I am asked occasionally why I don't put phrasing, bowing, breathing and dynamic markings in my scores. For a long time I did. But then I realized I am creating music that is realized via computer technology and MIDI, there are seldom live players involved. Since I embed all of the above information profusely in the MIDI sequence, it is redundant to include them in the score. Occasionally, when I publish a piece for live players, I add all of the necessary markings that players require.
Do other composers do things differently or similarly?
I am not interested in retrogression and I believe in complete scores, the more information the better, relative to the medium of performance. Sometimes I am not willing to work on something unless I see a reason. A complete score as an end in itself is fine, but a recording and score as a single interpretation is no less intricate or musical. When a composer tells a player to do a crescendo from m41 b2 to m50 b1 from pp to f, the notation conveys this clearly. The most complete scores I've ever seen are those by Mahler, his attention to detail in dynamics, articulation and phrasing is a great advance in musical thinking.
Machine performance of music is a paradox, as music must be felt to be enjoyed, and machines don't feel. Composing for computer still demands that we not only tell the computer what to play, but how to play it. MIDI doesn't understand a hairpin, but it understands ctrl 11 from 127 to 32. A camera cannot "feel", yet it can convey the warmth, excitement and happiness of a decades-old wedding picture, and a paint brush cannot feel the emotion the painter is creating on the canvas. A computer-based performance can convey the subjective experience of the composer by programming phrasing, articulation, velocity, note length, note location and patch-set, at least those are the technical details.
The score serves to help me find mistakes and correct them, it serves as a visual means to aid in my teaching practice and it also allows me, at a later date if I want to, get a live performance if that is what I want.
Does this make sense? I know it goes against classical orthodoxy in terms of what a complete score requires, but who really cares? If someone finds one of my scores in a library or garbage can and really wants to perform it, they can interpret the dynamics and phrasing as it naturally feels to them. The tempi I have set. What's the issue?
So why make a score at all? Having a visual representation of composition helps me to organize my pieces. I sequence in SMN, I edit the notation in Sibelius and further clarify my ideas and find errors before rendering to wave. I think it is a practical way to employ notation. Traditions are always in process, always changing, morphing, absorbing and being absorbed.
Jerry
www.jerrygerber.com