As you may remember, my previous three posts (”Appetite: A Different Way to Budget,” “Six Week Cycles (Shape Up), and “On the Usefulness of Rotating Rep”) demonstrated how ideas from another discipline (in that case, software design) can be examined in terms of the theater. Today, I want to do something similar, using another art form: music. Specifically, I’ll be looking at how musicians rehearse.
When I was writing the previous posts, I found myself looking at the “six week cycle” and wondering how rehearsal periods might be made more efficient and flexible in order to reduce the costs associated with getting a show on its feet. Also, as a theater historian, I was struck by quotations like this one from the University of Washington Library, which I mentioned in my previous post:
By the Civil War, the season was varied and demanding. A season could consist of 40 to 130 plays, changing nightly. Utility actors in a company might be expected to know over 100 parts. The famous actress Charlotte Cushman would offer 200 different lead roles. Actors were usually expected to learn a new part within two days, sometimes overnight.
Obviously, they were rehearsing differently than we do today. They also benefitted from a more frontal, formalized, less “realistic” approach to staging, one based at least partially in tradition, that led to a faster process. I suspect that many today would dismiss the above quotation as evidence of a slapdash approach, which is a favorite orientation of the “there is no alternative” “best of all possible worlds” folks trained in traditional theater programs. But I’m not so sure it can be dismissed so easily. Why would we assume that 19th century audiences were somehow less discriminating than audiences today?
If it costs money to rehearse, then greater efficiency might help a theater become more sustainable and seasons become more flexible. Furthermore, if we are trying to create a repertoire of productions that can be revived as needed, how might that change the way we rehearse in order to speed it up?
When I was writing my (free online) book DIY Theater MFA, I studied how people achieve mastery—i.e., how they *practice—*and I found that a great deal of research has been done on how musicians learn. While a lot of that attention centers on how musicians improve their skill at playing their instrument, it reminded me that their approach to preparing for a concert is very different than theater, and I wanted to know details. I contacted a few professional classical musicians and conductors to see what I could learn.
First, I asked what kind of preparation a musician is expected to do prior to the first rehearsal:
They should be prepared to play down the piece. That is, play it from top to bottom. They would have bowings for strings, breaths for winds/brass, all stylistic markings, etc from the conductor (via their section leader)…The rehearsals [together] will be spent on ensemble balance, musicianship, interpretation, etc.
I then asked for clarification about the “bowings…breaths…stylistic markings”—where do they get them?
Conductors (and section leaders) will decide when notes are carried one to another to create phrasing, or lifts/breaks, etc. They will decide on dynamics (unless accurate marks from the composer are there), how much a Crescendo or decrescendo grows/decays, etc. A lot of that can be marked in their parts and pros will practice what is in the part beyond the notes and rhythms. So, less time spent on that stuff in rehearsal.
Don’t the musicians go, “where’s my creativity???” I asked.
They put creativity into it, but ensembles must have nearly the same interpretations of basic elements or it would just sound like a group of soloists playing at the same time.
How many rehearsals, I asked:
For pros, likely just a few since the orchestra is paying them per service.
I then contacted my niece, who is a professional cellist in Houston who plays in a quartet as well as in larger orchestras. I wanted to find out whether this checked out. She said that what I’d found out was pretty typical, and then she added another element of her own pre-rehearsal preparation:
I may do quite a bit of listening study, and practice (like a few hours' worth) prior to the first rehearsal, if it is a technically demanding part.
“By ‘listening study,”’ I asked, “you mean listening to recordings of other people?”
…and score study. Understanding how the parts fit together, and maybe investigating historical/ contextual info.