Chapter 3
TEXTURES AND TECHNIQUES
Thinking Orchestrally
Practical Instrumentation
Considerations
Comparative Studies of
Techniques and Textures
Appropriateness in
Orchestration
Operatic Influences
Main ideas:
Orchestration is an important aspect of composition, and it requires infinite curiosity about orchestral music at all periods, as well as practical and technical knowledge.
It is important to avoid unnecessarily awkward writing and to aim for a playable score that is indicative of artistic merit.
When orchestrating piano music, it is essential to recognize and evaluate the personal style, mannerisms, and period of each composer.
Mozart's symphonies demonstrate a masterful blending of homophonic and polyphonic textures, with a characteristic of delicate transparency resulting from textures of real parts with few extraneous notes.
Schubert's symphony shows considerable expansion and development of the instrumental resources compared to Mozart, with advanced writing for brass and a greater dependence on harmonizations.
Both Mozart and Schubert used horns and trumpets primarily for sustaining harmony parts or building climaxes in simple harmonizations, but Schubert managed occasional melodic and harmonic prominence for the horns beyond the limits usual for his time.
The opera orchestra became a complementary and contributing factor in defining character delineation in successful operas, with Gluck, Mozart, and Weber leading the way in establishing the orchestra as an additional unit of dramatic support.
Weber's imaginative use of wind instruments was particularly notable and followed the lines set by his most illustrious predecessors in developing and exploiting the full potentialities of these instruments.
Wagner and Strauss continued the expansion of these ideas with virtuoso techniques which culminated in orchestral developments for the nineteenth century.
Rimsky-Korsakov has been credited with the assertion that "orchestration is composition." This truism emphasizes the importance of thinking orchestrally when composing for orchestra. Orchestration is not a subject that can be mastered by textbook study only. It requires infinite curiosity about what has been done and what is being done by writers of orchestral music at all periods. Textbook study and application serve as a guide in stimulating purposeful thinking and offer sound advice on all practical and technical matters. It is for the student to put these elements into practice by following the procedures which will help the eyes to hear, for, after all, notes are not sounds but symbols for sounds. One suggestion in this direction is to acquire a good score-reading technique. Following a score with recordings or with "live" performances can be helpful in this respect, as all visual parts then become identified with orchestral sound. Familiarity with the reading of all clefs and transpositions in current use is indispensable.
Unnecessary awkwardness caused by inherently unidiomatic writing is to be avoided. Many student attempts, though meritorious in many ways, are often killed by passages which simply cannot be played with any degree of technical perfection. Other passages may look intriguing on paper but fail to "come off" or "sound." Such passages can be corrected only by forming good habits of orchestral thinking. A playable score is usually indicative of music with artistic merit.
In planning the orchestration of piano music, it is desirable to recognize and evaluate the personal style, mannerisms, and period of each composer. By way of illustration, examine the symphonic works of Mozart and Schubert. Two suggested scores for this purpose are Mozart's Symphony No. 35 (Haffner), and the great Schubert C major Symphony No. 7.
Mozart employs a typical Classical instrumentation: woodwinds, horns, trumpets, and timpani in pairs, along with the usual strings. The clarinets were added by the composer in a final revision of the work. A survey of the forty-one symphonies by Mozart reveals irregular numbers of wind instruments, with no apparent attempt to standardize the instrumentation. He simply scored his symphonic works for those instruments which were available. (This concept of practicality has returned to twentieth-century orchestration.) The trombones were not included in a single Mozart symphony! The style is a masterful blending of homophonic and polyphonic textures, the latter having frequent short canonic imitations and fugatos. The part writing rarely exceeds the usual four parts except when tuttis call for a limited use of doublings and fillers. (Doublings are to be regarded as added voices in unisons or octaves, while fillers are extra harmony notes added in either the medium or high registers.)
Mozart's orchestration possesses an elusive quality of delicate transparency which distinguishes it as being among the finest examples of clear musical thinking. This transparency results from textures of real parts with few extraneous notes. Melodic outlining or unison doubling and sustained fillers are practically nonexistent. All musical values are purely and clearly stated with not only adequate scoring, but often with a delightfully tantalizing interplay of timbres revealing a craftsmanship of sheer genius. The extraordinary thing is that Mozart's dynamic levels of forte-to-piano are seldom exceeded in any of his symphonic works!
