From Neume to Folio: Mediaeval Influences on Earle Brown's Graphic Notation

Abstract

Several notational features of pieces in Earle Brown's Folio and Twentyfive Pages, such as the use of mirrors, notation in inversion, clefless staves, and the representation of relative rather than specific durations, bear a striking similarity to techniques found in mediaeval manuscripts. This article argues that Brown's decision to remove or omit prescriptive and directly descriptive elements from his scores—and even the visual appearance of certain scores—may have roots in his study of early music. The innovative aspects of his notation are here placed in the context of the ‘curious feeling’ that he described ‘of returning to a musical condition which prevailed in times past’.

Keywords:

• Earle Brown
• Clefless
• Mediaeval
• Neume
• Notation

Notes

[1] See the interview with John Yaffé on 25 September 1995, elsewhere in this journal.

[2] My thanks to the Earle Brown Music Foundation, which generously made this typescript available to me.

[3] See the edited version of this lecture (Brown, 1986). There has been some discussion of this issue in recent years (e.g. Schmidt, 2000).

[4] The Clerk's Group, directed by Edward Wickham, adopted this practice in their recordings of masses by Johannes Ockeghem, released on the ASV label; earlier pioneers included Thomas Binkley and the Ensemble Sequentia.

[5] The longer note value, which resembles a whole note, is formed with two strokes (it is not circular): a saucer-shape below and a pointed stroke above. These notes are intended to become slowly inaudible, while the filled (black) notes are ‘shorter’.

[6] Brown defines ‘time notation’ as ‘durations extended in space relative to time, rather than expressed in metric symbols as in traditional notation’ (Brown, 1975).

[7] In his study of historical notations, Brown would have learned that prior to the modern era, accidentals had only relative rather than absolute meaning: the symbols (diesis and mollis) indicated simply that a given note was to be raised or lowered. In certain circumstances, accidentals were used in a cautionary manner (where the singer might otherwise make a mistake). Brown's decision to include accidentals whose function could at most be relative may have been influenced by this historical usage.

[8] Various solutions for this puzzling piece have been proposed; see, for example: Fallows (1992); Urquhart (1997); and van Benthem (1997).

[9] The extent to which Brown's notational innovations grew out of, and were influenced by, contemporary developments in the visual arts, particularly the works of Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder, has been well documented; see, most recently, Johnson (2002). December 1952, in particular, has been identified with works by Mondrian (see Hitchcock, 1969, p. 247; Watkins, 1988, p. 566). In 1986, Brown himself described Jackson Pollock's work as a ‘visual representation of tremendously intricate polyphony … Pollock was the first thing I was drawn to because of the intricacy of the textures' (in an interview quoted in Dufallo, 1989, p. 109).