Sheet music
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Sheet music is a
The use of the term "sheet" is intended to differentiate written or printed forms of music from
Sheet music is the basic form in which Western
The term score is a common alternative (and more generic) term for sheet music, and there are several types of scores, as discussed below. The term score can also refer to
Elements
Title and credit
Sheet music from the 20th and 21st century typically indicates the title of the song or composition on a
If the
Title pages for songs may have a picture illustrating the characters, setting, or events from the lyrics. Title pages from instrumental works may omit an illustration, unless the work is program music which has, by its title or section names, associations with a setting, characters, or story.
Musical notation
The type of musical notation varies a great deal by genre or style of music. In most classical music, the melody and accompaniment parts (if present) are notated on the lines of a staff using round note heads. In classical sheet music, the staff typically contains:
- a
- a key signature indicating the key—for instance, a key signature with three sharps is typically used for the key of either A major or F♯ minor
- a time signature, which typically has two numbers aligned vertically with the bottom number indicating the note value that represents one beat and the top number indicating how many beats are in a bar—for instance, a time signature of 2
4 indicates that there are two quarter notes (crotchets) per bar.
Most songs and pieces from the Classical period (c. 1750) onward indicate the piece's tempo using an expression—often in Italian—such as Allegro (fast) or Grave (slow) as well as its dynamics (loudness or softness). The lyrics, if present, are written near the melody notes. However, music from the Baroque era (c. 1600–1750) or earlier eras may have neither a tempo marking nor a dynamic indication. The singers and musicians of that era were expected to know what tempo and loudness to play or sing a given song or piece due to their musical experience and knowledge. In the contemporary classical music era (20th and 21st century), and in some cases before (such as the Romantic period in German-speaking regions), composers often used their native language for tempo indications, rather than Italian (e.g., "fast" or "schnell") or added metronome markings (e.g., = 100 beats per minute).
These conventions of classical music notation, and in particular the use of English tempo instructions, are also used for sheet music versions of 20th and 21st century popular music songs. Popular music songs often indicate both the tempo and genre: "slow blues" or "uptempo rock". Pop songs often contain chord names above the staff using letter names (e.g., C Maj, F Maj, G7, etc.), so that an acoustic guitarist or pianist can improvise a chordal accompaniment.
In other styles of music, different musical notation methods may be used. In
Professional
Purpose and use
Sheet music can be used as a record of, a guide to, or a means to perform, a
In classical music, authoritative musical information about a piece can be gained by studying the written sketches and early versions of compositions that the composer might have retained, as well as the final autograph score and personal markings on proofs and printed scores.
Comprehending sheet music requires a special form of literacy: the ability to read
The skill of
Classical musicians playing
Handwritten or printed music is less important in other traditions of musical practice, however, such as
Although sheet music is often thought of as being a platform for new music and an aid to composition (i.e., the composer "writes" the music down), it can also serve as a visual record of music that already exists. Scholars and others have made transcriptions to render Western and non-Western music in readable form for study, analysis and re-creative performance. This has been done not only with folk or traditional music (e.g.,
Types
Modern sheet music may come in different formats. If a piece is composed for just one instrument or voice (such as a piece for a solo instrument or for a cappella solo voice), the whole work may be written or printed as one piece of sheet music. If an instrumental piece is intended to be performed by more than one person, each performer will usually have a separate piece of sheet music, called a part, to play from. This is especially the case in the publication of works requiring more than four or so performers, though invariably a full score is published as well. The sung parts in a vocal work are not usually issued separately today, although this was historically the case, especially before music printing made sheet music widely available.
Sheet music can be issued as individual pieces 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 given artist, etc.
When the separate instrumental and vocal parts of a musical work are printed together, the resulting sheet music is called a score. Conventionally, a score consists of musical notation with each instrumental or vocal part in vertical alignment (meaning that concurrent events in the notation for each part are arranged in parallel). The term score has also been used to refer to sheet music written for only one performer. The distinction between score and part applies when there is more than one part needed for performance.
Scores come in various formats.
Full scores, variants, and condensations
A full score is a large book showing the music of all instruments or voices in a composition lined up in a fixed order. It is large enough for a
A miniature score is like a full score but much reduced in size. It is too small for use in a performance by a conductor, but handy for studying a piece of music, whether it be for a large ensemble or a solo performer. A miniature score may contain some introductory remarks.
