If this is your first time to visit my blog, welcome! My name is Jordan and I’m a conductor, teacher, and music-lover. This is my blog, the Conductor’s Notebook. To get an overview, visit About the Blog.

This essay is part of an ongoing series on the Art of Rehearsal.

I have always been interested in expansive views of music analysis. I am particularly interested in any kind of musical analysis that leads directly to actionable insights for meaningful rehearsals leading to consequential performances. One of area that tends to get short shrift in many music programs is a completed study of dynamics.

Here’s my teacher, Marin Alsop, describing her approach to dynamic analysis (click here or skip to 1:17 below).

In Practical Terms

What might an analysis like this look like? I love talking about score marking techniques - my own and those of others. I’ve almost becoming a collector of them.

When developing a dynamic analysis, I will often used a large caret ^ or V to indicate the peaks and valleys of a piece, respectively, with a number 1, 2, or 3 inside the shape to indicate relative intensity, so that I can remind myself of the guiding . The highest peak and the lowest valleys would get a 1 (probably only once per piece or movement), and so on (with possibly 2 or more of the lower-level peaks). I typically let the composer’s dynamic markings serve as a roadmap, and try to keep equally marked passages (three different passages all marked ff of mp, say) at roughly the same level of intensity if the structure seems to support that idea. Other factors such as orchestration, register, and melodic shape might help to create more specific “personalities” or profiles for each of these.

Gunther Schuller went so far as to chart out these dynamics as intensities using decibel volumes, showing how, for instance, a pp marking for Beethoven wouldn’t mean quite the same thing as it would for Tchaikovsky, where Tchaikovsky gave 6 different shades of piano, marking up to 6 p’s.

Tabuteau Numbers

These ideas are great when trying to organize the larger architecture of a work, or when trying to contextualize one composer’s markings with another. What about for analyzing dynamics at the most detailed level? Instead of a telescope, how about a microscope to study a single melodic passage?

One very popular and well-subscribed system among many East Coast US woodwind players, their students, and anyone luck en is the Tabuteau Number System. This system was developed by the legendary French oboist and pedagogue Marcel Tabuteau (1887-1966). Like me, Tabuteau found his way to Pennsylvania, where he spent most of his adult life. He played first for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and later the Philadelphia Orchestra, also teaching at Curtis. His concepts are many and legendary and have spread far beyond the far-flung lands of Oboestan - he even had a profile in Time Magazine in 1939.

For more on Tabuteau’s teaching, the University of Indiana hosts some publicly accessible audio recordings of Tabuteau’s teachings - see here or listen to a sample below:

Most relevant for our discussion about practical analysis is his intensity numbering system. Harpist Anne Sullivan described it very simply in two steps on her blog (the post is now hosted on the Tabluteau website - see here):

Here are two ways to try this system on your own:

1. Start by practicing your control. See if you can express 10 levels of volume or intensity in your playing. Play a single note, or a scale or exercise pattern creating a gradual crescendo and decrescendo. Start at 1, and increase the volume or intensity evenly and incrementally up to 10 and then back down again, trying to match the same increments. Or start at 10, decrescendo and then return to 10. Remember that the more even and uniform you make your “steps,” the smoother your phrasing will sound. When you are ready for more difficulty, give yourself a more contoured number pattern to try. Here is an example: 1 2 3 2 3 4 5 4 5 6 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.

2. Apply the system to a melody. Start by playing the melody or phrase. Then sing the phrase. (Singing is a good way to get a “second opinion” on how the shape of the phrase.) Assign a number to each note of the phrase. Try playing by the numbers!

More information on the system is available on the excellent compendium website, Marcel Tabuteau First-Hand.

And for a deep dive, take a look at the appendix to this dissertation by Christopher Bowmaster, filled with diagrams and Tabuteau markings using the Weber Second Clarinet Concerto.

This is the type of practical analysis that interests me: the kind that aims squarely at enhancing the performer’s ability to consistently perform a desired shape. Tabuteau accomplishes this by first asking the performer to extending her mind - “offloading” musical thoughts onto the score for safekeeping. But it isn’t merely a way to store information; it is also a way to refine our musical thinking in the first place. That is, the act of analyzing a melody in this detailed way changes how we conceive of the melody in the first place. For me, any opportunity to upgrade my musical thinking is an automatic 10.

Cover Image: Leonard Bernstein’s Markings for Tchakovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique." Source: New York Philharmonic Archives.