It would be very interesting to me, and I imagine to others, to occasionally peek over a player’s shoulder to see what he’s playing. To take a look at his music. The directors of symphony broadcasts always seem to do the same old things, but it I can imagine that spending some time looking at the musical page could bring big benefits. They could even highlight the line as a soloist played it, maybe even doing something with graphics so that new viewers could begin to understand what’s going on. So - why don’t they ever show the actual musical notation of the players? I’m a musician, and I would appreciate seeing the score from time to time, myself. Even a quick peek over the conductor’s shoulder would be fascinating for viewers if it were graphically explained to them. Maybe show how one section is prominent. There’s a great deal they could do. Is it all about copyright? How stupid.
There’s nothing stopping the audience in the hall from bringing a score along and following it, but only occassionally do you see someone doing it. This suggests to me that there’s only a small minority of people who would be interested in doing this with a broadcast. What is done by the BBC, however, is (optional) programme notes on digital TV, working rather like subtitles, talking the viewerthrough the structure of the piece, and also taking opportunities to put it in a historical/artistic/social/etc. context.
In any case, I doubt much detail could be shown from a score, at a speed many viewers will be able to take in, in real time.
As a musician, I’m sure you’ve seen a conductor’s score of, say, a Brahms symphony. The average music lover can’t read music very well and one look at a conductor’s score of Brahms would probably cause them to faint!
Think PDQ Bach, where all the notes fell to the bottom of the page!
Perhaps the music of the principal violinist could be shown, if it didn’t interfere with the artist playing.
I do know that when I was playing clarinet with the symphony I sure wouldn’t have wanted a camera over my shoulder.
I’ll argue that if done artfully enough, it could be used to teach people what music looks like, how it works, and even how orchestral music is put together. And close up views of the music could certainly be taken from unobtrusive distances with telephoto lenses. I can envision the spot where, say, the horn call from Till plays. And instead of showing the hornist, playing, you could show the music. You could even highlight each note as it played. Think about a deft use of the telestrator from Monday Night Football, for example. Or a line of color, underlining the melody as it’s being played. You could even do that looking over the conductor’s shoulder. Imagine, say, the Mahler 1st, with the different sections of the orchestra being highlighted on the score when they play. It could surely be done, and it would be soooo instructive. Music is, after all, a language. It could be taught/explained - at least something about it - by some version of what I’m proposing. You have a chance to explain and teach someone something. Use that chance.
I didn’t think CC meant literally stick a camera over the players’ shoulders, that would be hideous for those involved (if not physically impossible), and unlikely to illuminate anything, other than the enourmous amount of annotations made to music. I thought this was more metaphorically, about displaying musical examples specifically laid out on screen. Could be wrong, though.
HIDEOUS!!!
And my reaction would be mirrored by many many other viewers. Don’t be clever and flashy, just because the technology exists, there’s also the need to step back and ask what is already being done well, and of that what could be done even better.
Yes, of course, there’s all sorts of applications of this kind of thing in teaching, and I’d happily put them to use. The time and place, however, is not when people are watching (for pleasure) a broadcast of a concert. You can’t force education on people, nor sneak it upon them.
I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, I’m tempted to hijack the thread with a major argument on this point 
Had a similar reaction here.
I’m all for teaching. But showing musical scores to the uninitiated would probably bore them or scare them away. Music presented on a screen as the music plays belongs in a classroom. Now THAT’S a good idea.
I forgot to add my perfect example of why you don’t want this on camera. Prior to the first rehearsal of the Firebird with a youth orchestra, I was having an unrelated conversation with the conductor, and happened to pick up the top copy of the hired parts and start glancing through it, thinking what particular points I’d need to work with them on. At the bottom of one page, in inch-high scrawl:
“TURN THE FUCKING PAGE NOW!”
They all laughed at Leonard Bernstein, too. Well, many felt that he was cheapening the experience. And think of all the people who learned about music from his talks. “Hideous”? I don’t think so, but that’s what makes for horseracing. However, I wouldn’t be terribly concerned about turning off the listeners/watchers. The people who will sit and watch part of, or an entire symphony program on PBS are not very likely to resent or reject attempts to help them understand the music better. I’ll peddle my idea elsewhere and see what happens. I don’t really have an answer yet to my question.
I might understand better if I knew more specifically what it was you think could be taught this way.
-FrL-
Well, I think the idea has merit—maybe not so much on broadcasts as offered as an option on DVDs. I remember having listening assignments for the music class I took in college, where we were supposed to follow along with the score. What you’re talking abut could be a snazzier, more user-friendly version of that.
I’d particularly like to see them show the score of Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 1, complete with comments to the horn player.
Actually, I think sub- or super-titles on a symphony broadcast, showing one instrument’s part, with each note subtly highlighted as it’s played, would be amazingly cool. And it wouldn’t be very intrusive: you still get the video footage of the orchestra itself, but quietly scrolling along the bottom would be one or two staffs showing a single melodic line, labeled “First Violin” or “Flute” or “Percussion” or whatever.
