# How hard can it be?



## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Why did great singers like Pinza and Pavarotti never learn to read music?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

That’s news to me  Shows how much know about those singers. You can go pretty far, going by only by ear, one note at a time I guess.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It's important to notice what operas they sang - primarily Italian of the 19th c - the ones with great melodies, arias, choruses etc which are far easier to learn by rote than say Wozzeck, The Dead City, Lady Macbeth or even the Wagner operas. A lot of these singers grew up listening to this music in concert, on radio, or records and they memorized it that way. Add a rehearsal pianist and they could do it. Why learn to read music if you didn't need to? I can't imagine doing it, but I've been reading music for 60 years and I don't even think about it. There have been plenty of musicians who were quite successful and never learned: Irving Berlin for one. Glen Campbell, one of the great country/pop guitarists and singers another. Danny Kaye had moderate success as a conductor and couldn't read a not.


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## licorice stick (Nov 24, 2014)

They were too busy making money and didn't have the intellectual curiosity to sightread or sit in a library and read scores.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

David Phillips said:


> Why did great singers like Pinza and Pavarotti never learn to read music?


I did some info and about Pavarotti and it is false, rumours spread by the anti Richard Bonynge camp, anything to disgrace him.
My godfather knows the man very well from his long time job at Decca/ Universal and Mr. Bonynge just laugh out loud, "Not again" where his words.


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Pugg said:


> I did some info and about Pavarotti and it is false, rumours spread by the anti Richard Bonynge camp, anything to disgrace him.
> My godfather knows the man very well from his long time job at Decca/ Universal and Mr. Bonynge just laugh out loud, "Not again" where his words.







Bonynge catagorically states in this interview that Pavarotti could not read music.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

This is a bit offtopic but I would like if someone could clarify what "reading music" actually means, regardless of the truthiness of rumors about Pavarotti.

I am very familiar with music notation. I know how the pitches and durations are represented in note system. Even though I don't play any instrument, I could learn to play a SIMPLE tune on a keyboard instrument just by looking at notes.
I have never studied "reading music"... All of my knowledge about music notation comes from elementary school. In my country it's a part of the regular school curriculum, to teach pupils music notation.

However, I don't know to play any instrument, let alone play it just by looking at notes. Even in my previous example of a simple tune, I would need to learn it, part by part, note by note, and only then I could "play" it... But to look at it and start playing immediately... no way.

Also, there's no way I could sing a melody (either aloud or in my mind) just by looking at notes.
To be able to sing it, I would need first to play it on a keyboard instrument, hear how it sounds, and only then I'd be able to sing it, whistle it, or whatever.

So I am a bit puzzled by the real meaning of the concept of "reading music" ?

While I am perfectly literate about music notation and understand it, I am incapable of using it to produce music immediately either by singing, imagining in my mind, or playing it.

So, according to your definition, do I know to read music?

Also, how is reading music taught? What is the main difficulty in it? I think it's reasonable to believe that Pavarotti knows reading music at least in a way that I do. So, if he does it, what would be a difficulty for someone with so much musical talent like him to go from there (passive knowledge) to the ability to sing by just looking at notes?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

David Phillips said:


> Why did great singers like Pinza and Pavarotti never learn to read music?


It is not necessary for all singers to read music in order to learn their parts. Pinza learned his by ear and would listen to his part being played on the piano and then be able to sing it accurately. That takes more talent to learn roles and retain them than by simply reading them off the page. With Pavarotti, he could have learned his roles the same way, that is if it's true that he was unable to read music. Not all famous musicians read music. The famous jazz genius Charlie Parker was unable to read music. He did everything by ear and there's a certain freedom by not being tied to the literal music page. Whether one learns a part off the page or by ear, there's still memorization involved and that's what matters. Whether Pavarotti read music or not, it did not appear to hold back him back with his vocal training and learning roles. He had tremendous natural ability.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Yes, you can read music, but at a limited, simple level. It's no different from reading English. At first you go slowly - sounding out words, not knowing some definitions, but with practice you get better at it and eventually you cannot NOT read. When you see written words in the language you know, you automatically read it without effort.

