KEEPER OF THE SCORES HAS A TOUGH TASK

Nobody is ranking a symphony orchestra’s librarian on a par with the conductor or principal trumpet. But in a musical world where time is money, the lowly librarian has become increasingly essential, while remaining essentially obscure.

Without librarians--whose jobs require checking hundreds of scores each week for accuracy and returning rented sheet music--orchestra rehearsals would become unwieldy and impossibly expensive. Errors can cost money.

“Every time the orchestra sits down to play, you have how many thousands of dollars (represented)?” librarian James T. Medvitz asked. “If you have to stop because of something the librarian did, that’s going to cost money if you have to go into overtime.”

The San Diego Symphony’s librarians--Medvitz is relieving Joseph Wagner, who is sort of retiring and will become part-time librarian for the San Diego Opera--say theirs is a high-pressure job. It is not unusual, they say, to be dressed down in front of an orchestra by an angry maestro.

“It’s the kind of job you’re only called for when something is wrong,” Wagner said. “It’s the nature of the job. You have all this work to do. The best thing that can happen is that nobody calls your name.”

Wagner recalled a guest appearance of soprano Leontyne Price for a benefit concert.

“Her manager didn’t give us the encores, so I thought she would use a pianist,” Wagner said. When Price arrived for rehearsal, it turned out that she was singing the encores with the orchestra. Except there was no music.

Because of his years as a professional musician and librarian, Wagner knew a retired publisher in San Bernardino specializing in operatic excerpts. The man offered to drive the scores to San Diego, but the concert’s only rehearsal would be over in the three hours it would take to make the trip.

The publisher flew the music down by private plane, with the symphony picking up the $100 tab for fuel. The publisher passed the orchestra parts to Wagner through the airplane window and Wagner raced back to the Civic Theatre. Half an hour remained in the rehearsal. “There was just enough time,” Wagner said.

The public sees little of librarians, other than an occasional glimpse of one carrying the conductor’s score and baton to the podium before the concert. Wagner is taking this month to explain his duties to Medvitz. They spend most of their time in the basement of Symphony Hall in a small room that contains the 550 titles--there are thousands of actual pieces of music--in the symphony’s library.

Librarians are busy year-round, every bit as occupied with the summer pops concerts as during the winter season. They spend a huge portion of their time carefully marking the bow strokes on the music parts for the string players. The high quality of an orchestra’s sound depends in part on the string players bowing the notes together and in the same direction. Librarians can spend as much as 30 hours a week copying the bowings for the 60 violinists, violists, cellists and bass players.

It can take two hours to mark the music for a single violin part, and copies must be marked for each of the 30 stands of string players. The bowings are not printed in the music because they tend to reflect a conductor’s style and interpretation. San Diego Music Director David Atherton generally prefers a legato line, with more notes per bow stroke, Wagner said.

Traditionally, a section’s principal player marks up the bowings he wants--often in consultation with the maestro--and returns his score to the librarian, usually a month in advance. That allows the librarian and assistant time to copy the markings onto the other scores--in black pencil, never ink or colored pencil.

Medvitz, formerly librarian for the symphony, ballet and opera in Houston, is also an orchestrator and the personal copyist for opera composer Carlisle Floyd. He has copied the music for the operas “Tremonisha” and “Willie Stark.”

A librarian’s duties fall into several categories. Wagner says he would begin the year by analyzing the season schedule to see what music is already owned by the symphony. The rest must be purchased or rented. He then lists the music for each concert that must be purchased or rented by edition and price or rental charge, and sends his analysis to the music director. The music director decides which edition he wants and tells the librarian whether to purchase or rent it.

Rented or newly purchased scores have to be painstakingly checked for accuracy. When a discrepancy appears while comparing the conductor’s score with an instrument part, the librarian has to determine which score has the error.

Wagner, a violist, and Medvitz, who played professionally as a trombonist, say it would be impossible to be a librarian and not be a musician, albeit a musician with the “certain personality” it takes for the tedious behind-the-scenes work.

The trick to success as a librarian, Medvitz believes, is to stay enough ahead marking the string parts to keep the pressure off. In the past year, that was not always possible, he has found, because the symphony used several guest principals, who were working around the country. They did not not always return their marked bowings far enough in advance.

Besides other routines such as mending music and replacing worn-out pieces, Medvitz said he has kept a “care package” for backstage emergencies. The kit includes manuscript paper, sewing kits, black socks, white and black bow ties, cummerbunds, suspenders, cuff links, studs and tape.

The librarian is always at the concerts to put the music on the stands and be ready for emergencies. The good librarian subscribes to Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will.

“I come an hour early because there may be something afoot,” Medvitz said. “That’s when you discover . . . the soloist is sick.”