Studying a score.

Okay, so I "hear" right and left in here that it is a good idea to study the scores of others. It sounds good and all, but I was wondering how exactly you guys go about doing it; what do you do?

I can follow a score easy enough, but the actual "study" idea is lost to me. So your methods/tips/advice/cautions are what I am basically asking for here.

Thanks a bunch!
Your resident, once living poultry....

Well, there are various degrees of "studying a score" and it's unclear where the borders are to simply reading it and to analysing it. Listening to the music and following the score like you mentioned is already a start and can be very helpful to hear details that you might miss otherwise. But with that method, since you're reading the score in "real time", you don't usually have enough time to really get all intricacies. So it is advisable to leave the music off at this point, read the score slowly and carefully and trying to imagine the music in your head. Not only do you understand a lot more about the techniques used in this particular music, it is also an excellent exercise for ear training and musical imagination.

Trying to play the score on the piano is excellent too, although sometimes not quite easy. But it's incredibly helpful for understanding more about the music, as you're literally "getting in touch with it". Similarly, you can also try to conduct it for yourself, which also has the effect of giving you a physical connection to the notes. Both of these methods also combine very well, since playing it on the piano will give you a good feedback on the harmonies and lines, whereas conducting it will show you more the greater processes, tempos, dynamics, densities, developments, formal structures.

You may argue that none of these is actually study, but merely ways of getting acquainted with the music through different means. However, if you want to get further and start to analyse, I still recommend these things (just reading it, playing it, etc.) as a first start.

Now, unless you want to write a book about a piece or something you certainly don't have to analyse every aspect of the music. It might actually be more helpful to concentrate on certain aspects of it. For example, you might simply look at the instrumentation of a certain piece: Which instruments play when, in which registers, at which dynamics? How are they combined? How else could you instrumentate the same passage and how would it sound then? Etc. I'd try to be as thorough as possible, while restricting myself to a passage. You might also just analyse the harmonies, or the types of textures (actually I mean the German "Satzart", but I don't know an English word for it).

But if it's nothing so specific you're interested in and you rather want to grasp the piece as a whole, I'd look at the greater form first. Are there distinct parts? Great developments? Does it sound static? Undulating? Broken apart? Strongly directed? And why does it sound so?

But all of these are just examples. In truth, there is no recipe for studying or analysing a piece of music. Maybe more so in very traditionally classical music, but if you're studying a 20th century score you usually have to find an appropriate way to study it invididually for each piece. That's why my suggestion was to first approach it rather freely by just reading/playing it and slowly finding out what would be appropriate or interesting questions to research in that piece. Then do just that.

I realize that this is often hard at the beginning when one just doesn't know where to approach a piece. So don't try to find out everything right at the beginning. Just get used to the piece, get to know it from different angles and sooner or later some aspects of it will catch your eye and you can look into them further.

Cool, thanks so much. that pretty much answers my question.

Gardener covered much but thought I'd add one or two other methods -

For chamber music or and orchestral music take a small section you like and write it in short score --- that is if it is a quintet or chamber symphony piece, transcribe the music to three staves and notate the doubling of certain lines (eg, bass, violin, picc play melodic line that you have written). This is also a great way to practice writing tranposing instruments at concert pitch AND also deal with some music that doesn't translate well to the piano as a whole.

Start small with your score study -- for example, tackling Schoenberg's Gurrelieder though admirable would be daunting to say the least --- start with Hadyn string quartets or some of Teleman's tafelmusik.

Do you have a particular piece you would like to study?

Definitely learn the processes of harmonic analysis and thematic analysis too (the later is a bit more subjective, i prefer Schoenberg's methods as explained in his in his "Fundamentals of Composition")

Originally Posted by composerorganist

Do you have a particular piece you would like to study?

i don't really, i can find most public domain ones... any suggestions?

I think the main question first is, what do you want to do with what you learn?

If you want to study a piece for the sake of absorbing material for your own compositions, you can approach it in a different way than if you are doing an essay/paper/etc on the piece for, say, music history analysis.

There's a lot of different approaches based on what goals you have.

If you want to take in the techniques used, then you should grab a text book that explains the theory behind the technique and then study literature examples (pieces) where the technique is used and then compare/check out how the technique is used across various different pieces.

If you're after historical/complete analysis, you have to dig up the history behind the piece (if available), the period it was written, composer and then go into other composers that existed at the time. Also important is that you look at what the "tendencies" were during that period, and how the piece you're looking at compares to those tendencies (Did it comply or was it a-typical? If so, why? Etc.)

Plus of course, an overview and analysis of the techniques (such as harmonic and rhythmic usage if applicable, or specific techniques such as 12 tone, serialism, clusters, extended techniques for instruments, etc.)

Then there's the analysis with focus on performance. This also depends if your goal is to do a historical reconstruction or if you're just figuring out how to give it your own spin and so on. A historical performance obviously requires you to look into historical sources (composer's own writings, letters, etc), books on the subject and so on to do something accurate within reason.

In all cases, it helps to have a firm grip of history and have more pieces around that you know from the same period. Analysis only gets "easier" the more pieces you analyze and the more music you actually learn. It helps enormously to have a frame of reference when faced with a new piece you want to analyze.

It's like, if you've already made your way through 20 or so baroque pieces, you'll be able to pick up a lot of trends and things by the 21th much faster than you were by the 1st. It's training your eye and sometimes ear to pick up specific things you know you have look out for depending on your objectives. Even if you're not shooting for anything specific, the nuances and details of things start to sink in the more you look and observe pieces and learn the historical/etc details by actually seeing it first hand in the music itself.

To further the example: If you're analyzing fugues and you've made your way through the baroque period, by the time you get to Hindemith or Satie's more out-there fugues you'll instantly pick up what they have and don't have from the tradition.

So really, think of what you want to accomplish and then arm yourself with what you need to do it. If it's a complete analysis, start with gathering historical sources, references, other pieces for comparison, and so on. If it's for picking up certain techniques, learning something specific, then figure out what is it that you want to look for and then gather pieces that demonstrate it in all possible ways, etc.

It's hard work, but it pays off in the long run.

Thanks!
you guys are being wonderfully helpful.

I didn't have time to read all previous replies, so I hope I won't repeat too much

Anyway when I want to analyze a score the first thing I do is look for contexts,
what theme is associated with which character/place/event/notion etc...
And then look for recurrences and variations,
for instance in the "Lord of the Rings" score by Howard Shore (just an example),
the motiff for the "Ring seduction" (basically a low-end rhythmic pattern) can be heard often throughout the score, elegantly entwined with the Shire theme (when Bilbo, Frodo or Sam are being seduced), with the Fellowship and Gondor themes (when Boromir is seduced) etc...
Try to figure out "why" (not "how") the composer wrote things as he/she did.

Listen for anything distinct, be it instrumentation, rhythm, sound, etc,
sometimes even a thing as overlooked as panning can have a meaning in a certain context.

And the best advice I can give you is don't bother with bad scores.
Only study good scores from good composers and orchestrators.
A few simple and yet good scores to start with would be Cinema Paradiso (E. Moriconne), Conan the Barbarian (B. Poldouries), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (M. Kamen), or Harry Potter I (J. Williams).

Good luck,
Omri.

Just copying a score helps a lot, too. Find a score with elements you'd like to learn about and/or incorporate into your music and write out the piece (on paper's probably better than on a computer, but that's just my preference). Perhaps try doing so as if you were the original composer (and make sure you either know the piece well and/or have a recording to refer to) and you'll pick up quite quickly on how and why certain instruments, ranges, combinations, and other musical elements are used.