A study score is sometimes the same size as, and often indistinguishable from, a miniature score, except in name. Some study scores are
A piano score (or piano reduction) is a more or less literal transcription for piano of a piece intended for many performing parts, especially orchestral works; this can include purely instrumental sections within large vocal works (see vocal score immediately below). Such arrangements are made for either piano solo (two hands) or piano duet (one or two pianos, four hands). Extra small staves are sometimes added at certain points in piano scores for two hands to make the presentation more complete, though it is usually impractical or impossible to include them while playing.
As with vocal score (below), it takes considerable skill to reduce an orchestral score to such smaller forms because the reduction needs to be not only playable on the keyboard but also thorough enough in its presentation of the intended
While piano scores are usually not meant for performance outside of study and pleasure (Franz Liszt's concert transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies being one group of notable exceptions), ballets get the most practical benefit from piano scores because with one or two pianists they allow the ballet to do many rehearsals at a much lower cost, before an orchestra has to be hired for the final rehearsals. Piano scores can also be used to train beginning conductors, who can conduct a pianist playing a piano reduction of a symphony; this is much less costly than conducting a full orchestra. Piano scores of operas do not include separate staves for the vocal parts, but they may add the sung text and stage directions above the music.
A part is an extraction from the full score of a particular instrument's part. It is used by orchestral players in performance, where the full score would be too cumbersome. However, in practice, it can be a substantial document if the work is lengthy, and a particular instrument is playing for much of its duration.
Vocal scores
A
Piano-vocal scores serve as a convenient way for vocal soloists and choristers to learn the music and rehearse separately from the orchestra. The vocal score of a musical typically does not include the spoken dialogue, except for cues. Piano-vocal scores are used to provide piano accompaniment for the performance of operas, musicals and oratorios by amateur groups and some small-scale professional groups. This may be done by a single piano player or by two piano players. With some 2000s-era musicals, keyboardists may play synthesizers instead of piano.
The related but less common choral score contains the choral parts with reduced accompaniment.
The comparable organ score exists as well, usually in association with church music for voices and orchestra, such as arrangements (by later hands) of Handel's Messiah. It is like the piano-vocal score in that it includes staves for the vocal parts and reduces the orchestral parts to be performed by one person. Unlike the vocal score, the organ score is sometimes intended by the arranger to substitute for the orchestra in performance if necessary.
A collection of songs from a given musical is usually printed under the label vocal selections. This is different from the vocal score from the same show in that it does not present the complete music, and the piano accompaniment is usually simplified and includes the melody line.
Other types
A short score is a reduction of a work for many instruments to just a few staves. Rather than composing directly in full score, many composers work out some type of short score while they are composing and later expand the complete orchestration. An opera, for instance, may be written first in a short score, then in full score, then reduced to a vocal score for rehearsal. Short scores are often not published; they may be more common for some performance venues (e.g., band) than in others. Because of their preliminary nature, short scores are the principal reference point for those composers wishing to attempt a 'completion' of another's unfinished work (e.g. Movements 2 through 5 of Gustav Mahler's 10th Symphony or the third act of Alban Berg's opera Lulu).
An open score is a score of a polyphonic piece showing each voice on a separate staff. In Renaissance or Baroque keyboard pieces, open scores of four staves were sometimes used instead of the more modern convention of one staff per hand.[1] It is also sometimes synonymous with full score (which may have more than one part per staff).
In a close score, all voice parts are represented on the two major staffs (treble and bass staffs).
Scores from the Baroque period (1600–1750) are very often in the form of a
Popular music
A
A chord chart (or simply, chart) contains little or no melodic information at all but provides fundamental harmonic information. Some chord charts also indicate the rhythm that should be played, particularly if there is a syncopated series of "hits" that the arranger wants all of the rhythm section to perform. Otherwise, chord charts either leave the rhythm blank or indicate slashes for each beat.
