Green
paper cover with title The Scores Project and description of its
contents along with editor and artist names

The Scores Project: Essays on Experimental Notation in Music, Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950 - 1975

2025

Edited by Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren and John Hicks

Editor's note: A huge omnibus of scores that I’m particularly interested in as I’ve been performing more often with them myself through my own evolving chicken scratch, and I’ve previously neglected digging deeply into these pioneers of modern event and performance scores.

A compilation of mid-20th century scores for music, art and other performances along with commentaries by scholars

Hosted at Internet Archive

CC BY-NC 4.0

In the mid-twentieth century, individuals across visual art, music, poetry, theater, and dance began using experimental scores, revolutionizing artistic practice and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. Featuring over two thousand images and audiovisual materials, The Scores Project is a unique digital publication that provides a comprehensive view of this historical moment through select experimental scores by George Brecht, Sylvano Bussotti, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low, Benjamin Patterson, Yvonne Rainer, Mieko Shiomi, and La Monte Young, as well as commentaries from an interdisciplinary team of scholars, rekindling a sense of wonder at this innovative and complex period in art history.

Published to accompany the digital edition, this print book includes the introduction, complete commentaries, and a selection of images from the online publication. URLs are provided throughout— in captions and chapter openers—to encourage readers to engage with the online edition. To view the project in its entirety, please visit getty.edu/ publications/scores/.

This publication was created using Quire™, a multiformat publishing tool from Getty.

The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at getty.edu/publications/scores/ and includes video, audio, and zoomable illustrations. Free PDF and EPUB downloads of the book are also available.

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. All images are reproduced with the permission of the rights holders acknowledged in captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY- NC license covering the rest of this publication. These images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without consent from the owners, who reserve all rights.

First edition 2025

Any revisions or corrections made to this publication after the first edition date will be listed in detail in the project repository at https:// github.com/thegetty/scores. The revisions branch of the project repository, when present, will show any changes currently under consideration but not yet published here.

Published by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Getty Publications
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500
Los Angeles, California 90049-1682
getty.edu/publications/

Adriana Romero, Project Editor
Lisa Marietta, Manuscript Editor
Greg Albers, Digital Publications Manager
Andrew LeClair and E Roon Kang, Design
Molly McGeehan, Production
Karen Ehrmann and Pauline Lopez, Image and Rights Acquisition
Jenny Park and Alex Hallenbeck, Digital Assistants

Distributed in the United States and Canada by the University of Chicago Press

Distributed outside the United States and Canada by Yale University Press, London

Type composed in U001

Printed in China

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gallope, Michael, editor. | Harren, Natilee, editor. | Hicks, John
(John Andrew), editor. | Getty Research Institute, issuing body.
Title: The scores project : essays on experimental notation in music, art, poetry, and dance, 1950–1975 / edited by Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, and John Hicks.
Description: Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, [2025] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A collection of essays examining experimental scores and source documents from the postwar avant-gardes, interpreted by experts on art, music, dance, and poetry”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024032747 | ISBN 9781606069332 (paperback) | ISBN 9781606069356 (pdf) | ISBN 9781606069349 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—History—20th century. | Arts—Experimental methods—History—20th century. | Performance art—History—20th century. | Musical notation—History—20th century. | Movement notation—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC NX458 .S37 2025 | DDC 700/.41109045—dc23/ eng/20240926 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2024032747

Every effort has been made to contact the owners and photographers of illustrations reproduced here whose names do not appear in the captions. Photographs and videos of items in the holdings of the Getty Research Institute are courtesy the Research Institute. Anyone having further information concerning copyright holders is asked to contact Getty Publications so this information can be included in future printings. This publication was peer reviewed through a single-masked process in which the reviewers remained anonymous.