Could you commission another article, featuring two people who know about scores, know how to read them, know what they're for, and how they've shaped music. Some of the inaccuracies and guesswork in this article need correcting; some of the bizarre assertions need a rebuttal.

Meaningless brabble between two people who obviously know nothing about notated music, about the importance and history of notated music. Ignorant and arrogant. A lot of assumptions, bogus comparisons, but most of all utter misknowledge about the subject. Painful and sad to read. Sure there are downsides to written music, as there are downsides to written language, but instead of doing some research and exploring the history and delving into the benefits and disadvantages they just go on a rant. It's the same ignorance that tears down random statues for the sake of revolution and sprays nazi all over Churchill's bust. History is clearly offending to a lot of people, is it because they can't put it into context? cope with the complexity? Or cause it makes them feel less special? Who knows...surely not these two.

Not sure i see the point in getting two people to talk about something they don't know the first thing about.

MF: That's a weird thing, because now we're looking at this Rothko chapel piece by Morton Feldman, which we agree is mind-blowingly brilliant.

RT: Yeah [laughs].

MF: I presume he didn't use the score just as a means of documenting his ideas, but he used the score as a means of constructing those musical ideas and structures. So here's an example of someone that actually contradicts what I’ve just said. And actually, you know, for both of us, Morton Feldman is one of the things that we listen to the whole time. So that’s why I chose this. I could have chosen some Vivaldi or something, which would have been a total no-brainer, about how rubbish it was.

That's what written scores do, *period*. It's not uniquely well represented in Feldman, nor unusually poorly in Vivaldi. You guys haven't got the faintest clue what you're talking about--as your own "conclusion" painfully demonstrates.

If you know nothing, why not just shut up until you do?

"I don't like it as much as some of his own music"...does he think 'Rothko Chapel' is a COVER or something?! Wth?! At least TRY to research the subject before writing an article. Sheesh. Also, if nobody had bothered to notate any music (in the western classical tradition at least) then it would be pretty difficult for us know what any music from say, 16th Century Italy, sounded like because guess what chaps...electronic devices weren't invented yet. In fact, ELECTRICITY wasn't invented yet. Oh, and one of the first instances of music notation appeared in Iraq (Babylonia then...) dated around 1400 BC. So it isn't really THAT new. Rant over. Blimey.

I agree with Ben's comment above (from 14th Jan). This needs a balanced discussion, the benefits of a notation system for music are huge and wide reaching and the, in most cases, completely false and ill-informed assertions in this piece need addressing urgently!

"I mean, I think the Western linear score is relatively new. I think it was invented in Italian monasteries..." Presumably in the interval between inventing tagliatelle and spaghetti.

Oh, and the comment about Vivaldi is unbelievably ignorant. He was a man before his time, championing the rights of women and the poorest in society. Musically, he was hugely influential on Bach, arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, composer(s) of Western Classical tradition. If you're going to knock something, at least have the curtesy to explain why you think it's rubbish. I'm not sure you'll find that many people who agree with you fortunately, including many young people, most of whom I'm assuming, have never heard of EITHER of you.

That's truly embarrassing to read...

I always tell my students and colleagues with whom I share music: "it's not on the page". The notes are a representation of ordered pitches within a specific moment in time. Music yes, and music? NO. That is what happens when you're not thinking about what everyone else is thinking about your performance and all that goes with that. I agree notation is restrictive and prohibitive and people forget that they have EARS! Even if the intent is for the song to always be played the way it was written, no one besides the composer can ever play it the way s/he/they heard and felt it - thus the instructions and articulations, etc. What makes it live is the next iteration, rendition, through time. Music is living and fluid!
Thanks for this conversation.

I'd like to echo what a lot of others have been saying: this convo is so unbelievably light on substance that you can't actually take the main point seriously. Please Please publish a follow-up

"I don't like it as much as some of his own music" – we've corrected a transcription mistake in this. Apologies. It was "I don't like it as much as some of his other music"

there was an error with the transcription, rian's comment was "I don't like it as much as some of his OTHER music" - i've asked the editor to correct this. sorry for the confusion. :)

An article about chess by two guys who don’t play chess.