This is the most common kind of written music used by professional
A
A tablature (or tab) is a special type of musical score – most typically for a solo instrument – which shows where to play the pitches on the given instrument rather than which pitches to produce, with rhythm indicated as well. Tablature is widely used in the 2000s for guitar and electric bass songs and pieces in popular music genres such as rock music and heavy metal music. This type of notation was first used in the late Middle Ages, and it has been used for keyboard (e.g., pipe organ) and for fretted string instruments (lute, guitar).[2]
Song sheets
Song sheets are the printed lyrics without musical notation. Academic studies of American music call these sheets songsters.[3]: 25 Over the first half of the 20th century, lyrics to songs were printed and sold individually, in collections on newspaper-sized sheets, combined into booklets, and in magazines.[3]: 53–54 Song sheets typically included photographs of famous entertainers associated with the song, as well as attributions to musical theater and films.[3]: 58
Song sheets were recognized as competition to sheet music by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1930, when a representative said, "Thousands now learn the popular melodies from the radio, the publishers state. With the lyrics available for five or ten cents and the strain known, impulse to buy sheet music is eliminated." While sheet music for a song might cost thirty or thirty-five cents, a song sheet typically sold for a nickel or a dime. Choral societies would buy a single copy of the sheet music for the pianist and then multiple song sheets for the singers.[3]: 55
When the lyrics are printed without permission from the
The first legitimate song sheet magazines began in 1934, and Lyle Engel's Song Hits which was first published in 1937 was successful for decades.[3]: 40–41 Song sheet magazines included advertisements, gossip columns, record reviews, and promotional biographies of celebrities.[3]: 69
History
Outside modern eurocentric cultures exists a wide variety of systems of musical notation, each adapted to the peculiar needs of the musical cultures in question, and some highly evolved classical musics do not use notation at all (or only in rudimentary forms as mnemonic aids) such as the khyal and dhrupad forms of Northern India. Western musical notation systems describe only music adapted to the needs of musical forms and instruments based on equal temperament, but are ill-equipped to describe musics of other types, such as the courtly forms of Japanese gagaku, Indian dhrupad, or the percussive music of ewe drumming. The infiltration of Western staff notation into these cultures has been described by the musicologist Alain Daniélou[4] and others as a process of cultural imperialism.[5]
Precursors to sheet music
A tablet from about 1250 BC shows a more developed form of notation.[7] Although the interpretation of the notation system is still controversial, it is clear that the notation indicates the names of strings on a lyre, the tuning of which is described in other tablets.[8] Although they are fragmentary, these tablets represent the earliest notated melodies found anywhere in the world.[8]
Ancient Greek musical notation was in use from at least the 6th century BC until approximately the 4th century AD; several complete compositions and fragments of compositions using this notation survive. The notation consists of symbols placed above text syllables. An example of a complete composition is the Seikilos epitaph, which has been variously dated between the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD.
In ancient Greek music, three hymns by
Western manuscript notation
Before the 15th century, Western music was written by hand and preserved in
Even after the advent of music printing in the mid-1400s, much music continued to exist solely in composers' hand-written manuscripts well into the 18th century.
Printing
15th century
There were several difficulties in translating the new
A common format for issuing multi-part, polyphonic music during the Renaissance was
The effect of printed music was similar to the effect of the printed word, in that information spread faster, more efficiently, at a lower cost, and to more people than it could through laboriously hand-copied manuscripts. It had the additional effect of encouraging amateur musicians of sufficient means, who could now afford sheet music, to perform. This in many ways affected the entire music industry. Composers could now write more music for amateur performers, knowing that it could be distributed and sold to the middle class.
This meant that composers did not have to depend solely on the patronage of wealthy aristocrats. Professional players could have more music at their disposal and they could access music from different countries. It increased the number of amateurs, from whom professional players could then earn money by teaching them. Nevertheless, in the early years, the cost of printed music limited its distribution. Another factor that limited the impact of printed music was that 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, giving them a monopoly. This was often an honour (and economic boon) granted to favoured court musicians or composers.
16th century
Mechanical plate engraving was developed in the late sixteenth century.[10] Although plate engraving had been used since the early fifteenth century for creating visual art and maps, it was not applied to music until 1581.[10] In this method, a mirror image of a complete page of music was engraved onto a metal plate. Ink was then applied to the grooves, and the music print was transferred onto paper. Metal plates could be stored and reused, which made this method an attractive option for music engravers. Copper was the initial metal of choice for early plates, but by the eighteenth century, pewter became the standard material due to its malleability and lower cost.[11]
Plate engraving was the methodology of choice for music printing until the late nineteenth century, at which point its decline was hastened by the development of photographic technology.[10] Nevertheless, the technique has survived to the present day and is still occasionally used by select publishers such as G. Henle Verlag in Germany.[12]
As musical composition increased in complexity, so too did the technology required to produce accurate musical scores. Unlike literary printing, which mainly contains printed words, music engraving communicates several different types of information simultaneously. To be clear to musicians, it is imperative that engraving techniques allow absolute precision. Notes of chords, dynamic markings, and other notation line up with vertical accuracy. If text is included, each syllable matches vertically with its assigned melody. Horizontally, subdivisions of beats are marked not only by their flags and beams, but also by the relative space between them on the page.[10] The logistics of creating such precise copies posed several problems for early music engravers, and have resulted in the development of several music engraving technologies.
