Music Video Lesson: Did Classical Musicians Ever Play from Lead Sheets?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. Robert Estrin here. The question today is did classical musicians ever play from lead sheets? Now lead sheets, as you well know, are what jazz musicians, rock country, new age, so many musicians play from. It's simply the melody line and the chord symbols. And that's what most working musicians read from, not the full score. As a matter of fact, other than classical and perhaps Broadway show tunes, musicals and things of that nature, the vast majority of music is not all written out every note. Musicians kind of make up their part based upon the chord symbols and the melody line. So you might wonder, do classical musicians do that or did they ever? And the answer is surprisingly yes, and perhaps it's a lost art, but let's go way back to the Baroque era with Bach, Handel, Telemann, Corelli, Vivaldi and these composers back then.

Did you know that music was written very differently? If you look at most Baroque music, first of all, there's very little dynamics. There's very little phrasing. It's just mostly the notes, and that's about it. Not only that, but you notice ornamentation, these squiggly lines that scholars centuries later try to still decipher what they meant by them. And there are volumes of books written about how to approach mort ends and trails and turns and all these various... And the fact of the matter is everybody has different ideas about it.

Now and back then, it's likely that the performers had the freedom to decide how much to embellish the score based upon these ornaments that were in the score. Perhaps they even added ornamentation in places that didn't have any of these markings. There was a freedom to improvise on the music, but it gets much deeper than that.

Did you know, for example, the trio Sonata, which so many composers of Corelli, that Telemann wrote, hundreds of these works were not actually written out. Now today you buy the music and it's all written out, but it wasn't written out then. What was a trio Sonata then? A trio Sonata was actually written for a solo instrument. It could be a violin, it could be a fluid, it could be any instrument, recorder. And a basso continuo, which could be virtually any instrument playing the low part, perhaps a cello, Viola da gamba. Something that could play the baseline, which was written out. So you have the melody written out, the bass written out. Well, what about the keyboard part? The harpsichordist in most cases, was that part written out? No.

Now it wasn't a lead sheet the way we think of a modern lead sheet. It was what's called figured bass. Figured bass was a type of lead sheet notation for lack of a better term, because it did not have the notes. It just had symbols that the player had to realize the part based upon those symbols. Improvising. Yes, improvising based upon chord changes just like a jazz musician does today. This was the lost art of improvisation of the Baroque era. Now you buy music today, you buy a Corelli trio Sonata or a Telemann trio Sonata, somebody went through the trouble of writing out and realizing from those chord symbols of the figured bass, a keyboard part.

So almost nobody does that anymore today. There are some early instrument enthusiasts who actually do this sort of thing, but for the most part, classical musicians are so used to the sanctity of the score that they don't even realize most of the time that that it wasn't even written out. These early works were not written out except for the melody and the bass. The rest of it was left up to the performer, the keyboardist to realize, and even the other parts could be embellished with ornamentation.

This is the truth about classical music. It was much closer to modern styles of music than anybody has any idea about because we look at it almost like museum pieces that you shouldn't touch them. They got to be preserved exactly as they were, but these were living, breathing works of music that evolved depending on who was performing them. So you want to approach classical music in this way. Even more modern classical music. When I say modern, I mean the classical era, a hundred years later. Mozart, Beethoven. That cadenzas were improvised, not necessarily written out and learned, but it was a time for performers to showcase what they could do in the middle of a concerto, taking off on the themes that they had just played. And again, this is all but a lost art. The romantic period, salon concerts and informal gatherings. People would make up music going back and forth, their stories of Liszt and Chopin at these events. And they try to outdo each other. And this is really what keeps classical music alive and fresh is that spontaneous element.

So while I certainly respect the scores of the great composers and fastidiously learn them. At the same time, you want to understand the lineage from where this music comes from so that you can add an element of spontaneity and inventiveness to your playing, realizing that these weren't just static, extant stone works, but they evolved depending upon who's performing them.

I hope this is interesting for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is livingpianos.com, your online piano resource and a whole lot more. And there's more at Patreon. If you like this channel, you can subscribe to it and share it in your social media. I appreciate spreading the word about piano to keep it alive in the 21st century. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining me.

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