Musical Notation and the Mid-Century Avant-Garde

FAIN: FT-249146-16

Michael Gallope
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)

Completion of an e-book about the philosophy and practice of avant-garde performance in the twentieth century.

This project has two aims. 1) It will offer a new philosophical account of the role of the musical score in the mid-century avant-garde. And 2) It will ground this argument in a media-rich e-book publication that showcases and animates a trove of relevant primary materials. In the 1950s and 1960s, the musical score emerged as the essential form for new directions in the nascent avant-garde fields of conceptual and performance art. The project argues that these scores are distinguished by the fact that they allow us to question, in ways that are unique and specific to each score, the minimal conditions and rules for an artwork to take place. These works challenge conventions of notation and performance at the same time that they dramatize specific collisions of different sensuous media: word, image, and sound. In advancing its arguments, the e-book adopts a media-rich digital format that will revitalize the presentation of hundreds of ephemeral documents, images, films, and recordings.