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The technologies – codes and materials – of inscription play a vital role in forming musical objects and practices, and crucially inform the discourses of music. Many current issues can be traced back to the beginning of the C20th, to the beginning of what has been described in architecture as an ‘age of divided representation’. An extraordinary property of common Western music notation has been its multiple functions: manipulation, representation, description, instruction and analysis for the same musical material can all be carried out using the same notational system. As with literacy, Western notation thus entered the cognitive processes associated with music, even in the absence of material text. Notation continues to inform musical thought, at all stages of a work’s existence. However, we cannot assume the same multivalency. In considering notational practices for the creation and performance of today’s hybrid musical objects, we must re-evaluate its role. Conventional assumptions are challenged by actual practice. Notation may best be viewed as a technology, and a crucial node in a network of technologies among which we must count human technical skills. Notation is a central node in the unique pattern of determination, distribution and dissemination that characterizes each musical object.