Score, Identity and Experience in Earle Brown's Twentyfive Pages

Abstract

This article explores some of the aesthetic and epistemological issues raised by Earle Brown's work, in particular the topics of knowledge and identity raised in Twentyfive Pages. Reference is made to the literary theories of Jacques Derrida, and parallels are suggested between the listener's experience of a work like Twentyfive Pages and Derrida's exploration of reading and the concepts of différance and trace.

Keywords:

• Analysis
• Earle Brown
• Derrida
• Différance
• Epistemology
• Identity
• Language
• Perception
• Score
• Text
• Trace
• Twentyfive Pages

Acknowledgements

I would like to offer my grateful thanks to Dan Albertson, Peter Barnett, Anne Elliott of Birmingham Central Library, Dr Mark Ward of the University of Birmingham, and above all my wife, Clare, without whose support this work would have been impossible.

Notes

[1] This could, of course, be regarded as an early example of a long-lasting preoccupation with open (and performance-specific) forms that were to become very important in Stockhausen's work during the 1960s and early '70s—for example, Stimmung (1968), Spiral (also 1968), a number of the other earlier ‘plus-minus’ notation scores, and Sternklang (1971).

[2] This strategy is especially apparent in the works dating from the 1970s.