title: The Space Between and Beyond Notes: Practice-led Exploration of Graphic Notation as Compositional Method for Song, Music Performance and Recordings
Creators: name: Petersen, E
Publisher: name: Liverpool John Moores University
Year: 2024

description: The overarching aim of this practice-led research is to explore a series of academic and cultural discourses and to bring together concerns regarding artistic practice, artistic research, and work as a musician. Specifically, the research aims to explore and document the historical backstory of the artist’s graphic notation and the application of experimental methods of composition, such as graphic notation, to the production of a series of autobiographical songs. The research has also been undertaken to address the paucity of literature in this area. The thesis explores a particular definition of graphic notation, which has historically been a musical notational method from the improvisation of jazz musicians to the current technological advances in compositional software. When considering ancient Egyptian forms of musical notation versus the modern-day software Sibelius, musical notation has always been innovative. Therefore, graphic notation is embraced to realise the potential of artistic practice, to encourage artistic freedom, to improve communication between artistic performance and the audience; and to challenge the way we create, experience, and consume music and visual art. The thesis is practice-led; however the historical and theoretical backstory acts as a framework for the practical part of the thesis. It contextualises experimental musical composition through the analysis of the innovative women pioneers of electronic sound, Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire. The graphic notation system I have used throughout my career as a musician and singer/songwriter was the compositional method used to create the major practical work for this thesis entitled Voices of Winter Palace (2019). The project is an autobiographical story which maps the lives of my grandparents Leo and Gwen Petersen. Leo was from the Faroe Islands and Gwen was from Liverpool, UK. Gwen’s alternative approach to communication with Leo (she did not speak any Danish or Faroese and he spoke little English), and the hurdles she faced with regards to communication, not only due to the language barrier but also the fact that Leo lost his speech, mirrored my experiences of creating an alternative method of communication through experimental graphic notation. The research and recording of Voices of Winter Palace (2019) was awarded Arts Council England funding and my songs were recorded with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra in Hungary. This internationally renowned orchestra has worked with numerous world-famous composers including Ennio Morricone amongst many others. The thesis explicitly advocates the necessity of employing a rigorous method to the practice-led research, namely reclaiming creative autonomy by taking control of the complete process of creating an album and a series of visual artworks to integrate the vision for the production of the work as a whole. This work makes an intervention into the fields of music composition, notation, visual art, and performance. The term graphic notation or graphic scores was a recognised experimental musical approach post-World War II, however, the thesis argument is that my work is not only experimental notation, but also a form of language that communicates sound, music, and narration. It is a score created for music, but the score can also be seen as visual art in its own right.