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I don’t think this would be very noticeable or distracting to people who don’t read music: it’s just a little meaningless graphic blahblah scrolling along the bottom.
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The part shown could change according to which instrument is most prominent in the piece at that time, or has a special theme, or whatever. I would love to see a virtuoso line shown on the screen at the same time as it’s actually being played, without having to invest in or flip through a whole conductor’s score.
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As noted, it would boost musical-notation literacy among those who are already a little bit familiar with it but seldom see it.
Yes. They should do this. Show me the petition and I’ll sign it.
Hilarious! I got in trouble in college for “editorializing” in one of my parts. Trying to pick out passages I needed to work on one of the more difficult ones got labeled “this is a bitch.” Teacher didn’t take to well to my characterization. 
Strangely, my teacher once wrote over a particularly awkward bar in a piece I was working on: ‘the bitch’.
IMHO, it’s a technical issue.
Until the advent of 70-inch HDTV screens of the past several years, it was never technically possible to achieve the high-resolution necessary to “scroll” a musical score at the bottom of a TV screen, a la the stock-ticker on MSNBC or something.
Those whom have seen musical scores (or conducted, as I) know that oftentimes on conductor’s scores, the bars and notes are printed fantastically small, and there are seperate lines for 1st violin, 2nd violin, and every single instrument of the entire friggin’ orchestra. Showing the entire score in a format that was actually readable to a TV viewer at home was technically impossible until just a few years ago.
Think of those ol’ Lawrence Welk shows from the '50s and ‘60s, originally broadcast through the airwaves on 19-inch black&white TVs using rabbit-ear antennae and often snowy reception. If you squinted hard enough, you might be able to make out what fingering the 1st Clarinetist was using on “Let Me Call you Sweetheart,” but you certainly weren’t going to be able to read the engraving on his tie pin!! The best old’ time TV could do was the “bouncing ball” over the lyrics at the bottom.
Unless you omitted showing the orchestra at all and just showed the score, which defeats the whole purpose, I suppose. And would have made ol’ Mr. Welk rather sore.
Musical scores don’t work well on TV for much the same reason hockey doesn’t translate well to TV (because the puck is too small and too fast to register well on TV; remember what a farce it was when the NHL tried to broadcast hockey games with “enhanced” graphics with a lighted puck?). In the same way, music scores sometimes move too fast and with too much fine-print to make meaningful representation on normal TVs practical.
THAT SAID, with the advent of today’s modern high-def large screen plasma TVs, the possiblity of actually making it work doesn’t sound as crazy as it once was.
That’s all IMHO, anyway, as someone who has actually conducted a score.
Other thoughts:
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Showing just a melody line often wouldn’t tell the viewer much at all. Seeing numerous parts at once would be necessary, hitting the technical wall shallora describes.
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Creating a custom-made bare-bones score would be a lot of work for a single broadcast. You’d be re-engraving a lot of music, and it’s both a time-consuming task and one that’s difficult to really do well (i.e. don’t just stick it into Sibelius and accept the default output!)
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Yeah, copyright would become an issue. Music publishers are still stuck in the 19th century in this respect, they make the RIAA look cutting edge.
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A virtuous part would fly by at such a speed, the only impact it would have would be to look flashy. That’s the soloist’s job
There would no doubt be some music that wouldn’t lend itself to such treatment. But there is also a lot of music that would, and the intention would be to introduce to the non-literate music lovers a bit of how music works, how it’s put together, and what people are looking at when they’re playing. When it comes to looking at a score, I envision a sort of lightly colored overlay that might indicate which section of the orchestral score correlates to what we’re hearing at any particular time. It might even slowly unfold as the music plays. You could have a visual representation of the sounds at the same time you’re hearing it. I mentioned Mahler’s 1st above, because there are so many places where one section of the orchestra is featured, even as others are tacit or quitely present. If one page of score were visible, and if the horn section were lightly highlighted, and then the winds, that would show people how a conductor’s score shows him everything that’s happening. If a violin player had a camera over his shoulder (at a great distance, with a telephoto lens) a view of the page might have a light red line running underneath the music that he’s playing, so that the correspondence could be made between the squiggles on the page and the sounds of the fiddle section. I think the percussion section would be particularly interesting to show - the bass drum beats, cymbal crashes, etc. There’s no limit to what a creative person might do with such a thing.
I think maybe the difficulty is that you’re describing ways that a musically-literate person approaches a complex score, and trying to work back from this to show those unfamiliar with the process how you go about doing it. The trouble is, this involves a massive simplification, because it’s simply not possible for a novice (for want of a better word) to take in everything. This simplification is both subjective and very much selective, which is quite the opposite of what the listener should be doing in order to fully experience the music.
You may be right, **Gorilla, **but as a teacher I’ve always felt that one of my main tasks is to take something that’s complex or sophisticated and simplify and distil it down to some level that is accessible to newcomers. I do believe it can be done. Even with music. Maybe some level of explanation or support would, in fact, be necessary, too, but unless the limitations are primarily legal, I think those who broadcast these events are missing an opportunity.