Music sheet

Figure 1. A score.

A score is a handwritten or printed document that represents and indicates how a musical composition should be interpreted, through its own language made up of musical signs and the so-called notation system. Like its analogues books, pamphlets, etc., the medium of the score is usually paper or, in earlier times, parchment. Although access to musical notation in recent years also includes presentation on computer screens.

In orchestral music, the score is the document used exclusively by the conductor and which contains the work to be performed with all its indications. This is broken down into particellas or parts: name given to each of those breakdowns or instrumental partitions that the performers of the different instruments have, which can each include two or more similar instruments, such as a piccolo and a flute, an oboe and an English horn, etc., and be performed by the same interpreter.

Score etymology

The word «score», an Italian term, literally means insieme di parti, that is, «set of parts». A large number of languages maintain this same etymological origin, such as the meanings Partitur in German, partition in French or partitura in Portuguese, Catalan and Basque. In English it is called score.

Purpose and use

Score can be used as a record, a guide, or a means of performing a piece of music. Although it is not a substitute for the sound of the musical performance, the score can be studied to build up the performance and to elucidate aspects of the music that may not be evident from simple hearing. Reliable information about a piece of music can be obtained by studying the sketches and early written versions of the works that the composer may have kept, as well as the final autograph score and personal annotations made on drafts and printed sheet music.

Understanding sheet music requires a special form of literacy, the ability to read musical notation. However, the ability to read or write music is not a prerequisite for composing music. Many composers have been able to create music in print, without the ability to read or write music notation, as long as a copyist of some kind was available. For example, the blind 18th century composer John Stanley as well as the 18th century composers and lyricists XX Lionel Bart, Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney.

The skill known as sight reading (or sight reading) is the ability of a musician to interpret an unfamiliar piece of music by seeing the sheet music for the first time. The ability to sight read is expected of both professional musicians and serious amateurs playing classical music and related genres. An even more refined skill is the ability to look at an unfamiliar piece of music and hear most or all of the sounds (melody, harmonies, timbres, etc.) in your head without having to play the piece.

With the exception of solo performances, where memorization is expected, classical musicians often have sheet music to hand when they play. In jazz music, which is mostly improvised, the score—called a lead sheet in this context—is used to give basic indications of melodies, chord changes, and arrangements.

Figure 2. Orchestral score.

Handwritten or printed music is less important in other traditions of musical practice. Although most popular music is published in notation of some kind, it is very common for people to learn music "by ear." This is also the case in most Western forms of folk music, where songs and dances are passed down by oral and aural tradition. The music of other cultures, both folk and classical, is often transmitted orally, although some non-Western cultures developed their own forms of sheet music notation.

Although sheet music is often seen as a platform for new music and an aid to composition (i.e., the composer writes down the music), it can also serve as a visual record of existing music. Transcriptions have been made by scholars and others to reproduce Western and non-Western music in a readable format for study, analysis, and creative interpretation. This has been done with folk and traditional music. For example, the volumes of Magyar and Romanian folk music written by Béla Bartók. But it was also done with sound recordings of improvisations made by musicians like jazz piano, as well as performances that may be based only partially on musical notation. A comprehensive and recent example of the latter is the collection The Beatles: Complete Scores, which attempts to transcribe on staves and tablature all songs as they were recorded by the Beatles in instrumental and vocal detail.

Structure

The score consists of a staff, made up of five lines and four spaces, on which are located the symbols that represent the musical components of the work written on it. These musical signs usually indicate the musical notes, the figures, that is, the duration of the notes, the key signature, tonality, accidentals (such as flats, sharps and becuadros), the ties between notes, the articulation and other particularities of the interpretation. musical. Additionally, the scores usually have additional information outside the staff on how to interpret the different sections of the work, such as tempo and dynamics, among others.

For more information on the elements that can appear in a score, see the article dedicated to musical signs.

Order of Instruments

Scores maintain a customary system of organizing musical instruments by families and, in turn, families are divided into sections. Within each family, the instruments are ordered according to the range from high to low (for example, the piccolo precedes the flute and the oboe precedes the English horn).

