Rehearsal Letter - Usage in The 20th Century

Usage in The 20th Century

In some cases, A to Z might not be enough. After Z, Aa may be used, followed by Bb, and so on until Zz (though Ii, Jj and/or Oo might also be skipped). The Wilhelm Hansen edition of Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 7 in C major presents one unusual case: the letters A to Z (including both I and J) are used up after the wind rip with just three more pages left in the score. For the final flute and bassoon solo, the editors use Ö (the final letter of the Finnish alphabet) as a rehearsal letter.

But in the case of some composers, such as Gustav Mahler and/or Dmitri Shostakovich, twice through the alphabet might still not be enough. For this reason, some editors prefer rehearsal numbers to rehearsal letters. Mahler's and Shostakovich's scores use rehearsal numbers rather than letters. These are typically in bold and enclosed in a box, or less commonly, a circle. Confusingly, however, some editions enclose bar numbers in boxes, though they're usually not boldface. In the Schirmer edition of Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3 (in one movement), the rehearsal numbers are enclosed in circles, and they occur every ten measures, actually being the bar number divided by 10. That rehearsal numbers "are easily confused with measure numbers" is a reason sometimes given in favor of rehearsal letters.

Advocates of rehearsal numbers counter that even 26 letters are not enough for some scores. Whereas rehearsal letters "reset" for each movement of a multi-movement work (even for connected movements), rehearsal numbers typically run over the course of the entire work, even if the movements are not connected. For example, the rehearsal number for the last few bars of the first movement of Edward Elgar's First Symphony is 55; the first rehearsal number of the second movement is 56.

There are exceptions, however. The final outburst in the first movement of Mahler's Second Symphony is rehearsal number 27. Mahler actually wanted a pause of five minutes before the next movement, so the rehearsal numbers reset to 1, ending with 15. The third movement follows after a short break, but its first rehearsal number is 28.

For jazz and pop compositions with several choruses, "many jazz composers and arrangers" use a format in which "each successive verse/chorus part of the form is assigned successive letters of the alphabet" combined with a measure number: for example, letter A for the first 8-bar phrase of the verse after the introduction, A9 for the next 8-bar phrase, A17, A25, then B, B9, B17, B25 for the chorus, etc., with the special rehearsal marking TAG for the tag ending.

The 2008 version of the Finale notation program by default provided rehearsal letters A, B, C and D, but the 2009 provides all A to Z.