As part of my prep for writing a classical guitar quartet last semester, I did a fair bit of score reading. The key scores I studied were:
- Leo Brouwer: “Cuban Landscape with Rain” (Doberman-Yppan, 1984)
- Leo Brouwer: “Paisaje Cubano Con Rumba” (Doberman-Yppan, 1985)
- Leo Brouwer: “Hika (In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu)” (Ediciones Espiral Eterna, 2008)
- Pat Metheny: “Road to the Sun” (Hal Leonard, 2020)
- Olivier Messiaen: “Quartet for the End of Time” (Durand, 1941)
- Andrew York: “Pacific Coast Highway” (Corda, 1995)
- Roland Dyens: “Austin Tango” (Les Productions d'OZ, 2009)
- Tōru Takemitsu: “Toward the Sea” (Schott, 1981)
- Tōru Takemitsu: “12 Songs for Guitar” (Schott, 1971-74)
- Tōru Takemitsu: “Landscape 1” (Schott, 1960)
- Tōru Takemitsu: “In the Woods” (Schott, 1995)
- Federico Mompou: “Suite Compostelana” (Salabert, 1962)
Clearly, the emphasis was on guitar pieces, and Brouwer's guitar quartets were especially useful. (Indeed, to my ears, the middle movement of my quartet is perhaps a little too derivative of Brouwer, but what can I say? I'm in the assimilation stage.)
Anyway, I thought it might be useful to get a few thoughts down about the process, kicking off with: what do I mean by score reading/study, and what have I been getting out of it exactly?
For me at any rate, the first stage involves reading through a score accompanied by a recording. The first read-through or so can be tricky (although it's getting easier). I'm hardly the world's best sight-reader (as I've said before, I'm a guitarist after all) so it can be very easy to get lost quite quickly. I find it easiest to track the rhythms first, following one part where possible, then beginning to swap between parts, finally working up to following the whole texture, although on anything much more than a quartet I frankly struggle. Interestingly, using this rhythm-following approach is actually hardest when the underlying pulse is slow (and with Takemitsu, that's pretty much all the time). Of course, it's easy to get lost at super-fast speeds too, especially where the meter is complex, but generally, I can cope - it's the slow tempi that kill me. (The molto adagio movements of Beethoven's String Quartet 15 get me every bloody time... )
Once I've got the overall rhythmic sense and general shape of a piece in my head, I start to try to follow the melody, and even to try to audiate along with it*. I can't say I'm always successful with this, and certainly with, say, Bartok or Debussy, I would say I'm catching the melodic contour more than the exact melody. But even that feels like a big step forward.
And finally, there's an attempt to apprehend the harmony, and this can best be described as a work in progress, I suppose. Of course, phenomenologically speaking, I can grasp the harmony, but actually making what I hear cohere with what's on the page, well, not so much. With guitar pieces, of course, it's easier for me, if only because I'm broadly familiar with "the moves". But once I'm into multiple clefs, I'm pretty much lost.
Which brings me to the last stage. Once I'm reading through reasonably fluently and don't have to hang for dear life, I'll mark up the score as I'm going through for some study follow-up. Often this will be to confirm the rhythms, at points where I've got the rhythmic contour in my head, but can't quite read the specific notation. Or else I might mark up a passage where I want to understand the harmony, say.
So some thoughts on the benefits:
- My rhythmic understanding is actually improving leaps and bounds, I think - and this is helping with both my writing and sight-reading.
- Ditto my grasp of texture, instrumental interplay, and counterpoint (although on the last I think I'm in dire need of some remedial study at some point. Sigh.)
- Although, as I say, my harmonic reading still needs a lot of work, the "study" stage of the process, that is, returning to the score and analysing certain sections in detail is really helping me get my head round more advanced harmonic processes.
- Finally, it's just a different way to engage with the music. I wouldn't say it's better or even deeper than simply listening closely (although it does at least force that), but qualitatively different somehow. It's also, while hard, actually rather fun.**
My current thinking is that part of this semester's composition portfolio will be a piece for string quartet and electric guitar (more on realising the string quartet parts in midi - or the difficulty in doing so - will form the basis of a future thrilling post.) So my current score reading is focussed on string quartets, specifically Beethoven (the late quartets), Debussy, Bartók, and Takemitsu. I like a challenge. But I'm also looking forward to looking at formal scoring for electric guitar and currently have pieces by Morton Feldman, Earl Brown, Betsy Jolas, and my teacher Tom Armstrong lined up. If anyone has any ideas about adding to that selection, do let me know.
* I gave a talk about my struggles with audiation as part of last semester's Research Training for Practitioners assessment; I'll try to get up a slide show walkthrough here soon,
** I've been tending to do this at the end of the day, and its impact on my dream life has been, er, interesting.
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