CRR de Strasbourg – Académie Supérieure de Musique HEAR – Direction d’ensembles instrumentaux

Score Study – Miguel Etchegoncelay

1. Global view • Sound (texture, instrumentation, orchestration, dynamics, sound layers, articulation,
Objective : acquire an overall view of the piece. conventions, schools, historical context, aesthetics, style).
Method :
A. Read all the information furnished with the score
B. Read precisely the first page in order to get acquainted with the instrumentation. Using a piano through this phase of the study can be helpful to listen to the different
C. Browse rapidly through the score to detect technical elements like tempo, metrics, general elements present in the piece.
style, range, especially difficult passages, overall sound, texture, solo passages, tutti, etc. After the analysis, the conductor should be able to read through the music again while
listening with the “inner” ear without difficulties.
• Do I find the music interesting enough to invest time in a full analysis ? Write down the analysis in a graphic or flow chart, it will be useful in the future as a
• Do I have the required instrumentation to play this music without problems? reminder.
• Am I able to overcome all the technical issues with my musicians?
• Do I have enough rehearsal time for the piece?
• Is this work appropriate to be included in my program ? 4. Interpretation
Objective : acquire a personal sounding image of the score.
2. Reading Interpretation is setting in relationship all the parameters identified through the analysis in
Objectif : acquire an overall sound idea of the piece, discover intuitively its expressiveness order to elaborate a musical discourse as closed as possible to that of the composer
potential. himself.
Method : This is a moment of creativity.
• Choose a comfortable pulse. The conductor can now (not before!) start to do markings on the score with all the
• Read through without stopping. necessary signs that would allow him to rehearse and perform the piece.
• Let your imagination flow, get the feeling, intuitively. The process of rehearsing consists in bringing the orchestra as near as possible to the ideal
• Do not analyse details. sounding image conceived in the conductor’s head after the analysis.
• Do not use the piano or a recording.
• Read through as many times as necessary in order to get a global sounding image as
natural as possible. «… study the full score with hands behind the back … learn the music and afterwards impose the
music on the arms and not the arms on the music » Margaret Hillis

3. Analysis « …the dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks
Objective: acquire a detailed knowledge of all the parameters taking part of the work. with the heart and feels with the brain » Georges Szell
Method : analyse each parameter from big (macro) to small (micro)
« … my belief is that the performer is the real, true artist. All that we create as poets and
• Form (movements, sections, periods, phrases) composers expresses a wish but not an ability: only the performance itself reveals that ability of
• Harmony (tonality, cadences, modulations, harmonic sequences, charts and/or other art » Richard Wagner
harmonic procedures (modal, aleatoric, polytonality, atonal, clusters, dodecaphony, serial,
etc.) « … skill is at the basis of any creativity » Michael Colgrass
• Melody (theme/s, phrases, half-phrases, motifs, cells, other melodic elements)
• Rhythm (puls, metrics, rhythm, regularity/irregularity, binary subdivision, ternary
subdivision, polyrhythm, agogics, hemiolas, syncopations, rhythm formulas attached to
particular styles of languages, tempo indications, tempo relationships)