Material Cultures of Music Notation (Music and Material Culture)

Material Cultures of Music Notation brings together a collection of essays that explore a fundamental question in the current landscape of musicology: how can writing and reading music be understood as concrete, material practices in a wider cultural context? Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from musicology, media studies, performance studies, and more, the chapters in this volume offer a wide array of new perspectives that foreground the materiality of music notation. From digital scores to the transmission of manuscripts in the Middle Ages, the volume deliberately disrupts boundaries of discipline, historical period, genre, and tradition, by approaching notation's materiality through four key interrelated themes: knowledge, the body, social relations, and technology. Together, the chapters capture vital new work in an essential emerging area of scholarship.

Floris Schuiling is Assistant Professor at Utrecht University. His areas of expertise are modern and contemporary music in the Netherlands, especially improvised and experimental music, and the role of technology and material culture in musical creativity,with a focus on performance practices.

Emily Payne is Lecturer in Music at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include performance studies (particularly of post-war music), creativity, collaboration, embodiment, and materiality.