Looking At Scores

How often do you spend looking at or analyzing scores of pieces you like or want to learn from?  I picked up a score of a piece by charles wuorinen recently and find it useful to see how it was put together.  I'm wondering how other composers use scores and how it helps the learning process.

I've got a stack on the coffee table right now!  Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" for his four part chorale writing because I have a repeated section in the piece I'm working on that functions similarly to parts from the St. Matthew, (on a MUCH smaller scale).  The Faure "Requiem" because this is for choir, organ, and other instruments and I wanted to see how Faure handled doublings in his organ part.  Since he was an organist and choir director, his work seems like a good one to go to for balance issues.  I've got the Mozart "Requiem" out because the way he layers orchestral rhythms over choir is always so spritely.  Texture without a lot of weight.  Finally, I'm also consulting the Faure for layout and notational clarity decisions.  I've got the John Rutter edition, and while he drives me nuts with his enharmonic equivalents, the formatting for the layout is nice and clean and readable.  

Rather than listening to music and then grabbing the score immediately to see how the composer did that thing, which I would then forget 10 minutes later, I tend to grab a score when I'm actually composing and I am writing something with a similar feel to ___.  I'll go look at ___ and see how they handled their cadences, or whatever.  

I spend a lot of time looking at scores. Very rarely do I listen to music without the score because a) I like to be able to see visually how the music is structured, especially but not at all exclusively in orchestral music and especially in very texturally complicated orchestral music where looking at the score can make you hear more things than you would otherwise and b) it helps keep you focused on the music. I pretty much only listen to music that I know well without the score, and actually am somewhat reluctant to listen to music I don't know unless I have the score. I've gotten so addicted to scores that I bring them with me to concerts most of the time (on my tablet computer) - which is actually one of my favorite things to do. Apart from that I spend a lot of time studying scores (not enough, unfortunately) and reading over whatever on the piano - vocal music with piano accompaniment is great. Doing on-the-spot reductions of orchestral music is also great practice and viciously difficult.

Looking at and analyzing scores is a MUST for all composers.

Depends on my mood.  In my undergrad days I did it a lot..in my PhD days I do it a lot.  Now, I just like to go to an orchestra and enjoy!