Score reading

We are not going to analyse the music in as much depth as we have been doing with our previous set works. The main objective of the next few lessons is to develop our ability to score read. Let’s begin by listening to Morning from Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg and see if you can follow the score. Don’t worry if you get lost!

When a conductor stands in front of an orchestra he has in front of him a score of the music which contains all the parts that will be playing. This is called a full score. There are other types of score such as a vocal score which only has the voice and a piano part (we saw one of these for Ezra’s Bucharest) and a short score (such as we saw for Buckley’s Grace) which only has the more important parts represented. Short scores may also have different instruments/parts sharing the same stave. A skeleton score only contains the bare minimum of information, perhaps just the melody. Scores work much the same way a book does, reading from left to right. If there is more than one system of music per page, then you read the top system first and then go to the lower system.

Score order

The problem with reading a full score is the amount of information happening at the same time. It is very difficult to know where to look at first. Fortunately, scores are always set out in the same way. This is called score order and it is very useful. There are four families of instruments in the orchestra (what are they?) and they are always presented in the order;

Woodwind

Brass

Percussion

Strings

Order of instruments

Furthermore, within each family of instruments there is a special order.

Flute

Oboe

Clarinet

Bassoon

Horn

Trumpet

Trombone

Tuba

Timps

Percussion

Other additional instruments such as harps, piano, celesta etc.

Violin I

Violin II

Viola

Cello

Bass

If there are any related instruments of different sizes such as contra bassoon or piccolo, then they go above or below the parent instrument according to pitch.

The first place one should look to find the melody is the first violins. Strings were the first instruments in the orchestra and the first violins more often than not have the tune. Now we know that the violins are not at the top of the score but at the top of the bottom section of score, about a quarter of the way up the page in this instance. Notice how there is a slightly larger space between the woodwind and brass and the percussion and strings to help differentiate these sections and the strings even get a repeat of the tempo marking from the top of the score.

Focus on Winds.

Unfortunately, the strings are not playing at the beginning of the piece and so we are going to have to look elsewhere for the melody. At the top of the page we can see that the flute has the melody. In this movement Grieg makes a feature of the woodwind instruments and we are also going to focus on them.

But first let’s check out the Italian names of the instruments:

Listen with pauses to answer the following questions.

• What instruments are playing chords to accompany the melody?
• What texture does this create?
• What is the texture at letter A and how is it different from the texture of bars 1 & 2?
• What instrument, that we haven’t heard before, joins at letter B?
• What instrument plays a solo at bar 50?
• What 3 instruments play the solo at E?
• What is the texture at bar 63?
• What instrument plays a solo at 66?
• What does divisi mean?
• What instrument plays a solo at 81?