Collection Abstract:
This collection aims to provide an examination of graphic notation through the lens of environmental thought, bringing together scholars working across musicology, music theory, composition, performance studies, and the environmental humanities. By examining graphic notation as a site where visual art, ecological imagination, and musical practice converge, the volume will illuminate how composers and performers have used the score itself to rethink the relationship between music, environment, and listening.
Purpose:
Over the past several decades, scholars working in ecomusicology have demonstrated the many ways music engages with environmental thought, ecological awareness, and place-based listening. At the same time, composers since the mid-twentieth century have increasingly turned toward graphic musical notation, scores that function as visual fields rather than fixed symbolic instructions. Yet the intersection between graphic notation and ecological thinking remains understudied.
This edited volume seeks to explore how graphic notation participates in environmental thought, ecological aesthetics, and sonic relationships to landscape, space, and environment. From the experimental scores of John Cage and the visual-sonic landscapes of R. Murray Schafer to contemporary environmentally oriented score practices, graphic notation has frequently blurred boundaries between visual art, sound, environment, and performer interpretation. In some of these works graphic processes translate environmental structures into musical form; elsewhere, composers use cartographic diagrams, ecological data, natural processes, or landscape imagery as compositional materials.
The goal of this collection is to bring together musicologists, theorists, performers, composers, and scholars from related disciplines (art history, environmental humanities, sound studies, media studies) to examine how graphic notation mediates relationships between music and environment.
We welcome historically grounded studies as well as theoretically informed analyses and practice-based perspectives.
Possible Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Historical Case Studies
§ Graphic notation in works by composers such as John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, George Crumb, Earle Brown, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Annea Lockwood, et alia.
§ Environmental imagery and score design in graphic works of the post-1945 avant-garde
§ Landscape, cartography, or geological imagery in graphic scores
Ecological Aesthetics
§ Graphic notation as a representation of ecological systems
§ Environmental processes translated into visual musical structures
§ Graphic scores and the aesthetics of indeterminacy
Sound, Space, and Environment
§ Graphic notation and soundscape composition
§ Notation and spatial listening practices
§ Environmental listening and score interpretation
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
§ Graphic notation as visual art
§ Ecocritical readings of experimental scores
§ Graphic notation in relation to environmental art and land art
Performance and Practice
§ Performer interpretation and ecological listening
§ Improvisation, indeterminacy, and environmental responsiveness
§ Pedagogical approaches to environmentally oriented graphic notation
Contemporary and Global Perspectives
§ Twenty-first-century graphic scores engaging climate change, ecology, or environmental activism
§ Graphic notation in non-Western or global experimental traditions
§ Digital or data-driven ecological graphic notation
Submission Guidelines
A 350–500 word abstract
A brief bio (100–150 words)
Institutional affiliation (if applicable)
Send submissions to: scoresoftheearth@gmail.com
Abstract Deadline: July 1, 2026
Notification of Acceptance: August 1, 2026
Chapter Draft for Editorial Feedback: November 1, 2026
Full Chapter Length: 5,000–6,000 words (including notes and bibliography) and follow Chicago Manual of Style (notes and bibliography).