Over the course of the past few weeks I've been listening to parts of Mahler's 5th symphony. At this point I've only heard the first three movements. The reason why I have not listened to the entire piece yet is because I am trying to follow the music with a symphonic score. The only problem is, that it is quite difficult to follow. At some times I felt confident in where I was, and then I would lose my place and be unable to pick it back up. I have to say that I have had experience with following a symphonic score, but it is still a difficult task to keep up with the music when looking at a score. So really, what I'm looking at is why do I have trouble with this particular piece?
Realistically, I've only looked at two symphonic scores-meaning the entire work. The first was Mozart's Jupiter symphony in 11th grade. I remember quite vividly how I reacted when I first had it in my hands. I opened the book and saw 15+ staves and was utterly overwhelmed that the entire first page was only 10 measures long. Next up was listening to the symphony and following it, needless to say I lost my place within the first page turn-I ended up getting a headache as I frantically looked at the music not know what to look at and how to decipher what I was looking at and what I was hearing. Though class after class my ability to follow the music improved Soon there were only a few parts in which I had struggles with-but I could easily find myself after those particular sections. The reason behind this was because of repeated exposure, listening to who has the melody and look at that instrument on the score and see if what is playing is what is written, and eventually the themes started to stick in my head and I could recognize them.
The second symphonic score was the aforementioned Mahler symphony. By this time, I had looking at the Jupiter symphony for about two years and I felt pretty confident in being able to follow symphonic scores. However I wasn't even 2 minutes into the first movement when I lost my place. I was trying my best- to focus on the melody and the instrument that has the melody and try to follow it. Though sometimes the melody was played by all the instruments and then switch off between different instruments, making it confusing at some times. This was essentially the main way in which I followed the score. Thus I tried a different tactic, I tried keeping the beat and counting measures. This worked for a while, except sometimes the conductor would have tempo changes that weren't written in my score which threw me off. I even tried focusing on dynamics-but since there were so many changes it was impossible to keep on track. It took a whole 30 minutes to listen to the first movement-15m long, from start to finish with being able to follow 80% of the material.
Through listening and following this symphony on score I can tell that my skills have improved. I had to adapt to how this symphony was arranged-not all symphonies are the same so the way that the score is laid out isn't the same as well. In the Jupiter Symphony score Each page was a set of measures-in the Mahler symphony sometimes there would be markings that indicated that the measures didn't continue onto the next page but below that set of staves. So sometimes there would be a page with all the instruments-and the next page would have two sections of just string instruments, then it would revert back to the all of the instruments on the next page. So if you were following the trumpet, the staff for the trumpet would be gone and you would only see the string instruments. (Of course the trumpet wouldn't be playing at that part-but it is offsetting because now the cello is now taking the spot on the page where the trumpet was). However, as confusing as it was it has been a constant learning experience-and this is the first time I have heard the symphony so I am not familiar with the melody an themes-making it harder to follow. I probably should have listened to the entire piece first then look at a score- so I would at least be familiar with the material. I still have the 4th movement to look at and listen to, so I am looking forward to see how well I do. It is a struggle, but it pushes me to continue to listen and memorize the themes and seeing which instruments repeat them to find where it is on the score and continue following it.