What a rubbish conversation...
The overconfidence of the parties involved is nauseating.
Nepotism and poor curation of the Wire Magazine in the recent years is also discouraging, if nothing else.
Maybe this was the case all along, but on The Wire, I'd rather read about musics and opinions of people who are not on every other mainstream and/or alternative(!) music magazine thanks to their pr agents-personal connections.

Hey, relax S. He said « I do like that piece. I don't like it as much as some of his other stuff. » that’s a difference.

Ah the anarchic sound art crew with the lols. Cringe reading.

"I think technically speaking, inharmonic and dissonant probably mean… well, we don't know do we because we're not, we're not musically trained."

How can you publish an article on music notation from two people who are not musically trained? This article is full of ignorance and intellectual shortcuts, assumptions and falsity. I would be ashamed if I were them.

This is pathetic. Do better.

They don't know how to hear the music in the score if they make such statements. They need to doubt their assumptions.

Are they saying they prefer improv? That's a fair statement, but just shutting down the importance of the score is wildly ignorant. Having two people try to make their opinions about something they have no training in and make those opinions seem important is wildly ignorant. Do they also hate books as they are also "telling a lie"?

This conversation is so disgusting and insulting to composers.

When willful ignorance is perceived as the ultimate path towards enlightenment, we have a big problem.

Why are you giving such an important platform for folks to discuss something of huge cultural significance that they know absolutely nothing about, and then allowing them, unchallenged, to embarrass themselves with ludicrous statements and rubbish the work of thousands of fellow musicians from the last few centuries with no evidence, argument or even the most basic familiarity with what they are discussing?

Maybe you could publish this as a series. Next you could have them discuss advances in nuclear power plant designs or the theory behind how the COVID vaccines work.

Scores are a way of creating a distance between ourselves and sound; in this distance, poetry is born. Musical thought can breath on paper more than on any other mean. Feldman knew this very well, and so did Vivaldi. This interview is catastrophically dull

Absolute rubbish. What's your next article, children who make sandcastles dissecting the work of architects? Who cares about the opinions of people ignorant to the topic, why this got published is beyond me.

A score isn't the music, a script isn't the play, movies are sequences of two dimensional still images, and water is wet.

There are interesting things to be said about the problems created by notation, but this article contains none of them. By publishing it you have made the world a stupider place, and the authors will one day be embarrassed - after they learn to read.

Two people with not even a basic understanding of the topic saying absolute nonsense but hey, it will give us a clickbait title. Looks like we have an interview to post!

"I think the hammer is the worst tool in the toolbox, and all hammers should be disposed of, because they are never useful for any task. We should only use screwdrivers for every job!"

I may stop cringing by the end of the day, but I doubt it.

We’re still listening to Vivaldi 280 years after he died, and I’ll have forgotten about these guys in 280 seconds. I did have a quick listen to some of their output and it reminded me of that stuff Ross from Friends made on his keyboard in college.

I don’t say this simply to be critical, but to encourage anyone who read their naive ramblings to ignore them: Bach wrote The Matthew Passion on manuscript paper and it came out pretty well. That’s a better standard to aim for, if you’re interested in making music, I’d argue, than inexpert Ableton knob-twiddling.

For the DEAF guy who composed some of the greatest music in history, the score is everything for Beethoven. Notation is quantified music. Music theory is developed through notations. All the chords and notes these electronic musicians mindlessly use came from scores and notation. They’re only restrictive if (1) you have no imagination, and (2) you don’t know how to read music. They should’ve at least shut up about something they don’t know about.

The whole piece is a great example of what someone can lose by dismissing an entire discipline (or an approach to it) as if they are too good for it. The confidence to suggest that “time isn’t represented in a musical score,” and “never at any point does it say one inch equals one minute” reveals not just an ignorance of the existence of tempo markings, but the variety of expression they offer, from simple bpm Mark and Rian must be familiar with, to the centuries-old Italian conventions (allegro, largo, vivace, etc) and the more free-form modern indicators like “freely,” or “plodding.” Nobody needs to read sheet music or embrace classical tonal harmony to make music, but insisting it doesn’t do something it’s done for literal centuries is embarrassing. I hope Mark and Rian reconsider their take on this.

