The appreciation and consequent enjoyment of an orchestral concert
will be greatly enhanced if the listener is familiar with certain
details regarding the orchestra itself and some of the compositions he
is apt to hear. This I have borne in mind in the chapter divisions of
this portion of my book, and, as a result, I have divided the subject
into the general development of the orchestra, the specific
consideration of the principal orchestral instruments, a cursory
commentary on certain phases of orchestral music and a chapter on
Richard Strauss who represents its most advanced aspects.
The first music of which we moderns take account was unaccompanied (_a
capella_) singing for church service. It was composed in the old
ecclesiastical modes, which are quite different from our modern
scales, and the name which comes most prominently to mind in
connection with this beginning of our musical history is that of
Palestrina. With the influence of this old church choral music so
dominant, there is little wonder that the first efforts to write music
for instruments were awkward. It may be said right here that this
awkwardness, or rather this lack of knowledge and appreciation of the
individual capacity of various instruments, is shown throughout the
school of contrapuntal composition, even by Bach. When Bach wrote for
orchestral instruments he did not consider their peculiar tone
quality, or their capacity for individual expression, but simply their
pitch--which instrument could take up this, that or the other theme in
his contrapuntal score, when he had carried it as high or as low as he
could on some other instrument. This also is true of Haendel, although
in less degree.
But just as we have seen that Domenico Scarlatti worked along original
lines for the pianoforte and created the germ of the sonata form,
while Bach was weaving and plaiting the counterpoint of his suites,
partitas and "Well-Tempered Clavichord," so in Italy, during a large
part of this contrapuntal period, a distinct kind of orchestral music
was springing up. Again, just as we have seen that in Italy the
pianoforte shook off the trammels of counterpoint when it began to be
used as an accompaniment for dramatic recitative in opera, so the
instruments in the orchestra, when composers began to use them for
operatic accompaniments, were employed more with reference to their
individual tone qualities and power of expression.
Primitive Orchestral Efforts.
Although, strictly speaking, not the first composer to use orchestral
instruments in opera, and to display skill in utilizing their
individual characteristics, the most important of these early men was
Claudio Monteverde (1568-1643). In his "Orpheo," which he produced in
1608, he utilized, besides two harpsichords (and it may be of interest
to note here that instruments of the pianoforte class were long used
in orchestras as connecting links between all the other instruments),
two bass viols, two tenor viols, one double harp, two little French
violins, two large guitars, two wood organs, two viola di gambas, one
regal, four trombones, two cornets, one octave flute, one clarion, and
three trumpets with mutes--a fairly formidable array of instruments
when the period is considered. Of especial interest are the "two
little French violins," which probably were the same as our modern
violins, now the prima donnas of the orchestra and far outnumbering
any other instrument employed.
It was Monteverde who in his "Tancredi e Clorinda" made use for the
first time of a tremolo for stringed instruments, and it is said so to
have astonished the performers that they at first refused to play it.
Before Monteverde there were operatic composers like Jacopo Peri, and
after him Cavalli and Alessandro Scarlatti, who did much for their day
to develop the orchestra. This is a very brief summary of the early
development of instrumental music, a story that easily could fill a
volume--which, probably, however, very few people would take the
trouble to read.
Beethoven and the Modern Orchestra.
The first really modern composer for the orchestra was Joseph Haydn
(1732-1809), who also may be considered the father of the symphony.
Born before Mozart, he also survived that composer. His music is gay
and naive; while Mozart, although he had decidedly greater genius for
the dramatic than Haydn, nevertheless is only a trifle more emotional
in his symphonies. The three greatest of these which he composed
during the summer of 1788, the E flat major, G minor and C major
(known as the "Jupiter"), show a decided advance in the knowledge of
orchestration, and the E flat major is notable because it is the first
symphonic work in which clarinets were used. Haydn's and Mozart's
symphonies--that is, the best of them--sound agreeable even to-day in
a concert hall of moderate size. But because modern music with its
sonorous orchestra requires large auditoriums, like Carnegie Hall in
New York, these charming symphonic works of the earlier classical
period are swallowed up in space and much of their naive and pretty
effect is lost.
Beethoven may be said to have established the modern orchestra. Very
few instruments have been added to it since his time, and if an
orchestra to-day sounds differently from what it did in his day, if
the works of modern composers sound richer and more effective from a
modern point of view than his orchestral compositions, it is not
because we have added a lot of new instruments, but because our
composers have acquired greater skill in bringing out their peculiar
tone qualities and because the technique of orchestral players has
greatly improved.
It is for precisely the same reasons that Beethoven's symphonies show
such a great advance upon those of his predecessors. The point is not
that Beethoven added a few more instruments to the orchestra, but
that, so far as his own purposes were concerned, he handled all the
instruments which he included in his band with much greater skill than
his predecessors had shown. Many writers affect to despise technique.
But in point of fact the development of technique and the development
of art go hand in hand. An artist, be he writer, painter or musician,
cannot adequately express his ideas unless he has the means of doing
so or the genius to create the means.