Orchestral scores are generally arranged in the following order:

1. Winds
   1. Wood (Note: the traditional organization of woods does not order by single and double reed)
      1. Flauts (flautin, flute, high flute)
      2. Oboes (oboe, English corn)
      3. Clarinetes (clarinete piccolo, clarinet soprano, corno di bassetto, clarinet bassetto).
      4. Saxon
      5. Fagotes (fagot, contrafagot)
   2. Metals
      1. Cornos (horn, tuba Wagner)
      2. Trumpets (piccola trumpet, trumpet, trumpet, bass trumpet)
      3. Sassocorni
      4. Trombones (t trombone, low trombone)
      5. Tuba (tuba bajo, tuba contrabajo)
2. Percussion
   1. Undetermined height percussion (tambores, triangle, maracas, etc.)
   2. Percussion of determined height (glockenspiel, xylophone, vibráfono, marimba, tubular bells)
   3. Timbales
3. Other instruments
   1. Arpa
   2. Tecla (piano, celesta, organ, key)
   3. Ondas Martenot
   4. Mandolina
   5. Guitar
4. Coros
5. Solistas (both vocal and instrumental)
6. Pills
   1. Violines (first and second)
   2. Rape
   3. Violent.
   4. Contrabas

Types

Modern sheet music can come in different formats. If a piece is composed for a single instrument or voice (for example, a piece for a solo instrument or for solo voice a capella), the entire work may be written or printed as a single score. If an instrumental piece is designed to be played by more than one person, usually each performer will have a separate score called a part or particella to play on. This is precisely the case with the publication of compositions that require five or more interpreters. However, the full score is invariably published as well. The sung voices in a vocal work are not usually published separately today, although this has been the case historically, especially before musical printing made sheet music more widely available.

Scores can be published as individual or works (for example, a popular song or a Beethoven sonata), in collections (for example, works by one or several composers), as pieces performed by a certain artist, etc.

When separate parts of each instrument or voice are printed together, the resulting text is called a score. Conventionally, it is made up of twenty musical notations with each instrumental or vocal part, in vertical alignment (that is, that the concurrent facts in the notation for each part are arranged orthographically). The term score has also been used to refer to scores written by a single performer. The distinction between the score and a part applies when there is more than one part necessary for the performance.

Scores can be submitted in various formats, such as:

Figure 3. Score of orchestra director.

• One full score It is a great book that collects the music of all the instruments and voices of a composition arranged in a certain order. It's big enough for an orchestra director to read it while leading the rehearsals and performances.

• One miniature score it's like a much smaller score. It is too small to use it in a performance, but useful for studying music pieces, either for a large set or for a soloist. One miniature score may contain some introductory comments.

• One study score is sometimes the same size and often indistinguishable of a miniature scoreexcept in the name. Some of these scores are in eighth format and therefore are among the sizes of the full score and the miniature score. One study score, especially when it is part of an anthology for academic study, you can include additional comments about music as well as learning-oriented annotations.

• One piano score (o) piano reduction) is a more or less literal transcription for piano of a written piece for multiple interpreters, especially orchestral works, which can purely include instrumental sections within the large vocal works. Such arrangements are made for piano alone (two hands) or for piano duo (one or two pianos, four hands). Some additional small pentagrams are sometimes added at certain points of the piano score to two hands in order to make the presentation more complete, although it is usually impossible or unconventional to include them during interpretation. As with the vocal score (hereafter), a considerable ability is required to reduce an orchestral score to such small forms as the reduction must be interpretable on the keyboard and also complete enough in its presentation of the harmonies, textures, figurations, etc. of the original work. Sometimes annotations are included to show which instruments are playing at certain points. The piano scores They are generally not intended for interpretation outside of study and pleasure. However, there are a group of notable exceptions such as the transcriptions of concerts and symphonies of Beethoven de Liszt. Them ballets obtain the greatest practical benefit of piano scores, since with one or two pianists they allow to rehearse without limitations before an orchestra is absolutely necessary. They can also be used in the formation of beginner conductors. The piano scores of operas do not include separate staff for vocal parts, but may add the sung text and stage instructions above the music.

Figure 4. Score for piano and opera voice William Ratcliff of Caesar Cui. Play (?·i)

• One vocal score (o) piano and voice score) is a reduction of the score of a vocal work, such as an opera, a musical, an oratory, a cantatatata, etc., which shows the vocal parts (solista and coral) in their pentagrams and the orchestral parts in a reduction for piano (usually two hands) below the vocal parts. The purely orchestral sections of the score are also reduced for piano. If a passage from the work is a capella, a piano reduction of vocal parts is usually added to help in rehearsals. This is usually the case of religious scores a capella. Although they are not intended for interpretation, vocal scores they serve as a convenient way to learn music and rehearse separately for vocal soloists and corists. La vocal score of a musical usually does not include the spoken dialogue, except for the signs.

