This may belong in CS, but it is a general question about music, so…
Just watched the fine movie Eroica in which Beethoven takes the scores of his new Symphony No. 3 to a court orchestra, passes them out and the musicians immediately start playing this complex piece.
No rehearsal, no explanation from Ludwig how he wants it played (although he does interrupt a few times to make comments) and they do a splendid job of performing.
I think this is called “sight reading,” but no matter. Is it possible for the members of an orchestra to play a piece like this so perfectly the first time, without any rehearsals?
On a lighter note, this reminds me of a wonderful ad I saw years ago where a record company was offering a package deal of “nine of Beethoven’s most famous symphonies…” Did they know something we dont?
It is possible for an orchestra to play a piece cold like that, provided the orchestra restricts its membership to musicians who are expert sightreaders. And these days, that’s pretty much assumed as part of professional musicianship. Not sure if things were quite so cut & dried in Beethoven’s day, though. Today’s music schools place great emphasis on technical perfection.
However, there will always be differences in interpretation between a player or players and a conductor. A little of that won’t get you thrown out of the hall. But it doesn’t take too many muffed notes or rhythms to do the same. There are always more machine-perfect players to fill your chair.
It’s kind of hard to answer your question. I can think of several similar situations that might help answer it, though:
[ol][li]If you gave a copy of Eroica to the modern-day Chicago Symphony Orchestra, they’d probably do a fine job of reading it. But these are professional musicians, and Eroica is a famous piece, so it’s highly unlikely that any of them are unfamiliar with the piece already.[/li][li]If you wrote a brand-new piece that was likeEroica (in terms of compositional style) and gave it to the modern-day Chicago Symphony Orchestra, or even a good-quality amateur orchestra, I would be surprised if they weren’t able to play it. The melodic lines are fairly straightforward, there aren’t any meter changes to trip you up, and generally the parts aren’t terribly difficult.[/li][li]I’m not sure what Opal would do with a copy of Eroica.[/li][li]If Beethoven gave the first copy of Eroica to an orchestra of the day… well, there you can debate things. A large part of why a modern-day orchestra would find an Eroica-like piece simple to play is because the Romantic movement has already happened; as a musician, I know roughly what to expect when I’m handed a piece of Beethoven or Brahms, and so it’s easier to get back on track should I get confused. [/li][/ol]The question, then, is whether Eroica was a sufficient departure from what came before it to sow confusion in the ranks. I would guess not; while Eroica is often viewed as “the first Romantic piece” (or so says Wiki), it’s not a huge departure from, say, his Second Symphony. Certainly it wasn’t a Rite of Spring-level departure from what had come before. But, of course, this is my modern-day perspective on things; it’s possible that a musician of the time would have found the piece difficult, shocking, and new.
I didn’t see the movie but I’ll tell you that movies nearly never depict reality, not for music, not for anything.
That said, you could get a credible performance on a cold read-through of a straightforward piece. I have never played in an orchestra but I have played in jazz groups and a couple of musicals. Even in college I was amazed at how well the jazz ensemble as a group, mostly music majors (which I was not), could read a piece cold and have it sound decent. For studio work, there is great pressure on musicians to perform with few takes*, because time is money. So some commercial tracks could be done in as little as one take. So professional musicians can read this stuff great the first time.
But an orchestral piece is complex and shaped by the conductor over lots of rehearsals. You would not get a performance worthy of recording on a cold read-through.
*Guitar Player magazine used to publish a column by premier studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco who would publish snippets of scores that he had to read cold. All handwriten, and hard to read much less play.
It’s a bit anecdotal, but on the UK TV show ‘Pop Idol’, one singer wanted to do a version of a Queen song with a Gospel choir as the backing.
It sounded terrific, and the singer said he couldn’t believe how fast the choir picked up the music.
As one who was once part of the professional Hollywood (CA) studio scene, I can say that an orchestra of the best musicians can indeed perform works adequately that have never been seen or rehearsed before. Obviously, the complexity of the work is a factor, and a first-time runthrough might not have the interpretation or polish that further rehearsal would provide, but it can be done if you have top-notch cats.
An entire orchestra is expensive to hire for an additional hour, and even 1 minute over the time limit requires them, by union regs, to be paid for the entire hour. I have been in filmscore sessions where only 3 minutes remained in the regular session, a new piece of music was handed out and the conductor said, “Let’s go for it in one take.” It usually resulted in a usable take.
And that is one of main differences between amateur musicians and pros. In my middle school class, we will rehearse a piece for months. In high school, it might be weeks. By college it’s days, or less. A professional orchestra may run through once, then record or perform.
An amatuer practices until he gets it right. A professional practices until he/she never gets it wrong.
When I was in high school, our band and orchestra would go to regional contests wherein one of the things that had to be done was sightreading. The difficulty of the piece that was handed to you depended on what class you’d entered the contest in - D was the lowest, if IIRC, and AA the highest. There were a couple of high quality wind orchestras there that did a mighty fine job sightreading some fairly complex pieces.
I personally suck at it, and that’s one of the reasons I did not pursue my instrument further after high school.
I haven’t seen the movie, but what you’re describing is perfectly plausible, provided (1) the orchestra is reasonably competent, (2) somebody indicates the tempo to start, and (3) the music is straightforward and doesn’t involve any tempo changes or fluctuations.
I’m a musician and I’ve seen this scenario played out countless times, particularly when the conductor isn’t particularly good or easy to follow.
What people have said about orchestras also goes for choirs. A good choir (professional or well-trained amateur) should be able to read the music pretty quickly. When we do recordings in our choir (for ads or soundtracks), we’re usually given only one rehearsal to come to grips with the music. Sometimes we don’t even get that.
In my classification, we take the band into a room and they are given a piece that they (and I) have never seen before. I then get seven minutes to teach them everything I can about the music. Neither the students nor I can reproduce the music in any way on an instrument or any other device. At the end of seven minutes, we play the piece cold. Trust me, that’s a lot of stress on a twelve year-old. We do pretty well at it, though.
no, really. The instructor for our group was working with us on sight reading, and at one point he put on a tape. The first thing on it sounded like a train wreck – wrong notes everywhere, different instruments on different tempos, etc. The second piece was a nearly note-perfect version of what was obviously the same piece as the first. According to the instructor, both were played by Doc Severinsen’s Tonight Show orchestra; the first version was their first, sight-read pass through, while the second was their second pass.
with a Gospel choir as the backing.