How He Developed Orchestral Resources.
In following Beethoven's symphonies from the First to the Ninth, we
can see the modern orchestra developing under his hands from that
handed over to him by Haydn and Mozart. In the First and Second
Symphonies, Beethoven employs the usual strings, two flutes, two
oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and
tympani. In the Third Symphony, the "Eroica," he adds a third horn
part; in the Fifth a piccolo, trombones and contrabassoon. Although
employed in the finale only, these instruments here make their first
bow in the symphonic orchestra. In the Ninth Symphony Beethoven
introduced two additional horns, the first use of four horns in a
symphony. The scoring of these symphonies is given somewhat more in
detail in the chapter "How the Orchestra Grew," in Mr. W. J.
Henderson's "The Orchestra and Orchestral Music," a well conceived and
logically developed book, in which the full story of the orchestra and
its growth is clearly and interestingly told.
Beethoven not only understood to a greater degree than his
predecessors the peculiar characteristics of orchestral instruments,
he also compelled orchestral players to acquire a better technique by
giving them more difficult music to execute. In point of greater
difficulty in performance, a Beethoven symphony holds about the same
relation to the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn as the Beethoven
pianoforte sonatas do to the sonatas of those composers.
Beethoven and Wagner.
Just as Beethoven added only a few instruments to the orchestra of his
predecessors, but showed greater skill in handling those instruments,
so the modern musician--a Wagner or a Richard Strauss--achieves his
striking instrumental effects by a still greater knowledge of
instrumental resources. The Beethoven orchestra practically is the
orchestra of to-day. Few, very few, instruments have been added.
Modern composers steadily have asked for more and more instruments in
each group; but that is quite a different thing from adding new
instruments. They have required more instruments of the same kind, but
have asked for very few instruments of new kinds. Let me illustrate
this by two modern examples.
Firm, compact and eloquent as is Beethoven's orchestra in the Fifth
Symphony, it cannot for a moment be compared in richness, sonority,
tone color, searching power of expression and unflagging interest,
with Wagner's orchestra in "Die Meistersinger." Yet Wagner has added
only one trumpet, a harp and a tuba to the very orchestra which
Beethoven employed when he scored for the Fifth Symphony; while for
his "Symphonie Pathetique," one of the finest of modern orchestral
works, Tschaikowsky adds only a bass tuba to the orchestra used by
Beethoven. The simple fact is that modern composers have studied every
possible phase of tone color and expression of which each instrument
is capable. Furthermore, by skillfully dividing the orchestra into
groups and using these groups like separate orchestras, yet uniting
them into one great orchestra, they produce wonderfully rich
contrapuntal effects, and thus make the modern orchestra sound, not
seventy-five years, but five hundred years more advanced than that of
Beethoven, however great we gladly acknowledge Beethoven to have
been.
Berlioz, an Orchestral Juggler.
Following Beethoven, the next great development in the handling of
orchestral resources is due to Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), and it is
curious here how nearly one musical epoch overlaps another. Scarlatti
was composing sonatas, and thus voicing the beginning of the classical
era, while Bach was bringing the contrapuntal period to a close. It
was only five years after the completion of the Ninth Symphony that
Berlioz's "Francs Juges" overture was played. A year later his
"Symphonie Fantastique, Episode de la Vie d'un Artiste," was brought
out. Yet the Berlioz orchestra sounds so utterly different from the
Beethoven orchestra that it almost might be a collection of different
instruments. Even more than Beethoven, Berlioz understood the
individuality, the potential characteristics of each instrument.
Berlioz composed on a colossal scale, so colossal that his music
has been called architectural. The "Dies Irae" in his "Requiem"
calls for four brass bands, in four different corners of the
hall, and for fourteen kettledrums tuned to different notes, in
addition to the regular orchestra, chorus and soloists. This has
been dubbed "three-story music"--the orchestra on the ground floor,
the chorus on the _belle etage_, while the four extra brass
bands are stationed _aux troisieme_. Unfortunately for Berlioz, his
ambition, in so far as it related to the art of orchestration
and the skill he showed in accomplishing what he wanted to with
his body of instrumentalists, was far in excess of his inspiration.
His knowledge of the orchestra was sufficient to have afforded him
every facility for the expression of great thoughts if he had
them to express. But his power of thematic invention, his gift
for melody, was not equal to his genius for instrumentation.
Nevertheless, through this genius for instrumentation--for his
technique was so extraordinary that it amounted to genius--and
through his very striving after bizarre, unusual and gigantic
effects, he contributed largely toward the development of the
technical resources of instrumental music.
Wagner, Greatest of Orchestral Composers.