That's how music is for me: when I see it automatically read it in the sense that I immediately get the rhythms, the pitches, and in an orchestral score even the timbres. Sometimes in more complex music the harmonies are missing or take a lot longer. It's a skill that can be taught. How?

In most music schools there is a course prospective musicians take called Sight Singing and it's exactly what it sounds like: you open a book with music and sing it at sight without using any instrumental crutch. It starts with simple tunes, folk songs, etc that have easy, small intervals, and usually in nice keys. And it progresses from there until you can sight sing 12-tone rows. If you study conducting you're going to wind up working on score reading where you open a full orchestral score and learn to play it at the piano. It's hard - you have to read parts for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, 2 violin staves, viola, cello, bass and somehow get your fingers to play the correct notes with the correct rhythms - and some of those winds aren't written in concert pitch. Is this possible to do? Yes, but it takes a lot of hard work. Having proficiency on the keyboard is essential before you even start. Your brain has to work on overtime. And you do not start with Mahler, Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky! I started with early Haydn and Mozart and progressed from there and I'm not very good at it. There have been some conductors (George Szell) who was a master at doing it and expected what few students he took to be able to do it. Of all the conductors I know and play with, there's only one who can do it. Most of the hack maestros can't do it at all, and most of them have poor sight reading skills, too. I think it's because music schools have dumbed down their requirements.

One last thing: none of this is easy and can be learned fast - but the earlier you start the easier. When I was a kid the public schools used to teach singing in the classroom. At my elementary school, all of my teachers could play piano and we had pianos in each room and at least twice a week we had "music" time. We had song books along with Dick and Jane, Arithmetic, Spelling, Geography and such. Those days are sadly long gone. That's one of the reasons why Americans can't sing anymore. Go to any church if you doubt it.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Isn't the score a really significant guide to interpretation? If they don't read the score how can they interpret the music? Pavarotti sang Wagner . . .


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

mbh has the right idea about reading music....it is a skill which can be readily learned....you must translate the note symbols into interval relationships that you have learned by ear. sight-singing is invaluable, and relates directly to sight-reading on any instrument...
once you learn to recognize the intervals, then the note patterns, it automatically plugs into your ear - ie - you notice the written notes are in the pattern of a major, scale, a minor scale, a major arpeggio, chromatic scale, etc, etc, to groupings of increasing complexity....good sight readers do not read note by note - no way - they read the groups of notes, and these can become quite involved and complex....but you don't start with those...you start with simple melodies, simple tunes, and you begin to read the voice leading, and predictable patterns of the melodies.
I knew several people who could sight-sing atonal, or 12 tone music at sight - some of these people had perfect pitch, which is certainly an advantage - but some just had great relative pitch - they could produce the intervals at sight, even if there were no recognizable pattern evident..
When I taught instrumental music, I required my students to learn to sight read - each class session, they could increase their grade one notch if they aced the sight-reading - the rules were as folows:
1. correct pitches
2. correct rhythms
3. steady tempo
4. no stopping
I was not concerned with dynamics or articulation as such - but rather correct pitches, rhythm, steady tempo.
At first, the kids messed it up - stopped,failed to keep steady, etc - but before long they got it down - they wanted that grade!! they were up to the challenge....with the best students, before long, I had to present some pretty tough examples to stump them. once they figured it out - the incessant drilling on scales and arpeggios suddenly made sense to them....they had started to read music in note groups, recognizable patterns....


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Isn't the score a really significant guide to interpretation? If they don't read the score how can they interpret the music? Pavarotti sang Wagner . . .


Yes, indeed. if you can read the score, you can develop your own interpretation, based upon the notes printed in the score....the score is the "blueprint" of the entire musical structure.
it is possible to interpret without reading the score - but you are totally dependent upon a coach, to teach you the part by rote. or - you may have a recording of the piece, and just memorize the part thru mimicry....this is shaky, however, and under performance pressure mistakes will inevitably be made.
for many years, I played in pit orchestras for musical theater shows - all the standard Broadway shows....often the leads were trained as actors, not musicians, and learned their musical parts by rote....we always had to be on the alert for mistakes - extra beats added/left out, too many/not enough beats rest, notes held too long, not long enough, wrong entrances....of course, you have to go with the lead singer...with one well-known principal, we actually had a daily betting pool about how many beats rest he would take between entrances - it could vary anywhere from 2 to 7!!


