At 02:00 AM 12/17/03 -0800, you wrote:
>I think Kinko notation is the best we have so far
"Best" for what purpose and for whom? The world of notation is full of
various approaches, each with its purpose. In general, notation systems
(Javanese court gamelan, European classical, Ottoman, etc.) serve their
purposes at a given stage in history, or else performers and composers try
to change them.
>But are there not substantive, sometimes important aspects of most of the
>honkyoku performance practice that are not encapsulated in the notation?
In some Kinko guilds, perhaps, but the purpose there is mnemonic, to jog
your memory of a particular composition that you have already
mastered. Writing out every little squiggle would limit the notation to a
particular teacher's rendition at a particular time.
But Chikumeisha Kinko notation is very specific and very detailed. Over
the decades, Yamaguchi changed little in performance.
>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
"Prescriptive" doesn't refer only to fingering, it "prescribes" where and
how to bend the notes, which which notes are meri, what octave, muraiki,
etc. ("Proscriptive" would mean "forbidden"). "Descriptive" refers to
transcription, as of an improvised performance.
>There is no one to one correspondence possible between Kinko and western
>notation.
Agreed, although its concession to Western notation in the implied
durations can mislead. The student must understand the durations only in
the relative sense that two notated "beats" are somehow longer than one,
but rarely twice as long. You gotta feel it after a lot of listening to
the masters.
>... 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?
Yes, playing along with recording but preferably *without* scores. The
scores only set up inappropriate assumptions in the student's mind. The
ear is a miraculous tool for learning. Don't underestimate it.
Karl
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