Symphony orchestras as we know them would not be possible without the Grand Score, which itself was only possible due to the many compromises that had been made in instrumentation, notation, etc. The Grand Score is the roadmap to everything that the symphonic instrumentalists do--though each individual typically has access only to the notes he or she must play. The Grand Score is property of the conductor, whose calling it is to bring all of the musicians together as one to recreate the intended experience of the original composer. Typically, that composer would have worked off of a handwritten manuscript of this self-same score.

 

From the finished score, copyists had the task of transferring parts for each musician onto private copies for their use during rehearsals and performances. Copyists in this are the equivalent to the MIS department of the orchestra--responsible for providing everyone with the materials and data needed to carry out their respective tasks. In fact, the Grand Score itself is equivalent to a comprehensive General Ledger of the entire composition. Depending on the penmanship and the personality of the composer in question, copyists of the past were often required to translate smudges and incomplete markings. In many cases--when deadlines were tight--copyists were required to work feverishly to make many copies even as the Creator was applying finishing touches to the score.

 

 

Competent musicians learned, too, that an abundant supply of marking pencils was required in order to record changes and additions to the score--brought on by composers or conductors or themselves. Such alert care for even the most minute details protected all involved from the painful effects of playing loud when soft was called for or otherwise performing contrary to the stated objectives of the whole.

 

Conductors prior to the development of the symphony were often group members--instrumentalists or soloists--whose job it was to get the group started and to bring everyone to a stop together at the end. With the advent of the full symphony in the early nineteenth century, conductors began to have enough to do on their own--making such crossover performance increasingly more difficult. To understand and interpret the Grand Score, the conductor--the equivalent to a Chief Executive Officer (or a Chief Operating Officer in reality--since many of them have nothing to do with running the daily affairs of the organization) in the orchestral setting must have some knowledge of all of the instrument families and their individual instruments.

 

In a sense, this requirement is not unlike the statement made by W. Edwards Deming about the need to maintain control of variation in processes in a commercial enterprise--that all managers and workers must developed Profound Knowledge of all aspects of the processes in question. In part, this is due to the fact that although the orchestra as a whole must play in what tonally is the same key--many of them perform in what is to them another key from that of the dominant instruments--the strings, piano, etc. For example, a middle C for the piano and the violin is a Bb for the trumpet and clarinet and an F for the French horn. The physics of how the instruments all came about made such a translation necessary.

 

For this to all work, there needs to be a form of accommodation between the conductor and the players to not waste time and fabricate misunderstandings. For example, if the conductor says to the clarinetist, "Please bring up the F#," they both need to understand whether the conductor means the concert F# (from the view of the violins) or the transposed F# (from the perspective of the clarinet). Listeners are shielded from all of this seemingly unnecessary cognition. If the musicians didn't figure this out, however, the concert hall would soon be emptied.

 

 

The conductor--the only silent member of the organization--is nonetheless the ultimate judge of execution and interpretation. He or she has everything necessary to evaluate performance and elicit pleasing sounds. Once the conductor steps onto the podium, there is no other authority--though the instrumentalists are free to air their opinions in rehearsal. If the conductor is not prepared, the instrumentalists can carry him along--but only to a degree. As the history of professional symphony performance has shown, when symphony musicians are prepared, they have all the tools in the world to assure perfection.