| dc.description.abstract | The process of musical composition is sometimes conceived of as an individual, internal, cognitive
process in which notation plays a passive role of transmitting or recording musical ideas.
This thesis questions the role played by representations in musical composition practices.
We begin by tracing how, historically, compositional practices have co-evolved with musical
representations and technologies for music production. We present case studies to show that the
use of graphical sketches is a characteristic feature of the early stages of musical composition
and that this practice recurs across musical genres ranging from classical music to contemporary
electroacoustic composition. We describe the processes involved in sketching activities within
the framework of distributed cognition and distinguish an intermediate representational role for
sketches that is different from what is ‘in the head’ of the composer and from the functions of
more formal musical notations. Using evidences from the case studies, we argue in particular
that as in other creative design processes, sketches provide strategically ambiguous, heterogeneous
forms of representation that exploit vagueness, indeterminacy and inconsistency in the
development of musical ideas.
Building on this analysis of the functions of sketching we describe the design and implementation
of a new tool, the Music Sketcher, which attempts to provide more under-specified and
flexible forms of ‘sketch’ representation than are possible with contemporary composition tools.
This tool is evaluated through a series of case studies which explore how the representations
constructed with the tool are interpreted and what role they play in the compositional process.
We show that the program provides a similar level of vagueness to pen and paper, while also
facilitating re-representation and re-interpretation, thus helping bridge the gap between early
representations and later stages of commitment. | en_US |