• La coral partition is related to the vowel but is less common. Contains the coral parts without accompaniment.

• La organ score it is usually related to sacred music for voices and orchestra, such as arrangements (after) The Messiah Haendel. It's like a piano and voice score which contains pentagrams for vocal parts and reduces the orchestral parts to be played by a single person. Unlike the vocal scoreIn the organ score the arranger sometimes intends to replace the orchestra at the time of interpretation if necessary.

• The vocal selections are collections of printed songs of a certain musical. This is different from the vocal score of the same show, which does not show complete music and piano accompaniment is usually simplified and includes the line of the melody.

• One abbreviated score is a reduction of one piece for multiple instruments to just a few staves. Many composers, instead of compose directly the full scoremake some kind of abbreviated score while they are composing and then broaden the complete orchestration. An opera, for example, can be written for the first time in a abbreviated scorethen in the full score, then it reduces to one vocal score for testing. The abbreviated scores They are usually not published, although they may be more common in some concert halls (e.g. band) than in others.

• One lead sheet specifies only melody, letter and harmony, usually using a staff with chord symbols placed above and the letter below. It is usually used in popular music to collect the essential elements of the song without specifying how the song should be arranged or played.

• One chord table contains little or no melodic information, but provides detailed harmonious and rhythmic information. This is the most common type of written music used by professional session musicians who play jazz or other forms of popular music. It is intended primarily for the rhythmic section, usually contains piano, guitar, bass and drums.

• One Table is a special type of musical score, often for a solo instrument, which shows where you have to touch the sounds in the specific instrument instead of specifying the heights to be played, indicating also the rhythm. This type of notation, which dates from the end of the Middle Ages, has been used for key instruments such as the organ and for string instruments with frets such as the lute or guitar.

If the complete score is very complex and large, thus preventing the reading of a specific instrument, then a solo part of it is printed.

History

Figure 5. Partitura manuscrito en porgamino de un misal dominical del sigloXIII.

Handwritten sheet music

Before XV century| Western music was written by hand and preserved in manuscript, usually collected in large volumes. The best known examples are the medieval monodic chant manuscripts. In the case of medieval polyphony, such as the motet, the voices were written on separate portions of facing pages. This process was aided by the advent of mensural notation to clarify rhythmic aspects, and was accompanied by the medieval practice of composing polyphonic voices sequentially, rather than simultaneously as in later times. Manuscripts showing all the voices together in a single score were not common and were mostly confined to the organum, especially that of the School of Notre Dame.

Even after the advent of printed music, a great deal of music continued to exist solely in manuscript form well into the 18th century.

Printed sheet music

There were several difficulties in adapting the new printing technology to music. The first printed book to include music, the Mainz Psalter (1457), had to pick up the notation added by hand. This case is similar to the space left to the left in other incunabula for capital letters. The psalter was printed in Mainz, Germany by Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer. Currently one copy is located in Windsor Castle and another in the British Library.

Later the staff lines were printed, but scribes still added in the rest of the music by hand. The greatest difficulty in using movable type for music printing is that all the elements had to be aligned; the note head had to be correctly aligned with the staff or else it would have meant something different than it should. In vocal music the text must be properly aligned with the notes, although at that time this issue was not a priority, even in manuscripts.

The first machine-printed music appeared around 1473, roughly twenty years after Gutenberg introduced the printing press. In 1501 Ottaviano Petrucci published Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, which contains 96 pieces of printed music. Petrucci's printing method produced clean, legible and elegant music, but it was a long and difficult process that required three separate printings. Petrucci later developed a process that required only two impressions on the press, but was still expensive as each step required very precise alignment for the result to be legible. This was the first well-distributed printed polyphonic music. Petrucci also printed the first tablature with movable type. The printing process consisting of a single impression first appeared in London around 1520. Pierre Attaignant brought this technique into wide use in 1528 and it was maintained for 200 years with little change.

Figure 6. Border Harmonice Music Odhecaton from Petrucci.