Yet these scores, which appear to be quite simple technically, are decidedly hazardous — especially for amateur orchestras. What lies behind this apparent contradiction? The characteristic of transparency, more than any other single factor, provides the clue — for music of this texture requires technical perfection for a first-class performance. Difficulties (in Mozart) are not the result of awkward part writing. Quite the contrary. It is because all parts are written with such clarity, taste, and finesse that these scores require purity of sound, style, and sure technical control from each player to do them justice. Each instrument is allowed its full play of expressiveness, strength, and range without relying on sustained parts or doublings for its total effectiveness. Weak ranges of the wood-winds are not engulfed by sustained harmony parts in the same compass that would cover up any true solo character and rob a passage of its clarity and definition.
In the case of the Schubert symphony, there is considerable expansion and development of the instrumental resources as compared to the Mozart opus. Schubert's wind and timpani grouping remains conventional, but the writing for the brass — especially the horns and trombones — is advanced beyond that of traditional Classic usage. This change in instrumentation, however, does not in itself account for the difference in sonority of these works. Schubert's music is, for the most part, homophonically conceived, formalized counterpoint being relatively rare. A second point in texture variance may be noted by comparing the number of voice parts employed by each composer. Schubert frequently wrote unison and octave doublings along with fillers to extend the melodic and harmonic ranges for greater sonorities. His scoring technique gives further evidence of change and variance, as can be noted primarily in the importance given to the melodic line, with its greater dependence upon harmonizations. Because of the greater prominence given to the harmony, observe how the heavier instruments, horns and trombones, are assigned to these parts. Naturally, a fuller sonority is achieved by this method of scoring, and the degree of transparency retained is in proportion to the number and kind of sustaining parts.
Transparency is not the predominating characteristic of Schubert's music, yet a degree of this quality is present when the texture is essentially in four-part writing and without many sustaining voices or doubled parts. It should also be noted that modulation plays a more important part in Schubert's harmonic patterns, along with a prevailing use of the principal triads, which is another characteristic of the late Classic period. Elementary rhythmic patterns likewise assume more importance with this composer, for this kind of natural momentum builds climaxes and increases emotional tension. In summation, it can be established that the fundamental items of texture and style, as analyzed in the Schubert score, provide the roots of change which were to be fully explored and developed by the composers of the later Romantic period.
Before leaving the study of the scores under consideration, a further examination based on the use of the brass instruments should be helpful. In both scores the horns and trumpets rarely have extended melodic lines, being used primarily for sustaining harmony parts or building climaxes in simple harmonizations. In this connection both composers wrote for the natural horns and trumpets — without valves or pistons — and therefore were limited in over-all scale tones. Nevertheless, Schubert managed occasional melodic and harmonic prominence for the horns beyond the limits usual for his time. His trumpet parts likewise have greater independence from couplings with the horns than those in the Mozart score. However, their individual compositional styles furnish the real clue to their divergent techniques of orchestration.
It is of interest to note that melodic lines for horns and trumpets, when they do occur, are usually confined to the tones of the principal triads. This limitation is also applicable to broken chords and fanfares, since these passages were particularly effective in building climaxes in cadences. Quite likely these very limitations of available scale tones for horns, and particularly trumpets, had much to do with the compositional thinking of the composers of the Classic and early Romantic periods, as this factor forced them to derive much of their melodic material from the principal triad combinations. From Haydn to Beethoven and Brahms, there is a predominance of this kind of melodic thinking that was so frequent and regular that it can hardly be considered as simply a personal preference or mannerism.
The orchestra of the symphonic world of music represents but half the total development of this highly specialized medium. Another vital and less formalized division of music was steadily moving forward, with notable results. The ever-expanding horizon of opera offered challenging opportunities with different concepts and possibilities. In its beginnings, the opera orchestra did little more than accompany; but with gradual development and growth came greater freedom, independence, and importance. The opera orchestra became a complementary and contributing factor, a coordinating medium. As the composer of successful opera must be concerned with character delineation in the projection of his music, so too must his orchestra assist in defining such characterization. The opera scores of Gluck and Mozart led the way in establishing the orchestra as an additional unit of dramatic support. The Romantic genius of Weber, notably in his opera, Der Freischutz, created a totally new and startling conception by using the orchestra as a contributing means as well as a supporting unit of independent power and force. His orchestration not only delineated but also created and sustained descriptive moods as indicated by the libretto.
Especially notable was Weber's imaginative use of the wind instruments. In this respect, he followed the lines set by his most illustrious predecessors in developing and exploiting the full potentialities of these instruments. This was a further step toward the recognition and realization of musical composition being inseparably woven into the imaginative qualities of orchestra sonorities. The grandiose operatic scores of the two Richards — Wagner and Strauss — continued the expansion of these ideas with virtuoso techniques which culminated orchestral developments for the nineteenth century.