Unusual Musical Notation

Conducting my research on the internet, I have found several different examples of unusual musical notation. They are far removed from traditional musical notation, and unreadable without specialist knowledge or instructions. Some of the examples I've found are:

• Notes without heads
• Notes with heads and stems but looking very different to traditional notes.
• Use of a backwards flat sign, or two flat signs back to back, used in microtonal music, with similar        symbols for sharps.
• Stockhausen used a whole array of different symbols in his composition Plus-Minus – circles, plus and minus signs, arrows, brackets, squiggles, stems and tails without note head and many more that are difficult to describe in words.

I have also seen a variety of graphic scores where the staves are changed, written instructions are added, and images are added giving a ‘picture’ effect to the score:

• Staves not parallel – Sometimes the staves themselves overlap perpendicular to each other, as in Bernard Rand’s ‘as all get out’. This piece also uses curved staves.
• In Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet, there are straight lines joining various single notes across different staves. 
• George Crumb’s Makrocosmos has a spiral shaped score.
• The score of Water Music by John Cage combines written instructions (such as ‘pour water from one receptacle to another) with fragments of standard notation and various numbers.
• Iannis Xenakis’ Synaphai features abrupt endings to some staves making them not all a uniform length. Occasional lines and arrows seem to link parts of the score. Some of the notation is without heads, only stems.
• Sylvano Bussotti's "Pour Clavier" score is packed tightly together. There are no note stems as such, but the heads are connected to other notes by straight lines.

According to my research, sometimes unusual or graphic notation more accurately portrays the composer’s intentions than a traditional score, and sometimes it doesn't – where each performance has a different interpretation.