The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815 (review)

In their preface to this monograph, the authors mention that it took fifteen years to complete. The sheer heft of the tome gives one the sense before ever opening its cover that a comprehensive treatment of the subject is contained in its 600-plus pages, and it does not disappoint.

After a brief introductory essay which, through consideration of the varied instrumental forces used to depict or accompany staged presentations of the (aptly chosen) Orpheus legend from 1480 to 1791, articulates the fundamental question of what makes a grouping of instruments an orchestra, the authors survey various approaches taken by earlier writers, such as Marin Mersenne, Johann Mattheson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Carse, among others, and assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of their approaches. Those approaches included explorations of the etymology of the word "orchestra," the taxonomy of orchestra-like ensembles, the history of orchestral instruments, the history of orchestration, and the social history of the orchestra.

Laying the foundations for the richly detailed study that follows, the authors suggest that the orchestra was "born" somewhere between 1600 and 1791; since seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ensembles varied so greatly in make-up and function, establishing an exact date is difficult. "Instead of searching for the 'first orchestra,'" they argue, "it is more productive to view the birth of the orchestra as a process stretching over the course of two centuries and culminating around 1800 in a social institution that was distinctive and durable, and has remained a central feature of Western art music from that time to the present" (p. 14). In other words, the "'birth of the orchestra' can be defined as the emergence of the orchestra as an institution" (p. 35).

Following this introduction, Spitzer and Zaslaw proceed to explore the many-layered development of that institution from the pre- and "proto-orchestral" ensembles that accompanied sixteenth-century Florentine intermedii and seventeenth-century Viennese operas, English masques, Parisian ballets de cour, and Venetian polychoral sacred music, to the professional subscription-concert orchestras of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which, by that time, constituted "parallel organizations within an internationally integrated field" and are "recognizable as the direct ancestor[s] of modern orchestras" (p. 35).

Separate chapters are devoted to detailed discussions of two ensembles of major historical importance, the orchestras of Jean Baptiste Lully and Arcangelo Corelli. The chapter on Lully provides a fine example of the thoroughness of the authors' research, which ranged from such primary sources as historical treatises, dictionaries, essays, newspapers, journals, memoirs, correspondence, and archives, to secondary sources including more recent monographs, periodicals, musical monuments, and more. The volume contains over 1,500 footnotes (not endnotes). By mining such a wide variety of source materials, the authors were able to debunk aspects of the Lully "myth" most convincingly (i.e., that he created the orchestra, invented new wind instruments, was the first to impose unified bowing on the King's Twenty-Four Violins, and composed the earliest body of truly orchestral repertoire). Still, they allow that he "did in fact play a crucial role in synthesizing, consolidating, and disseminating orchestral organization, scorings, performance practices, and repertory. If Lully was not the orchestra's biological father," the authors assert, "he was at least its godfather" (p. 72).

Following their in-depth investigations of Lully's and Corelli's ensembles, the authors devote the next several chapters to orchestras in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Italy, France, Germany, and England, using evidence as varied as iconography, budgets and payroll records, musicians' contracts, roster lists, and anecdotal reports. The discussion of Italy covers particularly the developments in opera (e.g., Milan, Turin, Naples) and church orchestras, including San Petronio in Bologna and St. Mark's in Venice, while the Paris Opéra, theater orchestras, the Concert spirituel, private orchestras such as La Pouplinière's, and provincial Académies...