No, fear not, this particular written rant has absolutely nothing to do with the intellectual property debate, promise. Rather, it’s about parts for musicians in compositions requiring more than one player.
With the exception of parts for accompanying pianists in chamber music—which thankfully contain everyone else’s part, too—parts for almost all classical music repertory only contain the notes for that particular individual to play. It is a foolish tradition that lives on in most contemporary music.
In other performing arts, this is almost unthinkable. Imagine being an actor and being given a copy of a script that only contained your lines. Being an effective ensemble requires a fundamental understanding of what everyone else is doing in addition to what you’re doing. In fact, in that sense, ensembles in theatre, dance, and music are art’s most poignant metaphor for how individuals coexist in a society. But before I’m tempted to go off on some oddball philosophical tangent here, let me make a practical argument.
Last night, attending a rehearsal for a new piece of mine that’s being played by folks who normally don’t play classical music, was a real eye and ear opener. Every time these musicians had a problem, it was because they had no idea what the other musicians were doing at that point. Sure there was a score on hand but referring to it just slowed things down. I’ve had the same experience for years with classical ensembles, but it’s not just me. I’ve also witnessed it time after time in rehearsals of other people’s music.
Sure there are folks out there whose music thrives on the ambiguity of each musician not knowing what the other musicians are doing. Some work, like Joshua Fried’s Headset Sextet , generate uncharted sonic possibilities by carefully calculated deprivation strategies. However, most of us are aiming for everyone to blend together somehow.
So, what would it take to share more information with all of the musicians in each of their parts? Computer notation software allows you to configure parts anyway you want. There are many ways to give some notational hints about what other folks are doing without distracting from the notes each musician needs to learn for his or her own part.