It just shows how rubbish music education is in this country, unfortunately

Pretty useless to publish something like this. Why would you invite people to entertain a conversation on matters they don't seem to have any clue or knowledge about??? You can have a meaningful conversation about scores, notation, western musical traditions and all, and being critical about it too, but you need to know something about all this or it really sounds like pretentious crap to me.

What they seem to be saying is that improvised music is the only proper or valid kind of music.
That is one approach to music - but they seem to discount all others.
The discussion might have made more sense if they had made it clear from the outset that they were talking about only one approach to music - that being based solely or mainly on improvisation. But they appeared to be talking just about music as a whole, and, in that context, sounded quite narrow-minded.
They might have sounded more credible if they had conceded some merit to notation-based music, even if that wasn't their own preferred approach (there's nothing wrong with having preferences - but everything wrong with stating that their preferences are the only way to go). For example, those merits might include that music for large ensembles like orchestras or choruses would be very difficult or impossible to perform without the degree of planning that requires a written score and someone to say "This is how it will go"- i.e., a composer - being someone who is presumably skilled in planning music that works especially well.
I suppose you could have a suitably-skilled orchestra do a huge jam session purely by listening to each other and improvising in response; but the glories of well-planned music by a Beethoven or Debussy or Stravinsky would not be possible without those composers to design it and without music notation to make at least an approximately accurate record of that design. I would not consider it a good deal to sacrifice all that in exchange for allowing the total freedom of massive jam sessions.
One might as well say novels are worthless because they are set down in a particular form, and instead we should all make up our own stories. Or we shouldn't bother looking at or appreciating good paintings because, after all, we can all do our own daubings of paint on canvas.

There was weed involved? Sounds a lot like me high talking about artificial selection of blueberries.

Indeed this discussion seems a bit off topic. It's better to discuss things you do know and not make constantly a fool of yourself publicly. I get where this frustration with sheet music is coming from but being ignorant is not the way to go.

-"Bro drawings are the worse that ever happened to architecture"
-"Bro you're so right... it's not even space what they put on paper, just a representation of it... terrible"
-"Yeah they should have made the Parthenon by stacking up and feeling every single rock by hand. That's how you do it"
-"That's deep bro"

Next article suggestion for the Wire: get two people who can't read to review books:)

Really? Them talking about music is just another face of this shallow society, but you publishing it? Why!? You thought that this would have raised your readers maybe, but I find just so sad to see that Wire decided to publish this useless and inaccurate article which has no value at all, if not to show how arrogant and ignorant are these 2 people.

This conversation sounds like they've had a large dose of oxygen on the way up the hill then attempted to put the world to rights, but then what is open countryside for?

I do think notation might be too central to music education, I think this can constrain you before you've developed a voice or even started to really enjoy and understand music, however, I love being able to improvise and auto-transcribe what just happened in my head. Isn't that what composers did before Logic Pro X? I'm just sad I don't have a pet orchestra:)

The real point of using music notation has always been simply to accomplish things that are harder to accomplish without notation.
Historically, a lot of people have missed this point.
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While this article offers some pretty extreme positions, they're not necessarily more overstated than have been some much larger number of casual claims effectively to the opposite position; that only scored music is legitimate music. As a trained composer and theorist, I think what we see here is some part of the other side of a dialogue that's centuries past due while notation fetishists have been allowed to run wild and brainwash consumers to the de facto claim that real music is essentially a way of expressing notation, rather than the other way around.
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I'm nobody important. But for what it's worth, my own suggestion would be that musicians should try to learn at least 2 types of notation; maybe staff and/or tablature and/or "cipher" (I like "cipher" a lot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_musical_notation ) in order to better understand how notation systems affect (and sometimes interfere with) musical thinking, and I very strongly recommend ALSO that musicians dedicate some time every day to making music non-notationally, just to keep things in proper perspective. How does it SOUND? (or does that even matter?).

