Alan Belkin - Orchestration.pdf - Kompozycja, orkiestracja - organ321

Artistic Orchestration

Alan Belkin

This is the third volume in my series of online books on musical technique. The others

cover:

This series is dedicated to the memory of my teacher and friend Marvin Duchow,

one of the rare true scholars, a musician of immense depth and sensitivity, and a

man of unsurpassed kindness and generosity.

N.B. This material is © Alan Belkin, 2001. Legal proof of copyright exists. The

material may be used free of charge provided that the author's name is included.

email: alan.belkin@umontreal.ca

Table of contents

Introduction: Why This Book?

Preliminary Considerations

Remarks on Instruments

What is Poor Orchestration?

Basic Notions, Part 1

Orchestration and Form

Changes of sound

Rate of Orchestral Change

Degree of Continuity/Contrast

Interpreting the Phrasing

Orchestration and Dynamics

Color

Sustained vs. Dry Sound

Fat vs. Thin sound; Unison Doubling

Balance: Simultaneous and Successive

Form , Counterpoint , and (forthcoming) Fugue, and Harmony.

Basic Notions, Part 2

Musical Lines vs. Instrumental Parts

Planes of Tone

Contrapuntal Orchestration

The Tutti

Summary: What is good orchestration?

Orchestral Accompaniment

Appendix: Some Pedagogical Ideas

Examples from a Character Glossary

Outline Sketches as a Teaching Tool

Learning Orchestration from the Repertoire

Scales of contrast

Orchestral Simulation

Conclusion and Acknowledgements

Introduction: why this book?

Several fine books on orchestration already exist: Rimsky-Korsakov’s aptly named

"Principles of Orchestration" remains as valuable today as when it was published. The

excellent texts by Piston ("Orchestration") and Adler ("The Study of Orchestration")

combine thorough information about instruments with useful advice about their

combination.

Koechlin’s monumental work ("Traité de l'Orchestration") is in a class apart: In its four

huge volumes, the author generously shares a lifetime’s experience as a master

orchestrator and explores many subjects nowhere else to be found. Our work here is

much indebted to Koechlin.

The main subject the preceding books do not cover systematically is how orchestration

can express and enhance musical form. This, combined with our focus (throughout this

series) on explaining musical techniques in terms of how people hear, will lead us to

some useful principles.

Rimsky-Korsakov tells us that "to orchestrate is to create, and this is something which

cannot be taught". Experience proves him right. Once the basic information about

instruments is assimilated, it is difficult to teach the finer points of the art outside of

actual composition. Transcription of piano or chamber music, often used as a teaching

method, presents useful challenges, but these challenges are mainly problems of

translation, not of composition. We will not deal with transcription here, as the subject is

well covered in other books (see, for example, Joseph Wagner, "Orchestration").

What is orchestration? For our purposes, orchestration follows instrumentation, where the

student will have learnt how instruments work, and what is reasonably playable by a

good professional. The common conception of orchestration as simply assigning timbres

to lines is very inadequate. Timbre is a potent aspect of musical character. Using it

effectively requires a much knowledge about texture - the ways in which musical strands

can be combined - and how changes of timbre affect our perception of musical form.

There is in fact no area of music that is not dependant on timbre: It impinges even on the

most elementary harmony exercise. The tension of an appogiatura will change drastically

depending on whether it is for voices, strings, or piano. Our definition of orchestration

will therefore be: Composing with timbres. Most of our discussion here will focus on

how orchestration can be used to enhance various musical situations.

Orchestration is hard to teach. First, it is difficult to provide feedback for students’ work:

A real orchestra does not sit around waiting to try out elementary exercises. Second, if

the parts are reasonably playable, and provided the coming and going of entries does not

actively contradict the work’s main structural articulations, it is almost as hard to write

glaringly badly for the orchestra as it is to write glowingly well! This is because the

orchestra’s historical development has largely favored euphony of sound and flexibility

of technique. The inadequacy of poor, but playable, orchestration only shows itself over

fairly long spans or repeated listening. Grayness or heaviness of texture fatigues the ear,

and the structure and character of the work remain unvaried and undifferentiated.

As in our previous books, we will concentrate here on general principles instead of rules

of thumb. Given that orchestration is so hard to try out experimentally, this is especially

important. As an example, a common rule of thumb tells the student to avoid big gaps in

orchestral textures. The principles involved here are two:

* Musical elements that are in separate registers are not perceived as being on the

same plane of tone.

* For fullness of sound, the ear requires fairly complete registral saturation,

especially in the middle range.

These principles explain why large gaps may be effective in one situation, for example a

quiet, playful passage, and not in another, where mass and richness are required.

Another advantage of discussing general principles is that many of our remarks will

apply equally well to electroacoustic and mixed music, instead of being limited to

traditional instrumental combinations. That said, our examples will be drawn from the

standard repertoire, for ease of reference.

One final point: This work is not meant as a substitute for the texts referred to above, but

as a complement to them. No one should expect to learn orchestration just by reading this

book!

Alan Belkin - Orchestration.pdf

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