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Isn't the score a really significant guide to interpretation? If they don't read the score how can they interpret the music? Pavarotti sang Wagner . . .


Short answer: yes.
Long answer: The score is only part of the story. Music notation isn't perfect nor capable of indicating the vast amount of nuance and subtlety that composers are often looking for. Tradition with a big T is also quite important. Many operas are performed in a way that isn't in the score, but we know it's correct because the composer himself directed or conducted and made it clear that's what he wanted done. His acolytes and followers passed that tradition, like an oral history, on to the next generation. As time goes on we seem to be losing some of those nuggets of wisdom. WW II really damaged a lot of that history, too. There are many performers today who want to go back to the source material, the score, and build from there scrubbing away the "dirt and grime" of decades of performance practice. Sometimes it is refreshing and you listen anew. But often it backfires. So yes, start with the score, but there's a lot more to it. I recently played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with a young, inexperienced, arrogant conductor who insisted on playing it AS WRITTEN. Anyone who has played it knows how to play the big tune part: slow measures then subito faster , then back to slow. They're not written that way, but that's how Gershwin did it! So stupid jerk conductor does it all slow to the frustration of those of us who had played it many times before. Traditions matter.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The writing is only part of a performance of an opera. A singer has to act and memorize blocking. In the performance itself, all that has to be committed to memory. If a person has a very good mind for memorizing and can afford to hire a piano player to help him learn new roles, I don't see any reason why they can't get by without reading music.

Bix Beiderbecke was one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time and he played in Whiteman's band without being able to read music. Some people just have natural ears for learning music without having it written down. A conductor would need to be able to read music for sure though. You can't wing it through that much repertoire.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Heck148 said:


> mbh has the right idea about reading music....it is a skill which can be readily learned....you must translate the note symbols into interval relationships that you have learned by ear.


Me, I could never learn to sight sing even the simplest of tunes, because I can't work out how to do what you describe above: translate the notes into intervals. There is simply no clear pattern, or at least none that I could discover. Of course it can still be done (after all, thousands have managed the trick over the centuries), but it is more akin to learning Chinese ideograms than the alphabet. And thus I would not say it is a skill that can "readily" be learned. Learning to sing even simple folk songs at sight will take months or years of hours of daily study and practice.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Maria Callas would have had no patience with a singer who didn't care to read music. She was a well-trained musician who played the piano, and considered the score the essential first step in learning a role and the ultimate point of reference from which any interpretation should take off. She called the process of studying the score and reproducing it literally "straightjacketing," which, once mastered, allowed a musician to proceed to interpret what's written with as much imagination as she could while remaining firmly guided by the composer.

Listening to Callas while following a score is an impressive and enlightening experience. Musical precision and expression coincide, detail by detail, as they do with few opera singers, vindicating the integrity and wisdom of her approach. Everything is guided by knowledge and emotional intelligence. Nothing is ever sloppy or approximate. Every dynamic, every slur, every accent indicated by the composer is not merely observed but is transformed into a vehicle of meaning. A performer who can't read a score is going to have a struggle obtaining such a result, and I can't imagine anyone doing it. Certainly Pavarotti didn't.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

The biggest reason why I wish I could really read music is because that would also imply that I could write it down.
Sometimes it happens that I think of a new interesting tune, but I can't correctly write it down as a score.


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## jenspen (Apr 25, 2015)

Heck148 said:


> Yes, indeed. if you can read the score, you can develop your own interpretation, based upon the notes printed in the score....the score is the "blueprint" of the entire musical structure.


The young Pavarotti had the most beautiful silver trumpet of a voice I've ever heard. But I've been listening to another, somewhat older, famous lyric tenor whose voice I also love and whose studies were interrupted by WWII and five years of army service. He took up his studies again in his mid-30s and his subsequent career shows just what a lyric tenor who can read a score is able to take on - Puccini (but he thought that should be left to Italian tenors), Mozart, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Monteverdi, Mussorgsky (he learnt the role of the Prince in 24 hours), Walton, Tippett, Schoenberg, Bizet, Massenet, Elgar, Mahler, Britten, Schubert ....

not to forget Handel:


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