The score (1/4)February 11th, 2010

The score is often the first medium you have to deal with when studying a piece. It enables the composer to encode four key dimensions of music: pitch, duration, intensity and timbre. This document can then transmit the composer’s thought, or rather transcribe his music in a format understood by any interpreter.

As we have already discussed it a few weeks ago, we won’t go back on the history of notation. However I advise you to refresh your memory by (re) reading the articles about the development of musical notation. They are available at:

1. The little story of musical notation 1/4
2. The little story of musical notation 2/4
3. The little story of musical notation 3/4
4. The little story of musical notation 4/4

The score is an act of communication to the interpreter. By writing a score, the composer wants to make his music able to be played by someone else, codifying it with a special notation. Like any transcription, it may be accurate on some points but also very relative on others. While duration and pitch of sounds are, in itself, easely measurable, the nuances and attacks remain at the discretion of the performer.

The partition is a set of signs printed on paper or screen, called notation and enabling performers to reproduce the composition using instruments or voices designated by the composer. The composer has encoded the music he wants to be heard in the form of conventional symbols.

Although some data appear qualitatively and quantitatively well defined, we can not only consider a simple reading of the score and play exactly what is written. Who would play a score of Chopin respecting blindly the written rhythm? The result would probably sound awkward and far from the composer’s world and rubato that he wished the performer to achieve. This simple example illustrates the relativity induced by a notation appearing clear and objective: the score is entirely subjective, and raises rather difficult questions of interpretation without even having begun to play the first note .

It appears that interpretins a score is not an easy and repetitive task. We need as interpreters to put us in the composer’s perspective to understand the value of each sign of the score. Preliminary work on the text is therefore essential but is often neglected by interpreters. Yet this study of the score is paramount to an authentic interpretation.

In our study we will focus on three key points which have to be clarified before even beginning to play: the editorial quality of the text, the interpretation of signs and connotations associated with the text. These questions will lead us invariably to discuss the thorny issue of style in a composer’s notation.

Finally, to complete our overview of the score interpretation, we will focus on certain types of notations in the graphic scores much less common than conventional examples.

Related Posts :

• The score (3/4) – Notation
• The score (2/4) – Editions
• The little story of musical notation 4/4
• The little story of musical notation 2/4