Score reading and retention of twentieth-century compositions : effects of conventional notation, graphic notation, and improvisation on aural perception
This study was an investigation of the use of a nontraditional visual aid, graphic notation, in the aural perception of 20th-century music. Tests on score reading and retention were administered to fourth graders, eighth graders, and college non-music majors. Subjects, grouped according to different methods of presentation, (l) listened while viewing conventional scores, (2) listened while viewing graphic scores, and (3) participated in improvisatory activities using graphic techniques and then listened while viewing graphic scores. Experimenter-constructed graphic scores of excerpts from three 20th-century woodwind quintets by Hindemith, Chavez, and Schuller, were contrasted with conventional scores of the same works. Pitch was represented on the vertical axis, time on the horizontal axis; a different color was used for each instrument
