I was a composer for five years before I had any formal musical training in harmony, rhythm, formal structure, orchestration, and notation. From 1970-75 I blissfully created works without “knowing” what I was doing, and in one case, created an orchestral piece by writing out the individual instrumental parts before the score, which, trust me, is about as ass backwards as it gets when it comes to the practicalities of music composition. There was something, though, about these early years of being unfettered by rules and strictures that fed my sense of freedom and wonder at not just the sound of music, but also the way in which music notation could be represented on paper. Early on it became clear to me that I could do whatever I wanted with notation as long as the symbols and the way I placed them upon the page possessed an intrinsic clarity and logic that was easily understood by the performers. At about the same time that I was creating my ass backwards orchestral piece, I discovered the work of the composer George Crumb, whose music not only sounded, but looked otherworldly as well. The lovely thing about a Crumb score was that the staves that turned into spirals and circles and crucifixes did not exist as gimmickry, but clearly aided the performers in capturing the theatricality or drama of a given moment in sound in a way that would not likely be achieved by any other notational means. To me, conventional notation already possesses visual beauty , but the distance beyond convention that Crumb and many others, including myself, have taken it, has often raised the musical score page to the level of visual art. For example, in 1988, ten pages from my piece In The Throat of River Mornings were displayed at the 101 Wooster Gallery in Soho in New York City as part of the gallery’s Hear Art Exhibition.

In 1976 I began using a Pentel mechanical pencil with HB lead for all my scores, making the switch from using black ink on vellum prior to that, a process that required a razor blade to fix errors. I even used a Music Writer music typewriter for some scores in those early years. But, in 1987, I began creating my scores completely from scratch, meaning that a score page begins as a blank white canvas and every musical symbol that goes onto the page is done by hand, including the staff lines. To be clear, I am not talking about freehand. Everything is created by using music and lettering templates, rulers, and in some cases, a compass and other drafting tools. Reproduced below are seven pages from my latest work, I Wonder If This Ground Has Anything to Say (A Treaty Illumination). The piece itself is an illumination of the existence of Treaties and Agreements made between the White Europeans/U.S.Government and the Indigenous Nations from 1613 to the present day. 

The title page appears conventional and is, though bear in mind this page began in blank form. Pages 43-46 form the end of a section defining Treaties in canonical form. The notation is made up of graphic representations of crisp and chittering improvised vocal sounds, with speakers intoning above them definitions of the word treaty. On pages 45-46 the band comes together in a loud tutti iteration of this vocal technique that fades into two connected circles where soft elided vocal sounds are made before the band returns to the crisp chittering sounds in an intense three second crescendo that leads into the next section. Pages 239-240 show a subtractive factual statement spoken by the seven band members where, when each band member finishes their words, they begin making low half whistley wind sounds as depicted by the wispy undulating graphic lines. There is a crescendo to the top of page 240 and then a long diminuendo to the end of the page.

While some may argue that the musical sounds depicted on these pages could have been made using more conventional notation, it has been my experience that performers do respond differently and more freely to graphic notation, especially when it is clearly delineated and exists as part of a larger dialogue or story, as is the case in these examples from I Wonder If This Ground Has Anything to Say (A Treaty Illumination). This piece will be premiered by the great NYC band thingNY on October 16, 2025 at Merkin Hall in New York City.

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Jerome Kitzke’s music is reproduced by permission of Peer International Corporation., publisher and copyright holder.