As ham-fisted as is the article's treatment of this issue, the comments I'm seeing so far aren't really taking the high road in terms of offering cogent counter-argument. People commenting don't seem to appreciate that the article's statements are just an attempted rebuttal to an argument that has been left essentially unchallenged for many centuries. People commenting don't seem to appreciate that the burden, procedurally, is really on notation advocates to defend the use of notation as being culturally necessary, much less superior to non-notation methods. Granted, the voices in the article haven't set the bar very high. It does seem sort of like an article on "f*ckin' magnets", written by Insane Clown Posse.
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Both sides in this debate need to start doing better at some point.

I'll just leave this here then:

Music Theory and White Supremacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA

It is absolutely true that the notation is NOT the music, it is a set of instructions. It is also true that western classical notation has changed the course of music - it has enabled much longer structures and larger ensembles. It has enabled more complex harmonies and textures all hugely beneficial impacts. It has enabled immense riches in music. It also has constraining impacts - it is almost certainly the main force behind the disappearance of improvisation from most of western classical music (with the exception of organists). It also tends to push what people perform musically towards what is notated loosing what happens between the notated pitches and rhythms. I do think that we need to understand and discuss these issues. It interests me that people get so heated in defense of western classical notation. I think it is easier to assert its importance if we are honest about its limitations. Things have changed with the advent of high quality DAW software - we can now visually represent analyse and edit music in new and powerful ways. This will have an impact on the use of western classical notation, both positive and negative, in the same way that western classical notation has had an impact on the aural tradition.

In response to Mark Bick's excellent post, and to the somewhat less excellent post containing a link to the "Music Theory and White Supremacy" video:

Sure, notation has its limitations and there are issues worth discussing. And I think learning multiple approaches is valid (where possible, I teach my students notation, aural skills, and DAW).

The problem is the original article doesn't do really do any of that. It is a close-minded discussion, written from a position of ignorance.

To say that you like notated music does not take anything away from the myriad of fantastic musical traditions around the world that do not require a score. And you can express a preference for improvised music, or music learned via aural traditions, and still appreciate notation. And you can discuss how these interact, intersect, conflict with each other.

But in completely disregarding notation, and literally telling people not to study it, Mark and Rian run into a number of problems.

"But there’s these strange cycles that happen. I don’t know how he’s doing it but I love it." Look at the score!

Why can't someone that works with sound for decades question notation? One question to all these harsh critics: Do you know Mark Fells music at all on your behalf? Did you do any research in this topic? Mark Fell is actually creating a new narrativ in the Sound Art Scene, which is radical, honest and emancipated from the patriarchal structures of the past. He and his keen are working on creating a new, just and equal society, which is free from hypocrisy and acting as if... His sound and his thinking are always straightforward.

Let's think about a music without notation. I like the thought, of being free of structures and creating a new sensual, intuitiv approach to sound. Let's break all the old rules and create new ones, better ones! Ones that make us truly happy! Why don't we just do it? Should there be rules at all in art? Let's question the status quo, because as we all agree, it's unhealthy in many aspects. It's actually easier as we think and could be quite enjoyable.

Only in our heads we believe, that we have to hold on to endless rules otherwise chaos would brake down on us! Why don't we try it out and see what happens? Maybe something bigger and better than we could ever imagine would occur, who knows? Why can't we accept this radical idea as an inspiration for creating new sounds? I'm actually fed up from the established music in many ways and I'm thankful, when someone has the courage to make suggestions for a new approach to it. Those who doesn't get this, should keep on living in an obsolete world, full of rules and structures. The rest of us will be enjoying sound in pure freedom and making sensual experiences in soundscapes in a bigger world beyond boxes, which is something refreshingly thrilling and exciting. Maybe mainstream listeners will understand this in the future. We've already started with it now because we would be bored otherwise.

Thank you for the conversation, I pick up WIRE whenever I can; thank you to Jake Sorgen for sending me here today. Especially to J.C. Broyles: thank you for your comment of 15/01/2021.

