Talk:Sight reading
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Clarification
How come you can read and play "musical notation without having seen it before"?? -- Taku 07:08, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)
- You've seen the notation system before - you've just not seen this particular piece of sheet music before. I've tweaked it a bit - hopefully it's clearer now. --Camembert
Thanks. Now, it makes sense. -- Taku
[edit] Should we include other kinds of sight reading?
Sight reading is also something that actors do -- being presented with a script and having to perform it without rehearsal or preparation. Does anyone else think this should be mentioned somewhere within the article? --Sonance 06:48, May 27, 2005 (UTC)
- That's a very good point. I've added a mention in the first paragraph, but that's probably not enough, since the rest of the article is purely about music. If the term 'sight reading' is common in acting as well as music, then it needs a section to itself - but I'm not at all qualified to do that. Would anyone else like to have a go? Wombat 08:00, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Silent reading
I am quite fascinated by this sentence: "This distinction is analogous to ordinary prose reading during the Middle Ages, when the ability to read silently was apparently considered remarkable." Does anyone have a source for this? I would love to learn more.
Oh here:
When [Ambrose] read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud. This quote, taken from St. Augustine’s Confessions, and referring to Ambrose, bishop of Milan circa 383 AD, offers the first instance in recorded Western literature of silent reading (Manguel 43). The fact that Augustine took such pains to point out the circumstance, emphasizing the fact that Ambrose "never read aloud", suggests that this practice was by no means considered an ordinary occurrence at the time. Indeed, there is ample evidence "to suggest that in medieval Europe reading was normally [sic] a public activity, performed out loud for the benefit of the listeners" (Rendall 35). Certainly, this is partly due to the fact that literacy rates throughout the Western world were so low as to be almost non-existent until the early 16th century. Thus, the only way for written information to be disseminated was through public readings.
http://www.louisville.edu/a-s/english/dale/401/termpapers/foster.htm
- Thanks very much, 24.215.202.168. I put the anecdote into the Ambrose article and also added here a link to a book chapter that covers this material more thoroughly.
- Btw you can sign and date your postings (thus making these talk pages a bit more coherent by concluding with four consecutive tildes: ~~~~. Yours truly, Opus33 16:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] An unsupported passage
I am moving this passage to the talk page:
- Sight reading ability is a distinct area of study for musicians and will tend to atrophy if neglected. Practice improves the ability and a musician who has a sight-reading job will get better results by doing a lot of sight reading beforehand. The best way to improve sight reading is to do exactly that: read page after page of totally unfamiliar music.
Reason: there's no source given, it just seems to be someone's opinion. To qualify for inclusion in an encyclopedia, we'd need to have a reference to a controlled experimental study showing that practice makes a difference, or a poll of musicians asking them if their sight reading ability atrophies when they don't practice it. A quick Google check didn't find any such sources on line, but perhaps a visit to a library might do it. Opus33 16:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
- Agreed - I can only offer anecdotal evidence that it's the case (my sight-reading used to be so much better!), and that's not really enough. Wombat 08:27, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
