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Creator
Index of New Musical Notation
Call number
JPB 12-07
Physical description
9.2 linear feet (18 boxes)
Preferred Citation

Index of New Musical Notation records, Music Division, The New York Public Library.

Repository
Music Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

The Index of New Musical Notation was a research project formed in 1971 in New York City by music editor and writer Kurt Stone to bring unity and standards to modern music notation. The Index developed out of a committee at the Music Library Association and was housed and administered by the Music Division at the Library of the Performing Arts, New York Public Library. The records contain office files and materials relating to the three main projects of the Index, the original notation indexing project, its sponsorship of the International Conference on New Musical Notation in Ghent, and the Questionnaire on New Musical Notation. The collection as a whole demonstrates the development of methods for researching, categorizing, and establishing a more universal lexicon of musical notation.

Biographical/historical information

The Index of New Musical Notation was a research project formed in 1971 in New York City by music editor and writer Kurt Stone to bring unity and standards to modern music notation. The Index developed out of a committee at the Music Library Association and was housed and administered by the Music Division at the Library of Performing Arts, New York Public Library. The project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, later supplemented by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

The Index was a three year project. In addition to Stone, who was the project's director, Gerald Warfield, a composer and notation specialist, was hired as associate director. The project intended to analyze and index musical scores to determine the frequency of use of specific notation devices for musical effects beyond traditional notation. This project would analyze scores within the Library, as well as solicit additional obscure or unpublished material not held the Library, and compile the frequency of notation use on worksheets and cross reference on index cards. These cards were initially intended to be duplicated and published. As the project developed, it became clear that publishing the results in a book would result in greater dissemination of the project's findings.

The project's scope broadened to co-sponsor a conference with the University of Ghent in 1974, called the International Conference on New Musical Notation, where eighty professional musicians, composers, music editors, and musicologists from seventeen countries analyzed, discussed, and voted on over four hundred selected notation signs. In addition to the conference, the project sent out a "Questionnaire on New Musical Notation" and received over two hundred responses. Proceedings from the conference and questionnaire were initially published in Interface and Perspectives of New Music and the final results were compiled into the book Music notation in the twentieth century: A practical guidebook, that was published in 1980. The project officially disbanded in 1975.

Scope and arrangement

The records of the Index of New Musical Notation contain office files and materials relating to the three main projects of the Index, the original notation indexing project, the International Conference on New Musical Notation in Ghent, and the Questionnaire on New Musical Notation. The collection as a whole demonstrates the development of methods for researching, categorizing, and establishing a more universal lexicon of musical notation.

The office files are arranged in alphabetical order by file title and include the files of both director Kurt Stone and associate director Gerald Warfield. Stone's files primarily contain correspondence, in both English and German, regarding the acquisition of new scores, responses to letters of inquiry, and facilitating arrangements for the conference and the questionnaire. Notable correspondents include Samuel Adler, Earle Brown, Marc-Antonio Consoli, David Cope, Richard Bunger Evans, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Erhard Karkoschka, and Gardner Read. Stone attended the International Symposium on the Problems of New Musical Notation organized by the Istituto Italo-Latino Americano in Rome in 1972 and the file on the symposium holds correspondence and Stone's remarks at the event. Warfield's files contain correspondence with composers and notation specialists and files on various projects. Notable correspondents consist of Barney Childs, David Cope, Ben Johnston, and Roger Reynolds. Both Stone and Warfield's correspondence has letters they forwarded to the other for attention. Writings contain drafts of Stone's paper "Standardization of New Musical Notation," Warfield's paper "The Notation of Harmonics for Bowed String Instruments," as well as clippings of published articles about the Index. Writings by others include annotated typescripts of Erhard Karkoschka's Notation in New Music and typescripts of essays by Trygve Nordwall. The 1974-1975 ledger is interleaved with receipts, bills, and correspondence.

The projects and events files are arranged alphabetically by project. Materials on the International Conference on New Musical Notation consists of files on attendees and ballot sheets used in group sessions to vote on notation standards. Conference literature include handouts, schedules, group session information, and copies of the opening remarks. Notation project files have files on concepts, instrumental techniques, and symbols, index cards for various scores that cross reference types of notation, and worksheets analyzing specific compositions. The types of notation file include 'workings out' of notational problems as Warfield encountered them. The files of the Questionnaire of New Musical Notation contain a general file of grading criteria and correspondence, response cards sent to potential participants requesting their participation, and tabulation sheets. Completed questionnaires are also present. Questionnaires from American participants, in English, are numbered 1-193, and there is a separate run of unnumbered questionnaires completed by foreign participants in English, German, and French.

Arrangement

The records are arranged under two headings: Office Files and Projects and Events.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Unknown

Processing information

Compiled by Susan Malsbury.

Material was refoldered as needed and reboxed. Original folder titles were retained when apparent.

Using the collection

Location

Music Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.