Berlioz wrote a book on instrumentation, which has lately been
re-edited by Richard Strauss. In it Strauss, modestly ignoring
himself, says that Wagner's scores mark the only advance in
orchestration worth mentioning since Berlioz. It is true, the
technical possibilities of the orchestra were greatly improved, so far
as the woodwind was concerned, by the introduction of keyed
instruments constructed on the system invented by Theobald Boehm; while
the French instrument maker, Adolphe Sax, also made important
improvements by perfecting the bass clarinet and the bass tuba. But
whatever aid Wagner derived from these improvements merely was
incidental to the principle which is illustrated by every one of his
scores--that technique merely is a means to an end. Wagner is the
greatest orchestral virtuoso who ever breathed. Never, however, does
he employ technique for technique's sake, but always only to enable
his orchestra to convey the exact meaning he has in his mind or
express the emotion he has in his heart, and he spares no pains to hit
upon the best method of conveying these ideas and expressing these
emotions. That is one reason why, although no one with any knowledge
of music could mistake a passage by Wagner for any one else's music,
each of his works has its own peculiar orchestral style. For each of
his works reproduces through the orchestra the "atmosphere" of its
subject. The scores of "Tannhaeuser," "Lohengrin," "The Ring of the
Nibelung," "Tristan," "Meistersinger" and "Parsifal" never could be
mistaken for any one but Wagner's music. Yet how different they are
from each other! He makes each instrument speak its own language.
When, for example, the English horn speaks through Wagner, it speaks
English, not broken English, and so it is with all the other
instruments of the orchestra--he makes them speak without a foreign
accent.
If Wagner employs a large orchestra, it is not for the sake of making
a noise, but in order to gain variety in expression. "He is
wonderfully reserved in the use of his forces," says Richard Strauss.
"He employs them as a great general would his battalions, and does not
send in an army corps to pick off a skirmisher." Strauss regards
"Lohengrin" as a model score for a somewhat advanced student, before
proceeding to the polyphony of "Tristan" and "Meistersinger" or "the
fairy region of the 'Nibelungs.'" "The handling of the wind
instruments," writes Strauss, "reaches a hitherto unknown esthetic
height. The so-called third woodwinds, English horn and bass clarinet,
added for the first time to the woodwinds, are already employed in a
variety of tone color; the voices of the second, third and fourth
horn, trumpets and trombones established in an independent polyphony,
the doubling of melodic voices characteristic of Wagner, carried out
with such assurance and freedom and knowledge of their characteristic
timbres, and worked out with an understanding of tonal beauty, that to
this day evokes unstinted admiration. At the close of the second act
the organ tones that Wagner lures out of the orchestra triumph over
the queen of instruments itself."
How Wagner Produces His Effects.
The effects produced by Wagner are not due to a large orchestra, but
to his manner of using the instruments in it. Among some of his
special effects are the employment of full harmony with what formerly
would have been merely single passing notes, and above all, the
exploitation of every resource of counterpoint in combination with the
well developed system of harmony inherited from Beethoven, but largely
added to by himself. In fact, Wagner's greatness is due to the
combination of several great gifts--his melodic inventiveness, his
rich harmony and his wonderful technical skill in weaving together his
themes in a still richer counterpoint. This counterpoint is not,
however, dry and formal, because his themes--his leading motives--are
themselves full of emotional significance and not conceived, like
those of the old contrapuntists, merely: for formal treatment.
Richard Strauss is such a master of orchestration that I am inclined
to quote his summary of the development of the art of orchestration,
from his edition of the Berlioz book, which at this writing has not
yet been translated. I should like to recall to the reader's mind,
however, the fact that Strauss' father was a noted French-horn player;
that Strauss himself has a great love for the instrument; and that
when, in summing up the causes of Wagner's primacy among orchestral
writers, he finds one of them in the greater technical facility of the
valve horn, it is well to take this with a grain of salt and attribute
it somewhat to his own affection for the instrument. The symphonies of
Haydn and Mozart, according to Strauss, are enlarged string quartets
with obbligato woodwind, brass and tympani, and the occasional use of
other instruments of noise to strengthen the tuttis.
"Even with Beethoven, the symphony is still simply enlarged chamber
music, the orchestra being treated in a pianistic spirit which
unfortunately shows itself even in the orchestral work of Schumann and
Brahms. Wagner owes his polyphonic string quintet not to the Beethoven
orchestra, but to the last quartets of Beethoven, in which each
instrument is the peer of the others.
"Meanwhile, another kind of orchestral work was developing, for, from
the time of Gluck on, the opera orchestra was gaining in coloring and
in individual characteristics. Berlioz was not dramatic enough for
opera nor symphonic enough for the concert stage, yet his efforts to
write programmatic symphonies resulted in his discovering new effects,
new possibilities in tone tints and in orchestral technics. Berlioz
misses the polyphony that enriches Wagner's orchestra, and makes
instruments like the second violins, violas, etc., second horns, etc.,
weave their threads or strands of melody into the woof. Wagner's
primacy is due to his employment of the richest style of polyphony and
counterpoint, the increased possibility of this through the invention
of the valve horn, and his demand of solo virtuosity upon his
orchestral players. His scores mark the only advance worth mentioning
since Berlioz."
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