I’ve always wondered about this. I believe piano players can hire someone as a page turner, but there isn’t enough room for all the members of an orchestra to have a page-turner. Plus, I have never seen any.
Musicians in an orchestra play symphonies that are hours-long. Surely they don’t memorize the whole thing, and must use sheet music? If they do, how do they coordinate the page turning? If all the violin players turned their pages at the same time, then there would be this awkward pause in the music. Does each member have their sheet music printed differently, and therefore turn pages at different times?
If the publishers are nice, they try to coordinate it so that there is a rest at the end of a page. This, however is not always the case. What we tend to do in band is have one person keep playing while their stand partner turns the page. It sort of works.
As far as I’m aware they just wait until there’s a short rest where they can turn the page. Hours and hours of practice in the symphony would teach which places would be the best to turn the page, and also to memorize any music they need to to get to that point.
You might be surprised how much of the music is memorized. I was in the chorus of “The Damnation of Faust” and the music was mainly just used as a reference (glance at the music, “Oh, yeah, this part’s next”) or for the more difficult parts.
Ideally, the sheet music is laid out so that page turns happen in convenient places (like during a rest) - but in practice this doesn’t always happen. If a page turn occurs in the middle of a moving line, the musicians will likely just memorize part of the music on the next page and then make the turn when they’re able. Or, if multiple players are on the same part, some might drop out early to change the page.
Each part (eg Violin II, Piccolo) has their own music. Most of the time, it’s laid out so page turns occur during rests - which occur reasonably frequently in most circumstances.
String players share music between two - the standard practice is that the player on the ‘inside’, ie furthest from the audience, turns pages, so even if the music does not break, there’s no complete gap in sound. Where the music divides into individual lines within string parts, specific arrangements sometimes need to be made, so that half of the inside players turn and half of the outside do, for example. There’s also a standard term (V.S. = ‘volte subito’, turn quickly’) to remind a player that there’s little time to get onto the next page.
The other common solution to awkward pageturns is the photocopier - 3 pages fit comfortable on a music stand.
On the other hand, I have played a solo violin piece which was 14 pages long and needed a page turner throughout. One day, I’ll memorise it
Whenever I see people do this it always worries me- I mean, I’ve never seen anything go drastically wrong, but sometimes performers really test the limits of how many pages they can fit side-by-side on a stand.
This topic reminds me of a student composition a saw performed a few years ago. For whatever reason the composer neglected to print-out parts and had the ensemble (of about 5 people) playing from the score. So he set up about 8 stands- each holding 2 pages of music.
Five musicians all hundled around one stand at a time, and slowly shuffling to the other stands as the piece progressed- it was uh…interesting. But hey, I guess it effectively by-passed the whole page turn dilemma.
Thanks for all the quick answers! I figured that instruments that are played relatively infrequently would have plenty of rests in which they can turn pages, but was confused about instruments that have a lot of “play time,” like violins. Shared music stands, memorization of large chunks, plus cooperation from the publisher…of course, that makes total sense.
But how about string quartets? They can’t share stands, right? I guess they could memorize large chunks, but don’t all members pretty much play continuously, and would have few opportunities to quickly turn pages? Also, isn’t it more awkward to make quick turns when you have a bow in your hand, as opposed to a flute or something?
Say you make a copy of page 3 and tape it to the right of page 2 - if there’s a rest anywhere on page 3, you can use it to turn to the real page 3 (which is still behind page 2). I always use my left (violin) hand to turn pages, just held onto the bow.
It’s been awhile since I’ved played in a quartet (as a violinist), but I don’t ever remember turning pages being a problem. First off, all four of us never had to turn our pages at the same time, so it wasn’t like you had to worry about sudden silences. Also, after playing the same pieces over and over again you start memorizing your part. So if the page turn is in an inconvenient place, you’d simply play your part by memory until you’d get to a rest and THEN you’d turn the page.
It’s awkward at first turning the page with a bow in hand, but it’s not that bad once you get the hang of it (especially if you dog-ear each page). I’ve also turned pages with the tip of my bow, like the cool person I am. But I don’t recommend this. Your risk of knocking over the music increases tremendously, and you don’t want to piss off your stand partner by doing that.
In my high school orchestra, the unspoken rule was that the person sitting in the “lower” chair turned the page. I guess that’s why it was so cut throat during chair auditions.
A friend of mine, a clarinetist, used to write any extra notes, that were on the next page up until the next rest, onto a little piece of note paper, that he could clip onto the side or bottom of the page, to make pageturning easier.
You also run the risk of cracking the tip along the grain, which, if it happens, is unfixable.
For a violinist or violist, it is quite easy to turn the page with the left hand–the chin and sholder hold up the instrument, and your hand is freed up to turn the page quickly. You also don’t need to use all of your fingers to hold the bow, so you could reach over with the right hand and use your middle and ring fingers to turn the page.
For wind players, we either xerox a page, pencil in enough notes at the bottom of the page to get us through the phrase, or if it’s not a crucial part, just leave out a couple notes. Some instruments like trumpet can get away with playing one-handed and turn the page while playing. String players routinely have one player turn pages while his/her stand partner continues playing. It’s done as a matter of course.
The strangest solution I’ve seen is on a particular part at the end of Stravinsky’s Firebird, where some players will tear the page horizontally across the middle so that they can play half the page, then turn the top half of the page over while still leaving the bottom half in place.
I’ve done pretty much that before - it sometimes happens with complex music and limited rehearsal time, which means that all players having the score makes it easier to get from one end to the other
Re. quartets - I’ve seen numerous occassions where an awkward turn is dealt with by an adjacent player turning the page.
My brother-in-law is a professional organist and regularly plays solo pieces that last for 20-30 minutes and require both hands and feet. You should see his music books. He gets those huge artists’ pads, photocopies music - sometimes shrinking it, sometimes not - and attaches the pages to the pad, so he can have 6 or 8 pages in front of him at once, and arrange page turns in those rare moments when one hand is free.
In orchestra string sections, the inside player must always turn before the end of a page. If this occurs during a complicated phrase, the outside player has to keep playing even while the page is being turned, and therefore must memorize the last couple of bars before the end of the page.
Among orchestral string players, there is not much full-on memorization. Sure, maybe a melody or principal solo, or some things that require all eyes completely on the conductor. But in general, we rely almost completely on the printed music.
