experience. This is in large part due to their use of cross-domain knowledge in terms of common verbal language and grammar: “Practitioners point to a number of advantages to [verbal] notation: written words are accessible to a wide range of people, including those who cannot read traditional Western music stave notation” (Lely and Saunders, Word ix).
In addition, event scores often specify what is to be done, an often deceptively simple request, without specifying exactly how it is to be done, counterbalancing a large degree of latitude of performance action to players with less latitude of sign interpretation. As found in Chapter 8, this is a characteristic predicted as effective for mixed-experience contexts.
Strategies
Within mixed-experience contexts, any notation will probably gain a variety of responses, yet as shown within this chapter, a range of strategies may increase the likelihood of notation effectiveness for purpose. Use of iconic and index sign notation
may be predicted to be more effective than symbolic. Forms of notation that counterbalance more latitude of performance action with less latitude of sign interpretation (or vice versa) may be more effective. Semiotic flexibility is a key attribute. Through engagement of general cross-domain knowledge, successful semiotic interpretant relationships may form more easily. As well, notation with pedagogic qualities, along with the inclusion of performance notes and programme notes, acts as a way of seeding and shaping an evolving ecology of individual and collective contextual interpretant relationships.