Representing Performance in Ethnomusicological Studies

Abstract

Back in the 1970s a number of ethnomusicologists started to elaborate a theoretical reflection on performance as a central issue in the study of music making. This forced them to develop other ways of visualizing music for their analytical purposes. This article deals with how performance has been represented in ethnomusicological studies. I shall discuss how the graphic rendition of a sound recording is simply the mirror of what a scholar perceives, or the consequence of his/her will to emphasise a specific aspect, mediated through the possibilities offered by (and the limits of) the Western semiographic system. After presenting a series of examples on how various scholars chose to graphically visualize musical performance, this paper shows how the contemplation of the strategies used to visualize performance in ethnomusicological studies can be a fruitful way of reflecting upon various topics, namely 1) the impassable limits of score transcription for understanding music as a performative phenomenon; 2) the analysis of the graphic solutions adopted by the ethnomusicologist as a way to better understand their idea of what the performance is; 3) the role played by technology in promoting new analytical approaches and methodologies; 4) analysis in ethnomusicology as an “artisanal process”.