Forget Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in The Rye. Instead, try curling up in bed at night with regaling scores from the likes of Persichetti, Shostakovich, or Nelhybel!
When I was in high school, my weekday evenings were devoted for the most part to doing homework: math, social studies, science, English, a foreign language. There was much to accomplish each evening with the work my teachers assigned, and looking back, it was a bit of an arduous regimen although a wonderful side benefit was that it helped me develop good disciplinary habits. I would take occasional breaks to have a snack or watch a little TV (this was before the age of Internet) or maybe even talk on the phone to a friend. But my greatest relaxation (and often edification) came at the end of the evening when before I turned out the lights I would cozy up under the covers reading music scores as if they were engaging novels.
My immersion into composers’ music would begin with an examination of various fundamentals: the time signatures, key signatures, tempo, dynamics, articulation, expression and navigation markings. As I looked at these various elements, I would sometimes test my knowledge of them: How is 6/8 time played? 12/4 time? What are the flats in the key of A-flat major? The sharps in B major? I made sure I knew what the various times signatures meant, I memorized the flats and sharps for each key, and I learned the terms of tempo (from adagio to vivace) as well as dynamics (such as fortissimo and mezzo forte), expression (such as fermata and tenuto), and navigation (such as coda and da capo).
Then I would dive into the notes. As I read along, I would hear the notes in my head and at the same time visualize myself fingering the notes on my instrument, which was the clarinet. I would spend extra time on difficult passages until I thought I had the musicality down in my head and I would wiggle my fingers as I was reading along until I thought I had the fingerings worked out correctly as I would play them on my instrument. I would pay attention to performance markings such as crescendos, pianissimos, legatos and sforzandos, as well as repeats and codas. I would invariably come away with an appreciation for the complexity of the compositions and the composers’ and arrangers’ creativity.
This was all helpful to me when the next day I played on my clarinet what I played out in my mind the night before. While I could carry out this reading and mind-playing exercise at other times during the day, I preferred to read up on my music at bedtime when I was most relaxed and thought if the music was in my head when I went to sleep it would seep into my subconscious and help me play better when I actually performed the pieces on my instrument.
I didn’t just limit this regimen to the music we played in school. I applied it to the music I was working on in my private lessons as well as other types of music. Indeed, while listening to records at night is soothing for many, I found enjoyment in “playing” these pieces in my head at bedtime and interpreting them mentally as I imagined them.
I knew a lot of my fellow students spent part of their evenings reading novels—either those assigned in school or others they picked up for personal enjoyment. In my day, students read a lot of the classics popular at the high school level—Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, To Kill a Mockingbird. I was never an avid reader of novels at that age. My pleasure reading instead consisted of reading sheet music of pop songs or scores from composers whose works we played in high school band such as Mozart, Sousa, Roger Nixon, Robert Washburn, Russell Peck, Henry Fillmore, Robert Pearson, John Barnes Chance, Healey Willan, Armas Jarnefelt, Arthur Sullivan, Herbert Bielawa and Harry Simeone.
Studying the scores of composers as bedtime “reading” can be an effective means to improving musical skills and knowledge and no matter how late at night you do it, by “practicing” your instrument in your head you will not disturb anyone around you. Indeed, to become a better musician, you do not actually need to practice on your instrument. Your musicality can grow from within. As Herb Alpert has famously told the story of how his New York trumpet teacher, Caruso, would say of his horn, “You are the instrument, this is just a piece of plumbing.”