19th century
In the 19th century, the music industry was dominated by sheet music publishers. In the United States, the sheet music industry rose in tandem with
The late-19th century saw a massive explosion of
20th century and early 21st century
In the late 20th and into the 21st century, significant interest has developed in representing sheet music in a computer-readable format (see
In 1998, virtual sheet music evolved further into what was to be termed digital sheet music, which for the first time allowed publishers to make copyright sheet music available for purchase online. Unlike their hard copy counterparts, these files allowed for manipulation such as instrument changes, transposition and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) playback. The popularity of this instant delivery system among musicians appears to be acting as a catalyst of new growth for the industry well into the foreseeable future.
An early computer notation program available for home computers was
Many software products for modern digital audio workstation and scorewriters for general personal computers support generation of sheet music from MIDI files, by a performer playing the notes on a MIDI-equipped keyboard or other MIDI controller or by manual entry using a mouse or other computer device.
By 1999, a system and method for coordinating music display among players in an orchestra was patented by Harry Connick Jr.[14] It is a device with a computer screen which is used to show the sheet music for the musicians in an orchestra instead of the more commonly used paper. Connick uses this system when touring with his big band, for instance.[15] With the proliferation of wireless networks and iPads similar systems have been developed. In the classical music world, some string quartet groups use computer screen-based parts. There are several advantages to computer-based parts. Since the score is on a computer screen, the user can adjust the contrast, brightness and even the size of the notes, to make reading easier. In addition, some systems will do "page turns" using a foot pedal, which means that the performer does not have to miss playing music during a page turn, as often occurs with paper parts.
Of special practical interest for the general public is the
Some scorewriter computer programs have a feature that is very useful for composers and arrangers: the ability to "play back" the notated music using synthesizer sounds or virtual instruments. Due to the high cost of hiring a full symphony orchestra to play a new composition, before the development of these computer programs, many composers and arrangers were only able to hear their orchestral works by arranging them for piano, organ or string quartet. While a scorewiter program's playback will not contain the nuances of a professional orchestra recording, it still conveys a sense of the tone colors created by the piece and of the interplay of the different parts.
See also
- List of best-selling sheet music
- Choirbook, used for choral music during the Middle Ages and Renaissance
- Eye movement in music reading
- List of Online Digital Musical Document Libraries
- Manuscript paper
- Musical notation
- Partbook, contains one part, common during the Renaissance and Baroque
- Music stand, a device that holds sheet music in position
- Scorewriter – music notation software
- Shorthand for orchestra instrumentation
References
- ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5.
- ^ Hawkins, John (1776). A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (First ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 237. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
- ^ OCLC 742381178.
- ISBN 8186569332.[page needed]
- JSTOR 43615564.
- S2CID 163942248.
- ^ Kilmer, Anne D. (21 April 1965). Güterbock, Hans G.; Jacobsen, Thorkild (eds.). "The Strings of Musical Instruments: their Names, Numbers, and Significance" (PDF). Assyriological Studies. 16. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 261–268. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-10-23.
- ^ JSTOR 737674.
- ^ "Muziek voor luit[manuscript]". lib.ugent.be. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
- ^ a b c d King, A. Hyatt (1968). Four Hundred Years of Music Printing. London: Trustees of the British Museum.
- ^ Wolfe, Richard J. (1980). Early American Music Engraving and Printing. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
- ^ "Music Engraving". G. Henle Publishers. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
- ^ "America's Music Publishing Industry – The story of Tin Pan Alley". The Parlor Songs Academy.
- ^ U.S. patent 6,348,648
- ^ "Harry Connick Jr. Uses Macs at Heart of New Music Patent". The Mac Observer. 2002-03-07. Retrieved 2011-11-15.
External links
Archives of scanned works
- IMSLP – Public domain sheet music library of PDF files, International Music Score Library Project
- Music for the Nation – American sheet music archive, Library of Congress
- Historic American Sheet Music – Duke University Libraries Digital Collections, more than 3000 pieces of sheet music published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.
- Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection – sheet music project of The Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University.
- Pacific Northwest Sheet Music Collection, University of Washington Libraries
- IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana, sheet music from the Indiana University Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indiana Historical Society.
- Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki) – free sheet music archive with emphasis on choral music; contains works in PDFand also other formats.
- Mutopia project – free sheet music archive in which all pieces have been newly typeset with PDF and PostScript.
- Project Gutenberg – sheet music section of Finale or MusicXMLformat.