The Origins of the Formation of Graphic Notation in John Cage’s Works

The present study surveys the origins of the formation of Graphic Notation in John Cage’s works, the avant-garde composer of the twentieth century, and the reasons for the replacement of the visual and Prosy aspects instead of the traditional notation. This changes of the music notation system begin in his works from the early 1950 and his landmark is in the late 1960 and in his “Song Book”. Although, Cage’s famous composition of “Silence” or “4′33″ for any Instrument or Combination of Instruments”, is The beginning of the very important changes in his music and notation. In his notation methods, we can distinguish two major aspects: the first aspect, there is still the traditional notation, such as the staff, beat, time and duration, but, he has changed it in his notation methods, so, a performer is able to decide on some parts and to perform his interpretation of the scores. But, in the second aspects, started with time delay to his early notation, he relinquish all methods of the traditional notation and replace the picture or text elements instead of them. In this aspect, a performer interprets the totality of the scores.
The reasons of the present research is his attention to the contemporary and previous artists in the field of Graphic Notation and collect them in “Notation”, and his reference to the impact of the painters, poets and artists in the formation of his music in the collection of his writings and lectures. The purpose is to clarify the chronological trend of this impact and the achievement to the reasons of his tendency to the new ideas of his contemporary and previous movements. This research uses two methodes: Chronological and Descriptive-Analytic methodes, based on library resources, especially, reference to the writings and the remainder interviews of Cage. The chronological trend depicts on Cage’s influence of Futurism, Dada, and especially, Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto, called ” Destruction of Syntax- Imagination without strings-Words-in-Freedom” and his poetry book ,“Zang Tumb Tumb”, and the ideas raised by Russolo in his manifesto “The Art of Noises”, as well as, Mallarmé’s Concrete Poetry , Apollinaire’s ideas in Visual Poetry, the experiences of Sonia Delaunay and Blaise Cendrars, and his collaboration with Fluxus movement that tried to eliminate the boundaries between the arts.
The reasons for these tendency was the efforts to achieve the expressive manners proportional to his new musical ideas that its motivations hide in Futurism movement and the changes of the modern music. So, the changes of his notation can be divided into two periods: the first period represents the visual expression that reflected in the attitude of Mallarmé and Marinetti and includes the collection of the scores that have distorted graphically in order to convey the feelings. The second period, in addition to complete the first period, declares the concept of the Simultaneity in the Visual Poetry that influenced by the attitude of Apollinaire, and tries to reflect the concept of the music in his visual manifesto.