Contemporary Music Notation for the Flute: A Unified Guide to Notational Symbols for Composers and Performers

David Cope stated: “There are two basic approaches to the study of New Music Notation: codification and comprehension […] what really needs to be done is not to keep listing the diverse ways each composer symbolizes his music or create substantially new and negating systems of notation, but to concentrate on codifying one way for future composers to symbolize their music.”[1] In an attempt to limit the inconsistency and complexity characterizing contemporary notation idiomatic to the flute, this paper is the first to adopt Cope’s statement and ultimately apply it in relation to the notation of non-standard extended flute techniques. Following thorough examination of significant pre-existing literature pertaining to new music instrumental notation as well as comprehensive guides to contemporary flute notation, and the studying of over thirty scores for solo flute and flute ensemble, this work presents the various symbols of extended techniques employed in works since before the twentieth century, and suggests one-way to symbolize key clicks, pizzicato, tongue ram, singing and playing, speaking and playing, and aeolian sound. The final selection of symbols in this study is based upon criteria directly related to their visual effectiveness in communicating the function of the extended technique they represent. Any symbol that resembles another preceding symbol, or is too abstract, has been rejected, and symbols that are a logical extension from traditional notation and immediately communicate the action a flutist should take to successfully produce the technique, has been retained. [1] David Cope, New Music Notation (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Pub, 1976), xi.