Page:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/118

106 by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, training himself to read all four parts simultaneously, sometimes merely trying to hear mentally the successive harmonies as he looks at the score, but most often playing the parts on the piano. After mastering four voices in this way, he is ready to begin on one of the slow movements of a Haydn symphony.

In examining an orchestral score, it will be noted at once that the string parts are always together at the bottom of the page, while the wood-wind material is at the top. Since the strings furnish the most important parts of the harmonic structure for so much of the time, our amateur will at first play only the string parts, with the possible addition of the flute, oboe, and certain other non-transposed voices a little later on. But as he gains facility he will gradually be able to take in all the parts and to include at least a sort of summary of them all in his playing. The student is advised to purchase a number of the Haydn and Mozart symphonies either in the form of pocket editions or in the regular conductor's score, and to practise on these until he feels quite sure of himself. By this time he will be ready to try his hand at a modern score, which will be found not only to contain parts for more instruments, but many more divided parts for the strings. Meanwhile, he is, of course, taking every possible opportunity of attending concerts given by symphony orchestras, and is begging, borrowing, or buying the scores of as many of the compositions as possible, studying them in advance, and taking keen delight in following them at the performance; perhaps even imagining himself to be the conductor, and having visions of changes in interpretation that he would like to make if he were directing. As the result of several years of this sort of study, even an amateur may get to the point where he is able to conduct an orchestra from a full score with some degree of skill, and hence with some little satisfaction both to himself and to the performers.