A common format for publishing works for various voices, polyphonic music of the Renaissance was cuadernos de música. In this format, each voice part of a collection of five-voice madrigals, for example, is printed separately in its own notebook, so that all five music notebooks would be needed to interpret the music. The same music notebooks could be used by singers or instrumentalists. Sheet music for multi-voice pieces was rarely printed in the Renaissance. Although, the use of the score format as a means to compose voices simultaneously (instead of successively, as in the late Middle Ages) is attributed to Josquin Desprez.

The effect of printed music was similar to the effect of the printed word, in that information spread faster, more efficiently, and to a greater number of people than could be spread through manuscript. It also had the added effect of providing amateur musicians, at least those who could afford it, with sufficient means to perform. This affected the entire music industry in many ways. Composers could now write more music for amateur performers, knowing that it could be distributed. Professional musicians had more music at their disposal. The number of amateurs increased, from which professional performers could also earn income in exchange for providing musical instruction. However, in the early years the cost of printed music limited its diffusion.

In many places, the right to print music was granted by the monarch and only those with a special dispensation were allowed to do so. This was often an honor (and a financial "boom") bestowed on favorite court musicians. In the 19th century the music industry was dominated by sheet music publishers. In the United States, the sheet music industry rose along with a type of minstrel called blackface. The group of New York-based publishers and songwriters who dominated the industry is known as "Tin Pan Alley". The end of the 19th century saw the massive explosion of salon music, with piano playing "de rigueur& #3. 4; in the middle class home. But at the turn of the 20th century the phonograph and recorded music grew enormously in importance. This, along with the growth in popularity of radio from the 1920s onwards, diminished the relevance of sheet music publishers. The record industry replaced sheet music publishers as the biggest force in the music industry.

Musical scores typewriter

Machine to write musical scores Keaton Music Typewriter

There were some typewriters for musical scores whose operation was complex. Among the best known, we can mention the first invented in 1936 by Robert H. Keaton, the Keaton Music Typewriter.

Current evolution

At the end of the 20th century and in the XXI A great deal of interest has developed in the representation of sheet music in a computer-readable format (see music notation software), as well as downloadable files. Since 1991 OMR (Optical Music Recognition) has been available, which is an OCR for music. It is software to "read" scanned scores so that the results can be manipulated later. In 1998 virtual sheet music was further developed into what was to be called digital sheet music, which for the first time allowed licensed publishers to make copyrighted sheet music available for purchase online.. Unlike their paper equivalent, these files allow for manipulations such as instrument changes, transposition, and even MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) playback. The popularity of this immediate delivery system seems to be acting among musicians as a catalyst for new growth in the industry for the foreseeable future.

One of the first computer notation programs available for home computers was Music Construction Set, which was developed in 1984 and released for several different platforms. Introducing concepts largely unknown to the home user at the time, it allowed the editing of musical notes and signs using a pointing device such as a mouse. The user could "grab" a note or sign from a paddle and "drag" it to the appropriate place on the staff. The program allowed the music created to be played through several early sound cards, and the musical score could be printed on a graphics printer.

Many digital audio workstation or DAW software products support sheet music generation from MIDI files or by manual input. Products with this feature include free, open source programs such as Aria Maestosa and MuseScore, as well as commercial programs such as Cakewalk SONAR, Pro Tools and Logic Pro.

In 1999 Harry Connick, Jr. invented a system and method for coordinating the display of music among performers in an orchestra. Connick's invention is a device with a display used to display sheet music to musicians of an orchestra instead of the more commonly used paper sheet music. Connick uses this system when he is on tour with his band, for example.

Of special practical interest to the general public is the Mutopia Project, an effort to create a library of public domain sheet music using open documents from a free software program (LilyPond), and which is comparable to the library of books in the public domain of Project Gutenberg. The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) is also trying to create a virtual library containing music scores in the public domain, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world for free..

In addition to public domain efforts such as the Mutopia project and the IMSLP, many public domain musical works originally composed for piano, violin, or voice are finding their way back into commercial circulation now that they have been recomposed. for other instruments.

Score editing software

There are a large number of applications for editing sheet music:

• Cakewalk Express
• Denemo (free software)
• Encore
• Finale
• Free Clef
• Frescobaldi (free software), an environment for LilyPond
• Guitar Pro
• LilyPond (free software)
• MuseScore (free software)
• MusiXTeX (based on TeX)
• NoteWorthy Composer
• NtEd
• Rosegarden (free software)
• Sibelius
• TuxGuitar (free software)

You may be interested in it

• History of notation in Western music
• Musical notion
• Musical composition
• Musical signs
• Particella
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