ABSTRACT
Music continued to convey its alternative messages and holy men were obliged to admonish themselves before God for being seduced by the 'mere sensuous quality' of musical sounds. For the scribe, meaning appears to result as the product of a combinatorial process; broadly speaking, various words with more or less clearly defined reference or function are strung in a linear combination to form sentences, paragraphs which have a resultant clearly specified meaning. Undoubtedly, musical notation, like 'speech-notation', originated as a mnemonic device for already well-established musical practice but, like writing, it quickly grew to dominate that musical practice. The verbal or musical praxis is analysed into constituent elements which are notated, and the notation combined to form the meaningful or characteristic units of verbal or musical praxis. The electronic constructivist merely equates the syntax of his own musical action with some theoretical syntax of response, demanded of the listener.