How do you get something to sound like a Maurice Ravel orchestral piece? First (in this case anyway) you need to be a genius, then you need to write it down so it can get realized by traditionally trained, musically literate players.

How do you get something to sound like a Cecil Taylor solo set, typically the better part of an hour or more of unparalleled piano music? Be a genius (again, in this case) and devote the hours of your life to improvising on your instrument as more than a calling - a lifestyle.

Did Ravel improvise? Probably. Did Cecil study classical. Definitely.

Both paths work wonders, and dismissing either is not a good idea.

This is embarrassing and serves no purpose.

I’m tired of ignorant people having a soapbox to spout their opinions, and in this case it still doesn’t matter to me that they for some reason acknowledge their ignorance.

The only reason we can experience a Shakespeare play or a Mozart symphony is because they were written down.

I also don’t understand why you make such impassioned statements as “this is the worst thing to happen to X” when you don’t have any real knowledge about X. I think your lack of curiosity is a real deficit to your creative lives, and if I were you I would be ashamed at how stupid this is, now forever immortalized on the internet.

Maybe you should stick to talking about electronic music although I’m of the opinion that you might consider learning about music notation and theory before you “compose” another note. It would be helpful.

The reaction to this article has been absurdly over-the-top... and I bet these electronic musicians have been on the receiving end of this their whole musical lives. Classical music is toweringly insecure.

I enjoyed this actually. I think challenging the idea of a score is interesting and for those that are getting upset that you are trashing hundreds of years of history by questioning the relevance of scores ? I don't think anyone is suggesting burning all scores, just that the idea of music education is based usually on Western notation and it certainly has limitations if not down right damaging to the development of musical ideas - if you can't write it you can't play it doesn't make any sense and I happily binned of A-level music to pursue my own methods of composing. Having known Mark for a while he is provocative in order to get you thinking which I enjoy. I think detractors here miss a trick. Historically scoring is the only way of recording music. Now we have DAWs running on computers and could record meta data along with scores for more accurate / possibly flexible interpretations I believe a lot of research is happening in this field. Cage and composers like Feldman explored other graphical notations and work in this field continues. graphical scores had ideas outside traditional notation often in close reference to timbre and time but also signals for improvisation, sound fx and treatments. Sibelius (still) is hard to use off the grid and there is no "standard" for extra musical references - I challenge anyone here to use a scoring program outside its standard parameters of western classical notation. It is very hard indeed yet composers have to work within these limitations of time and pitch in order to transcribe their ideas and enable musicians to play them. What if we could develop a new system ? Which is far easier to work with for composers working off the grid and with a far wider sonic pallette - Just because it has been done for 100s of years doesn't make it the best. Ironically the Max Msp computing environment that Mark and Ryan use I would argue is a type of score - you set the parameters of time, timbre and events (notation). Yes there is no timeline but interestingly the wires and boxes of Max look alot like the instructions of alchemists's tranformations 100s of years ago. Essentially a set of processors and instructions to make gold from lead, which is what we do when we make music.

hold up, all - they are literally wearing beards *and* parkas

You probably should have interviewed someone who knows what they are talking about. I don’t know who either of these guys are but they sound silly and pretty ignorant about the topic.

@Cagey, this is totally on point, but what you wrote in a short blurb has more depth and nuance than what these two dilletantes had to say in a feature article in the wire.

they seem more frustrated with what wishart described as the "lattice" - notation is beautiful for the context(s) from which it evolved - we're in a new context, go do something about it

'The reaction to this article has been absurdly over-the-top...' No, a lot of us don't appreciate people saying silly things about subjects they know nothing about.

'...and I bet these electronic musicians have been on the receiving end of this their whole musical lives.' - Aw, poor things, they seem to be doing OK....

'Classical music is toweringly insecure.' Almost all musicians of any genre are insecure, and saying something as bizarre, unprovable and nonsensical as 'the musical score is the worst thing in musical history' sounds pretty off the charts in terms of insecurity.

