This discussion about notation is close to my heart. And important to
those composing for the instrument.
I think Kinko notation is the best we have so far, but it's
incomplete even for it's own repetoire, is it not? In the following
sense: Please correct me if I'm wrong, I do not wish to pretend to
be any kind of authority, I'm not. But are there not substantive,
sometimes important aspects of most of the honkyoku performance
practice that are not encapsulated in the notation? And these things
sometimes change from teacher to teacher or school to school to
various degrees, but it is not as if these things were completely
optional, or completely open for "interpretation" or improvisation.
So, if I'm right, the notation does not encapsulate, or represent,
the music in any one to one way.
Rather, the notation is a rough guide to how to perform the piece,
with the details, the sense of ma particular to that piece, etc.
being dealt with by the classical oral tradition method of direct
transmission.
Kinko notation as it functions is a very interesting animal in the
musical notation world. It is both a proscriptive and a descriptive
notation to some degree. Mostly proscriptive, since most of the
notation is fingering symbols, but there are the graphic notation
aspects (movement of line from left to right signifying low to high
that give you some pretty decent ability to describe subtle pitch
movements, and that ability is better than that given by adapting
western notation by using distance left to right for duration and
extending a pitch line following the notehead and moving it up and
down for pitch....The grid provided by the treble staff isn't fine
enough, alas. It doesn't work, trying to show the shape of a slide or
meri melody between eflat and d on the treble staff...but Kinko
notation does this very nicely...
So, I guess that's the answer to one question...
There is no one to one correspondence possible between Kinko and
western notation. Further, Kinko remains more flexible than even
modified western notation for expressing many contemporary musical
ideas (for the shakuhachi). On the other hand, sometimes western
notation is much better. If it's metered rhythm, complex
polyrhythms, etc. that you need, Kinko notation fails.
I've been able to adapt, or expand Kinko notation a little bit to
incorporate some of the multiphonic and other extended technique
things I do in my improvised music practice, because most of my music
uses free time, it's unmetered, variable. I have to write some
english on the side of the notation sometimes and I've created some
special symbols but it's readable.
Ned Rothenberg's pieces are in Kinko notation with additional
"performance notes". Which seems very much in the tradition, except
that in the case of the traditional pieces there are no performance
notes, see your local sensei, if there is one...and if not, find
recordings, preferably with matching scores. Yes? No?
Some of the Japanese composers use modified western notation, but if
they want to incorporate many of the subtleties (like alternative
fingerings) that are standard shakuhachi practice they have to use
fingering charts (awkward but effective), or print the standard
shakuhachi notation for special fingerings above the staff... and/or
create a glossary of graphical markings for the various types of
fluttertongue, windsounds, etc...so.this is..not standard western
notation at all...and not a satisfying solution either, if the
composer wants to indicate subtle pitch motion...
Very interesting problem. It would be nice if there was actually a
good solution.
But this is a fundamental problem with musical notation systems. As
music starts to take advantage of extended technique (and honkyoku
music certainly does) and as composers start to specify more and more
detail, it starts becoming very difficult to create a good notation
system that actually encapsulates what's needed to know how to play a
piece....
If a notation system becomes too cluttered and contains too much
information it begins to loose utility for any kind of sight
reading...
On the other hand, if it doesn't encapsulate enough about the piece
it doesn't serve the primary purpose of notation...
Any comments, ideas?
--Joel Taylor _____________________________________________
List subscription information is at: http://communication.ucsd.edu/shaku/listsub.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 06 2004 - 14:09:37 PST