ABSTRACT
Musical notation is so embedded into Western classical modes of thinking about composing and pedagogies that sometimes it can be hard to disentangle thinking about the one from the other. So deep-rooted are some ways of thinking about staff notation that in everyday English language usage, “to write a piece of music” is considered as being isomorphic with composing. In this interlude, musical notation, specifically Western classical staff notation, is problematized, and ramifications of challenging its primacy are outlined and discussed. This clearly has issues not only for all non-Western classical musics, but also for the ways in which composing is taught and learned in educational settings. Axiomatically linking two separate art forms, the visual and the sonic, is questioned, and the notion of signature pedagogies in this regard is outlined. In this interlude, educators working with composing music are invited to rethink their professional practices and ask themselves difficult questions concerning not only what they do, but also why they act in the ways that they do.
