The Reactive Score

Scores designed to be displayed on screens provide the opportunity for composers to dynamically update information and musical instructions presented to performers during the moment of performance. Such scores may be responsive to the agency of performers or audience members, providing new forms of structural organization or ways in which denoted musical material can be transformed. This paper explores the creative possibilities of such reactive scores and situates them within a historical tradition of malleable notation. Two works by the author are discussed in which real-time features of the musical performance drive the notational transformations of the performance score