Score clue

A score clue refers to a particular kind of clue in a music question that attempts to reward engagement with the actual musical content of a piece of music (which frequently, but not always, is notated in a musical score/sheet music – hence "score clue"), as opposed to engagement with other facts that are merely "about" the piece.

Definition

In general, the term carries two different meanings:

1. sensu lato, it is used to specifically refer to "note-spelling" clues that list a series of pitches in order ("D E F F"), sometimes with emphasis (rhythm), timing (duration), or directional (octave) cues.
2. sensu stricto, it is a clue that asks for any information that could be obtained from reading a score. This includes note-spelling (as above) but also things like instrumentation and tempo markings.

The former sense is much more common in general usage, to the point that some have explicitly spoke out against the "semantic narrowing". Some people use quotation marks around "score clue" as a nonendorsement the fairly ambiguous/misused term.

It is hard to define precisely what counts as a score clue because a score clue can form a part of a larger clue in concert with other facts (e.g. circumstances of creation, historical context, sources of inspiration), and "information that could be obtained from reading a score" can equally be obtained without it (e.g. you don't need to see a score to know that Mahler 5 opens with a marchlike trumpet solo).

Information that can only be obtained by literally reading a score (so, via only a singular type of engagement) typically make for bad clues.

Examples

In these excerpts, pink text marks passages that contain score clues (in the broader sense).

[…] An excerpt from one of this composer’s ballets includes trombone glissandi from F down to D and opens with piercing F-sharp eighth notes in the xylophone. For 10 points, name this Soviet composer of Spartacus, whose ballet Gayane (“gah-yah-nay”) contains the “Sabre Dance,” and who was from Armenia.

ANSWER: Aram Khachaturian

(from 2019 ACF Regionals, Packet H)

[…] Cesar Franck’s violin sonata opens with an E dominant chord of this type in the piano, which is echoed as an arpeggio in the opening notes of the violin. […] In Western harmony, these chords are built out of five stacked thirds. For 10 points, name these extended chords which are named for the smallest interval larger than octave.

ANSWER: ninths [accept major ninth; accept minor ninth; accept dominant ninth; accept minor major ninth; accept dominant seven sharp ninth]

(from 2021 Illinois Open, Packet 6)

An example close to the "note-spelling" end of the spectrum:

A slow chamber movement by this composer begins with the 2/4 melody [read slowly] “eighth notes B-flat D D B-flat, quarter notes E-flat, D, C,” briefly switching to 3/4 in the third bar. […] This composer, who arranged his first string quartet’s Andante cantabile for cello and orchestra, was commemorated by Rachmaninoff’s second Trio élégiaque. […] For 10 points, name this Russian composer whose non-chamber works include Swan Lake.

ANSWER: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

(from 2024 ESPN, Packet I)

History

Score clues (and note-spelling in particular) are notable for occupying a central role in the discussion of classical music questions in the modern era of quizbowl.

The inclusion of "score clues" was a major part of the reforms of music question writing in the early 2010s – they represented a concrete way to reward players for deeper engagement at a time when many questions were not doing so. Using strings of pitches allows one to directly clue things like themes and motifs that do not have names, opening the door for more segments to be clues and granting an advantage to people who are familiar with those pieces.

Overabundance

The music reforms of the previous decade were so successful that score clues became abundant and then (eventually) maybe a little too abundant. Over the same period, the term "score clue" began to narrow to "note-spelling" as that particular variety became noticeable. With that earlier period of activism fading in the community's collective memory, many modern players argue against what they view as contentless strings of letters because they have never known a world before their popularization.

The downside of note-spelling is the barrier to entry. Besides the actual recognition required, the mental work required to parse and audiate a note-spelling is non-trivial – this is evinced by the fact that not all people who have listened to a piece can buzz on a corresponding clue, even if they have a music background. Some have compared it to comp math or to technical clues in science questions, although the precision of this analogy is in dispute.

For people without the requisite training, note-spelling clues are among the most arcane: beyond all other kinds of score clues and on par with things like "descriptions of mathematical formulae" or "untranslated foreign languages". Even a trained ear can fail to use a clue if it features an obscure segment or an awkward or evasive phrasing. This gap between who the clue is meant to reward (players familiar with a piece) and who it actually does (potentially no one) is why an important part of writing score clues is to write them directly and write them well.

These issues were especially pronounced at lower difficulties like the high school level, where editors felt obligated to continue the trends that were ongoing in college quizbowl but did not necessarily have the touch to ensure their clues were appropriate for an audience with less background knowledge.

The following is a useful list of other clues that one can use in music questions that reward the same sort of person as note-spelling:

There are dozens of ways to clue music, and there's nothing special about so-called "score clues" (meaning, there's no reason for them to be near the top of a hypothetical sorted list). An unsorted list of some music clue types: instrument mechanism · extended techniques · treatise · pedagogy · acoustics · pure theory · music notation · music publishers · music history · ethnomusicology · musicology/analysis · original analysis · arrangements/quotations · sounds similar · composition inception · composer quip · composer style · composer biography · composer relationships · musician biography · writings on composers · score clue · performance practice · performance/recording history · conductors · programmatic music · commonality (e.g. something depicted by music) · catalog numerology · term or coinage · literary basis

—narbflaith guestourgenburger, Friday 2/5/2021 on the Discord

A balance of clue types should be used to prevent the perception that music questions are more like mathematical formulas you need to be an expert in to "solve", which affects people's real-life engagement with the subject and makes music seem like much more of a different thing than art or other subjects (i.e., only a layman's intuition is required by art questions that reward "looking at paintings" or literature questions that reward "reading books", unlike music questions that "just reward listening").

Issues

Executing score clues well requires extra care compared to other clues, due to a number of inherent and other issues.

• Over the years and especially around their outset, score clues have been beset by factual mistakes, sometimes due to incorrectly transcribing from the score (especially by not noticing a clef or key signature, or treating a transposing instrument as being in concert pitch). A non-negligible amount of instances of such errors are documented on the forums.
• Directly related to that, score clues are rampant with original research – writing clues directly out of a score, not finding secondary sources where other people have described in English words whatever you want to clue as a way to affirm the essential question of "how does one know that players will know this?"
• Many moderators speed through score clues, even when preceded by directives like [read slowly], unaware that it makes players miss what's important and thus makes the clue's inclusion useless.

Other usages

The Dede Allen Memorial series of audio tournaments about film features literal score clues by playing clips from film scores.