'I think challenging the idea of a score is interesting and for those that are getting upset that you are trashing hundreds of years of history by questioning the relevance of scores.' Questioning the 'relevance' of scores?? The *relevance* is self evident from the widespread use of notation over the last 1000 years or so. Most intelligent, self aware creators who use scores *already do this*. They constantly challenge and question the limitations and illogicalities of notation, get exasperated with those limitations, push against them, while also marvelling at the ingenuity of this form of documentation that has grown and evolved filtered through thousands of different minds, and many use a huge variety of approaches that push scoring to new limits. Some people fetishise the idea and visual appearance of the score itself, others just use it as a minimal perfunctory means to an end, some reject it all together, some use a form of scoring without knowing (the displays and graphic representations of DAWs are kinds of scores after all), some use the score as a direct vector in creating music, some hear the music aurally first then score it later, some improvise freely and create a generative and open diagrammatic representation of that, some use the features of notation to as scaffolding for working out intricate mathematical-musical structures - it's up to the imagination and preferences of the user. There are scores of all kinds, from obscure tablature to grids and graphs, to familiar 8th notes and quarter notes etc., to cartoons, to abstract shapes. Some jettison sound altogether and use scores as visual artworks. Some just don't use scores at all and play and compose completely aurally, and that's great! Everyone can do what they want: if only some folks wouldn't try to 'decide' on everyone else's behalf what other creative people should and shouldn't do, particularly when they know almost zero about the area being challenged. Also, don't assume that people who use notation don't constantly question and challenge their practice, attitudes and assumptions in this regard. The score can be amazing, it can also be completey useless and impede the creative process. What is beyond doubt though is that without it we would have no record of the last 1000 years of priceless musical literature across many cultures.

So much rage here, but I'm fully with Mark + Rian.. There's much more to music than linear scores afford, and followers of Guido de Arezzo have a harder time seeing that. Also, time for music theorists to confront their issues around class as well as white supremacy

What in the world made their conversation even worth publishing?

Quite some readers of this magazine could agree on the idea that the traditional music score can be a constraint or not necessary for some types of contemporary musical practices. However, is important to not underestimate how important the score has been to preserve music.One could see it as proto music recording and a playback technology. It is the arrogant tone of such a bold statement , while proudly saying I'm not an expert on what im talking about, that made people upset. In fact I find the comments more fun and more interesting than the actual manspreading chat between father and son

"The world's greatest music magazine since 1982"

apparently the best they could do is an interview that amounts to

"wow the written score is like so weird and I don't understand it, really it's the worst shit ever, we should just be playing music organically"
*Opens up his DAW and starts programming quantized beats*

What a load of crap! So post-modern that it hurts! Incredible that you publish it! Are you becoming a hipster magazine? I will think very hard before I renew my subscription...

I agree with these gentlemen. For example, I don't have a clue about maths. It's total nonsense to me. I think those mathematicians should just go and make something worthwhile and not be in this abstract realm theorising. Because I simply don't get maths!

I sense a lot of jealousy in-between the lines

Bb7M A/Bb Gdim7 Am7
e|-5---------------5-------0-----------------------15~-----------|
B|-6-------6-------5-------2-------8-----------15~---------------|
G|-7-----------5---6-------3-------9-------14~-------------------|
D|-8---------------8-------5-------10----------------------------|
A|---------------------------------12----------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------------------------------|
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

to all the haters in the comments section, u should enjoy this text just as you enjoy music, i don't give a pickle if they know what they're talking about, if chess or feldman, they're making music - nice conversation, some things just simply cannot be put in words

Defund the Albert Hall.

F*** the Proms.

No freestylin, no peace.

Pauses between movements are violence.

I suggest people forget about these moronic speakers and check out graphic music notation and the work of John Cage. It is an entirely different world and an amazingly beautiful one. It helps if you already know how to read music. AND this:
Computer, Graphic, and Traditional Systems: A Theoretical Study of Music Notation, by Richard Wood Massi Doctor of Philosophy in Music University of California, San Diego. 1993

This is awful. The Wire gravitates towards this bullshit all the time. Please write about music.

I hope all the funding bodies these chancers have fleeced over the years are reading these comments.