Listening analysis and score reading
What listening questions ask
You hear an excerpt and must place it by era, genre, texture, instrumentation or form, then justify the choice. Score questions ask for key, cadence, chord, transposition or clef.
Listening strategy
- Identify texture first: monophonic, homophonic, polyphonic/imitative.
- Note forces: a continuo group suggests Baroque; expanded brass and percussion suggest Romantic or twentieth-century.
- Mark cadences and repeats to map form; listen for the return of the opening theme.
- Harmonic idiom separates eras: modal, tonal-functional, chromatic, atonal.
Score reading
- Clefs: treble, bass, alto (C on third line), tenor (C on fourth line).
- Transposing instruments: clarinet in B♭ sounds a major second lower; horn in F a perfect fifth lower; trumpet in B♭ a major second lower; piccolo sounds an octave higher; double bass and contrabassoon an octave lower.
- Figured bass shows intervals above the bass; repeat signs, first and second endings and da capo control the order of play.
- Ornaments: trill, mordent, turn - realise them on the beat or before it according to style.
Worked example
A clarinet in B♭ is written C5. Because the instrument sounds a major second below written pitch, the sounding note is B♭4. Check direction first (lower), then interval (major second), and only then the octave.
Traps that cost marks
Reading written pitch as sounding pitch; misidentifying the tenor clef; confusing a half cadence (ends on V) with a plagal cadence (IV–I); ignoring first and second endings when counting bars.