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Marking the way: the significance of Eugene Ormandy''s score annotations.

Article Excerpt
The art of conducting consists in large measure of elements hidden from the general audience. Other than participating musicians, few people get to witness the rehearsal technique of conductors and understand how their musical goals are communicated. Even fewer see the process involved in preparing musical scores for performance. Fortunately, many conductors leave behind a written legacy in the form of markings entered on the scores they use for study or performance. While the entire realm of mental preparation cannot possibly be revealed through these annotations, such markings can offer substantial information about many aspects of a conductor's preparation process. Therefore, a study of conductor score markings has the potential to increase our understanding of the art of conducting in general and the specific techniques of individual conductors.

One conductor whose collection of scores is remarkably intact and well-preserved is Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985). Ormandy was the renowned music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra for forty-two years (1938-80), not counting the two years (1936-38) he spent as co-director with his predecessor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977), and his work as conductor laureate until his final performance with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984. Ormandy's extraordinarily long association with a major orchestra is unheard of by today's standards. Faced with the daunting task of succeeding Stokowski in Philadelphia, Ormandy managed to improve the playing of the orchestra and brought it to world acclaim. The critical reception of Ormandy's body of work has never been unanimously favorable, but the duration of his tenure with the Phila delphia Orchestra and the extent of his conducting repertoire both stand as testaments to an outstanding career. (1)

The Eugene Ormandy Collection of Scores, housed in the Walter H. & Leonore Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, offers a wealth of revealing examples of how score markings can provide insight into a conductor's practices. The collection totals approximately 1,186 scores, 183 sets of scores and parts, and 46 sets of parts without scores. Almost all of the scores in the collection are either marked by Ormandy or bear inscriptions from composers to Ormandy.

Ormandy's collection of scores was donated to the University of Pennsylvania in 1987 by his widow, Gretel Ormandy (1909-1998). The major part of the collection was originally housed in the library of the Philadelphia Orchestra. (2) These scores were deaccessioned by the orchestra and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. A smaller part of the collection is comprised of scores that were kept in the Ormandy home. Some of the latter contain markings and inscriptions but most are unmarked.

The Eugene Ormandy Collection of Scores is neatly complemented by the Eugene Ormandy Oral History Collection, also at the University of Pennsylvania. It contains interviews with orchestra members, soloists, conductors, administrators, and others. Ormandy's personal and professional papers, as well as a collection of his sound recordings, are also housed at the library.

A closely related collection at the library is the Leopold Stokowski Collection of Scores. This collection of more than nine hundred scores was given to the university in 1997 by the Curtis Institute of Music. Its present location at the University of Pennsylvania allows for side-by-side comparisons of the markings of Ormandy and Stokowski. Future comparative studies of conductor score markings might also be expanded to include the marked scores of George Szell (Cleveland Orchestra's George Szell Memorial Library), Arturo Toscanini (Toscanini Legacy Collection at the New York Public Library), Serge Koussevitzky (Boston Public Library), Fritz Reiner (Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Samuel R. and Marie Louise Rosenthal Archives), and Leonard Bernstein (New York Philharmonic Archives).

Every conductor develops a singular approach to marking scores. What may be common practice for one conductor might never appear in another conductor's scores. Comparison of this sort requires a standardized approach to the analysis of markings. Categorizing markings by type is one step that can be taken; capturing such information within catalog records is a second step that can make the information available to a wider audience.

For the purposes of this article, Ormandy's markings have been categorized as indicated in the following outline:

* Marks of Secondary Interest

Reinforcement

Analysis

Durations

* Editing

Tempos

Dynamics

Bowings

Conducting Solutions

* Alterations to Musical Content Cuts

Changes to Orchestration

MARKS OF SECONDARY INTEREST

Reinforcement

The most common type of marking, and of least significance musically, is that of reinforcement. Ormandy's score markings of this type followed the norm, with most of his markings in colored pencil or crayon. These are typically enlargements made of markings already present on the score: tempos, instrument names, time signatures, and dynamics, often enlarged by conductors for enhanced visibility during rehearsal or performance. Markings of this type may also be a tool used by conductors during the process of learning or memorizing a score. The markings may also note critical points in a work that warrant special attention.

Analysis

While some conductors learn a new piece by "experiencing" it (either through rehearsal or by mentally conducting the piece), others utilize various analytical tools to digest a new work. These tools can run the gamut from harmonic analysis to analysis of structural features. There are few indications that Ormandy approached music analytically; markings of harmonic or structural analysis are extremely rare in his scores. Occasionally, he marked his scores to reveal phrase structures by marking groups of measures with the number of measures in the group. One can presume that if Ormandy engaged in any sort of detailed analysis it was either done on a separate score or intuitively.

Comments from interviewees in the Eugene Ormandy Oral History Collection predominantly support the conclusion that Ormandy did not use an analytical approach in preparing a piece of music for performance. Composer George Rochberg noted that Ormandy "was not a sufficiently intellectual enough conductor to know exactly how to approach getting at the structure of a work and at the core of a work." (3) Rochberg went on to state that Ormandy "learned my scores not by studying them and coming into the hall knowing them; he learned them during rehearsal." (4) Robert Page, a choral conductor who often worked with Ormandy, noted that "In my experience he was not one who could analyze and prepare ahead that much. He had to hear it and work from that standpoint." (5) Isaac Stern noted that Ormandy "had an innate sense of the inside of a phrase." (6)

Durations

Conductors often mark their scores with durations for a variety of purposes: programming, measuring the effect of choices of tempos, and for use in the recording studio. Several interviewees (7) in the Eugene Ormandy Oral History Collection commented upon Ormandy's precise sense of time, and speculated that it was developed in part during the 1920s when he worked in the Capitol Theater Orchestra in New York City. (8) This work environment demanded a practical approach to musicmaking, including a very tight control of durations, especially when it came to the orchestra's participation in radio broadcasts.

Later in his career Ormandy was said to have been able to repeat performances of a work within an extremely narrow range of durational variation. This aspect of his ability was commented upon by William Smith (assistant conductor and keyboard player with the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1952-92) in one of his interviews in the Eugene Ormandy Oral History Collection. Talking...

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