Musical Indeterminacy & Advanced Notation

Strategies for composing works that change from performance to performance and offer performers significant and sometimes spontaneous input into their musical form and content. Examination of canonic works and discussion of the defining boundaries of musical ontology. Consideration of various notational techniques, prescriptive versus descriptive purposes, pictographic notation, the aesthetics of the score, under-specification versus musical graininess, and the sonification of visual data. Discussion of game pieces, aleatoric chance procedures, the role of improvisation, conceptual vagueness, interpretative compliance, and the ethics of fidelity and exactitude. Brief etude assignments, readings, and creation of a short ensemble piece performed in concert.