Score Reading: A Key to the Music Experience [Paperback]

Michael Dickreiter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

Score reading provides insights into the musical structure of a work that are difficult to obtain from merely listening. Many listeners and amateurs derive great pleasure from following a performance with score in hand to help them better understand the intricacies of what they are hearing. This guide includes practice examples of increasing difficulty taken from scores of well-known works from various periods.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The technical is overlaid with informative and easy-to-read history lessons on scores, orchestras, and conductors. -- Library Journal , October 15, 2000

About the Author

Michael Dickreiter Michael Dickreiter has earned a Tonmeister (sound engineer) diploma from Detmold Music Academy and a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University. He is an instructor at the School for Radio Technique in Nuremberg and the author of several books on sound recording techniques, acoustics, and musical instruments.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 266 pages
• Publisher: Amadeus Press (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574670565
• ISBN-13: 978-1574670561
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #287,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One-stop-shopping for orchestral information, February 16, 2001

By 

E. Koehler (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Score Reading: A Key to the Music Experience (Paperback)

This book belongs in the hands of every aspiring orchestral musician, conductor, and avocational music-lover. Ambitious high-school students and conservatory undergraduates will especially appreciate the clarity and concision with which Dickreiter (through Pauly's fine translation) illuminates the labyrinth of abbreviations, symbols and page layout details for deciphering orchestral scores. Best of all, the book answers most basic questions about instrumentation (including foreign terminology, clefs and transpositions), performance practice and history, without forcing the reader to hunt down the information in several other sources.

Musicians searching for practice material in reducing scores at the piano will not find it in this book, but they will find a handy reference with a sound review of orchestral history and instrumentation. Aspiring conductors will find a valuable introduction to their craft and all readers will appreciate the clarity of the text which conveys information without the baggage of elitist condescension or that chatty hand-holding which bloats many mass market "how to" or "dummies" books. Several of the score examples employ a format (found in the Norton Scores) that highlights prominent melodic lines with gray shading. This illustrates the dynamics of score reading very clearly for novices.

The chapters are as follows: 1) Introduction, 2) Types of Scores, 3) The Look of a Score, 4) Scores and Their History, 5) Reading a Score - Hearing a Score, 6) Examples for Practicing Score Reading, 7) Orchestras and Conductors, 8) Instrumentation and Score Reading: Suggestions for Further Reading.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Score Reading Book, March 10, 2001

By 

"rthone" (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Score Reading: A Key to the Music Experience (Paperback)

As a Composition and Conducting major, it's a nice, well-written book which reveals a way how to you read a score while listening to it. For real Score Reading purposes ("hacking the Orchestral Score on the piano), I wouldn't recommend it so much because although it consists of excerpts, it's not practical enough because of the format. Probably di Lassus, Bach Chorales and later the "Kunst der Fuge" are still the best way to improve your reading of the clefs before you can start reading a full score using the clefs for the transposition. For everybody who's not a conducting major, it could be a very useful book as an introduction to score reading or actually score listening

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars music made simple, June 15, 2009

By 

Samuel Buzzelli (Bridgeville, PA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Score Reading: A Key to the Music Experience (Paperback)

This is an easy read. Meant for those who would like to be able to follow a musical score and enjoy the listening experience. many musical citations throughout the text illustrate what is being explained in the text.