Introduction: Notation and/as Material Culture

Abstract

This introduction outlines the aims and themes of this volume. We discuss the central position of notation in the foundations of music scholarship as well as the various moves towards disciplinary innovation since the late twentieth century that have challenged it. We argue that the study of notation as material culture, understood in a broad sense in the wake of recent arguments for a general ‘material turn’, provides a fruitful way to attend to musical practices of reading and writing while avoiding a traditional work-based ideology. We connect this materialist approach to notation to recent developments in the study of musical instruments while also identifying precursors in the study of early music as well as the ethnomusicological study of non-western forms of notation. We conclude by outlining four important themes in the study of notation as material culture that also form the four parts of the volume: epistemology, embodiment, social relations, and technology.