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About

Artists working in and across the fields of visual art, music, poetry, theater, and dance at midcentury began to use experimental scores in ways that revolutionized artistic practice and opened up new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration. Their experimental practices—associated with the neo-avant-garde, neo-Dadaism, intermedia, Fluxus, and postmodernism—exploded in notoriety during the 1960s in locales from New York to Europe, East Asia, and Latin America, becoming foundational to global trends in contemporary art and performance. The Scores Project is a unique digital publication that provides a comprehensive view of this historical moment through a series of experimental scores and complete edition of the groundbreaking An Anthology of Chance Operations (1963). The featured scores by John Cage, George Brecht, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low, Benjamin Patterson, Yvonne Rainer, Mieko Shiomi, David Tudor, and La Monte Young include expert commentaries from an interdisciplinary team of scholars and are accompanied by a digitized archive of over 2,000 ephemera and audiovisual materials. Ambitious, provocative, and playful, The Scores Project fosters a renewed sense of wonder at this innovative and historically complex moment in the history of art.

Each chapter includes a Score, Commentary, Playback, and Archive section. The Score section showcases high-resolution images of the featured notation. The Commentary section includes a scholarly essay explaining the score’s original context and describes its key elements. The Playback section contains recordings of the score’s performance in audio, video, and animated formats, including both historical realizations and contemporary interpretations. The Archive section is a curated trove of hundreds of relevant primary materials, including letters, newspaper clippings, sketches, photographs, printed ephemera, and more. Featured images invite readers to dive directly into some of the most fascinating moments of these digitized materials. Finally, the Object Index allows users to browse and sort items from across all chapters, facilitating new discovery.

Citation Information

Chicago

Gallope, Michael, Natilee Harren, and John Hicks. The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music, Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025. https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/.

MLA

Gallope, Michael, et al. The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music, Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975. Getty Research Institute, 2025, https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/. Accessed DD Mon. YYYY.

Permanent URL

https://www.getty.edu/publications/scores/

Revision History

Any revisions or corrections made to this publication after the first edition date will be listed here and in the project repository at github.com/thegetty/scores/, where a more detailed version history is available. The revisions branch of the project repository, when present, will show any changes currently under consideration but not yet published here.

May 6, 2025

  • First edition

May 27, 2025

  • Minor text corrections

  • PDF accessibility improvements

Other Formats

Copyright

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© 2025 J. Paul Getty Trust

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. 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.
The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. 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.

Published by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
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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

Type composed in U001

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 or in the illustration credits at the back of this book. 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.

Splash Page Image Captions

Benjamin Patterson (American, 1934–2016). Duo for Voice and a String Instrument, 1961. Getty Research Institute, Jean Brown Papers, 890164, box 39, folder 32. © The Estate of Benjamin Patterson.

Benjamin Patterson (American, 1934–2016). Handwritten score of Paper Piece in English on paper, 1960. Getty Research Institute, Jean Brown Papers, 890164, box 39, folder 33. © The Estate of Benjamin Patterson.

Benjamin Patterson (American, 1934–2016). “Situations” for 3 Pianos, 1960. Getty Research Institute, Jean Brown Papers, 890164, box 39, folder 32. © The Estate of Benjamin Patterson.

Yvonne Rainer (American, b. 1934). Graphic scores related to Trio B, from The Mind Is a Muscle, ca. 1966–68. Getty Research Institute, Yvonne Rainer Papers, 2006.M.24, box 22, folder 3. Used with Permission. © Yvonne Rainer.

Yvonne Rainer (American, b. 1934). Notebook sketches related to We Shall Run, ca. 1963. Getty Research Institute, Yvonne Rainer Papers, 2006.M.24, box 1, folder 5. Used with Permission. © Yvonne Rainer.

Yvonne Rainer (American, b. 1934). Notebook page related to Watering Place, ca. 1960. Getty Research Institute, Yvonne Rainer Papers, 2006.M.24, box 1, folder 2. Used with Permission. © Yvonne Rainer.

Yvonne Rainer (American, b. 1934). Notes related to Three Satie Spoons, The Bells, and Ordinary Dance, 1961–62. Getty Research Institute, Yvonne Rainer Papers, 2006.M.24, box 30, folder 1. Used with Permission. © Yvonne Rainer.

Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006). Drawing on the handwritten draft of the program for Routine, 1973. Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 24, folder 9.

Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006). Throat and Cough Piece, 1957–58. Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 4, folder 13.

Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006). Sketches for illustrations for the program for Loss, ca. 1973. Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 20, folder 13.

Allan Kaprow (American, 1927–2006). Shooting script for 16mm film of Comfort Zones, June 1975. Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow Papers, 980063, box 26, folder 7.

Morton Feldman (American, 1926–87). Intersection 3 with a dedication to David Tudor, 1953. Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 9, folder 1. Intersection 3 by Morton Feldman © 1962 by C.F. Peters Corporation, New York. Permission by C.F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved.

Morton Feldman (American, 1926–87). Intersection +, 1953. Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 9, folder 25. Permission by C.F. Peters Corporation. All rights reserved.

David Tudor’s copy of John Cage’s Solo for Piano from Concert for Piano and Orchestra, 1957–58. Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 176, folders 1, 2. Edition Peters.

Sylvano Bussotti (Italian, 1931–2021). Miscellaneous scores by Sylvano Bussotti sent to David Tudor, early 1960s. Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 51, folder 8. Used by permission of Hal Leonard.