J. Anthony Allen explains why orchestral scores are printed on 11" x 17" paper or larger, then walks through his own piece "Sunder" and Ligeti's Requiem, where extreme divisi means each player gets their own staff and conductors need glasses to read the tiny notation.
Okay, so before we get into each individual instrument, I want to talk about the score. So orchestra scores and big scores in general have a couple unique things to them that are worth pointing out. In this first video, I want to just talk about how much I love looking at these big scores. Let me show you some. So I got a few of mine. Here's the piece we were just looking at. This is. Most scores are printed on this big 11 by 17 or bigger paper the long way. So that. I hope you can see this. Let me try this. So that you can really see the full orchestra on every page. That makes it. To fit everybody on one page, even on this big paper, makes it each instrument really small. Right. You have to really squint to read these. And this is why most conductors wear glasses, because they're used to reading these teeny, tiny notes. But, you know, a full ensemble, a full orchestra smashed onto one page, even really big paper is tough. Here's another orchestra piece by me. This one's called Sunder. This one is interesting because you'll see on a couple pages. Let me just find a random one. Okay. You'll see some. Some writing in red. What's happening there is. This is the copy of the. Of that I used in rehearsal. So often in rehearsals with an orchestra, you, as the composer, will sit in the audience, you know, kind of close to the conductor, but not. But, you know, still far back enough to hear everything really well. And then you'll scribble some notes, and then after they get through it, you'll go up to the conductor and say, okay, you know, and here what the note says is no mute. That means that in that section, I want them to take the mute out. You know, you can. You can tell the conductor things that are different that are in the score, but most of the time, you're just kind of clarifying what's in the score. You don't really want to be making changes, but sometimes there are questions that come up and things like that. And often when you do that, it's like dynamic things. I noticed some of them in here. Yeah, here's a good one. So here, like, I circled just, like two notes, and I wrote too much meaning. Like, tell the conductor to tell that player, that's the marimba player to pull back a little bit there. So, you know, just clarifying things. Okay, enough about me. Let me show you my favorite score that I own, Liggety Requiem. This is a monster score. It's really big. I bought this when I was traveling and I was In Paris, I just had a big backpack, and I bought this. And then I left behind some clothes just so that I could fit this in my backpack. The thing that makes this so big is that there's a lot of divisi here. Meaning, like, normally when we write out, like, the cello, for example, the cello might have 10 or so people playing it, but we write one staff and it says cello. And all 10 of those string players play that same thing. In this piece, every individual person gets their own part. So there are 10 staves for cello, 10 staves for first violins, probably more. 10 staves for second violins, probably more. And not every page is even showing every instrument. You know, it's just so tiny. And it's handwritten, too, by the way. So it's just so small and gorgeous to read. Oh, God, I love just, like, listening to music and following along in the score. There's notes from Ligety in here where he's written some stuff in French. Actually, it might be translated. Nope, it's French. Actually, it looks like German. It's written in German, but. Oh, and it's a beautiful piece, too. So anyway, I love big, beautiful scores. I could just, like, thumb through big scores all day long. You don't have to. So let me move on from this. There's a couple things that we expect to see in scores that I want to point out in the next couple of videos. And then we'll also talk about how some tips for how to read scores. Following along with a score while you're looking at the music or hearing the music is difficult, and it takes some practice. But I have some tips for how to do it. So first, let's go into this idea of transposition.
