Virginia Anderson

chanted (laid out proportionately to the delivery). It concludes with instruc-

tions for the canonic presentation of the text, its coordination with the tap-
ping, and provisions for ending.

the second approach: the idea transmission model

and its discontents
As can be seen above, an alternative notation is largely defined by what the per-
former does with it. Among others, Jean-Jacques Nattiez and Nelson Goodman
have used linguistic models to outline the transmission of a musical idea from
composer through performer to listener. Nattiez delineated a series of inter-
connected acts of “poesis” (making) and “esthesis” (taking in) on a “trace” (the
score) (1990, 12).6 Both poesis and esthesis are active as to decision-making and
critical faculties; indeed, Nattiez calls them the “poietic process” and “esthesic
process” to highlight their activity. Nattiez omits the performer entirely in his
first example. Somewhat later, he gives the performer a kind of ancillary, out-
side role in the process. [Fig. 1]

Poietic process—>Score—>Musical result<—Esthesic process

Interpretation (performance)

Fig. 1

This model sidelines the performer too much to describe transmission of

Romantic music, let alone music in indeterminate notation. It has no sense
of esthesis, of taking in, by the performer, either from the score or from the
composer. Nattiez’s model makes sense only in the strictest total serialism in
which the performer complies literally and selflessly with the score. Performers
make poietic, even “compositional,” contributions to the demands of text and
graphic notation, as they also do to cadenzas, jazz solos over changes, and other
indeterminate music. A better model for most music would feature a chain of
poietic and esthesic processes: [Fig. 2]

Composing process (poietic)

Score (trace of composing process)

Performing process (esthesic and poietic)

Musical result (trace of performing process)

Listening process (esthesic, and in the case of analysis or criticism, poietic)

Fig. 2

6 Nattiez adapted this model from Jean Molino and from Paul Valéry (1945), “Leçon inaugurale du cours
de poétique au Collège de France,” Variétés V (Paris: Gallimard), 297–322. Roman Jakobson used the
postal analogy of ‘addresser’, ‘message’, and ‘addressee’ (Nattiez 1990, 18).

134

Figure 1. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, chart of transmission of musical process (1990, 73).

Figure 2. A better model of transmission.