The third edition of Graphème: a series of graphic and experimental music scores by composers from a variety of backgrounds and experience.

Each composer offers a rigorous conceptual framework and provides an often sensual dialog between composer, performer, sound and space in spirit of collaborative creativity.

The pieces here represent imaginative and inventive ways to notate a musical vision, making use of innovative approaches – photographic representation, geometric and cartographic schema and various degrees of indetermination and precision – as well as extending more traditional ideas of notation, to expand on expressive possibilities.

Some composers embrace deep and abstract conceptual propositions while others exploit the aesthetic potential of graphic sign making to transfer ideas into a sounding choreography of possibilities, inviting performers and listeners to find connections in unexpected places.

Progress in science and technology over the last decades has opened up new choices for expression and interaction, and we indeed find many composers taking up these new challenges with vibrant energy and enthusiasm. Some aspects of technology and new experimental score-making, for example, those that engage with video and interactive media, are beyond the scope of this publication. We have, however, found artists who have taken these ideas and influences as a point of departure, responding to this increasingly rational, mathematical and scientific world by using notions of data collection, the ever increasing precision of measurement and use structures derived from geometry and mathematics in innovative ways.

Graphème is a project founded in 2020 by smallest functional unit (Tony Buck, Racha Garbieh, Mazen Kerbaj, Magda Mayas, Ute Wassermann) with the aim of performing and publishing unconventional, hybrid notational formats and graphic scores by international composers.

Volume 3 features scores by Merche Blasco, Nicolás Carrasco, William Engelen, Julian Galay, Cat Hope, Charlotte Hug, @verkomponist, Lucie Vitkova, Sabine Vogel, Michael Zerang