Orchestration: An Anthology of Writings (review)

In his preface, Paul Mathews declares Hector Berlioz's Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration of 1844 "a watershed moment in the history of orchestration" (pages unnumbered in the front matter). While books about instrumental practice had been published periodically since the sixteenth century, no one as prominent as Berlioz had done so as extensively, nor had the case been made that orchestration—to Berlioz, the balancing of appropriate numbers and types of instruments, considering their differing timbres, characters, and ranges of expression—was a craft beyond mere instrumentation.

Since Berlioz, many composers have written on this topic. Mathews began to collect those writings to use in the classes he taught on the subject at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Along the way, it occurred to him that they documented the evolution of orchestral style in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and comprised a useful history of philosophy and practice in this domain. The resulting anthology includes writings only by composers, and further eliminates excerpts from twentieth-century orchestration textbooks, such as those by Walter Piston and Samuel Adler, on the grounds that their purpose is less speculative and more technical.

The texts included are grouped into six chronological sections, each introduced by Mathews. He divides nineteenth-century practice into three styles: French, with mainly homophonic textures; German, predominantly contrapuntal; and New German, combining homophonic and contrapuntal. In the twentieth century, the historic divide between those styles was less evident, though Mathews detects vestiges of the opposing schools of thought in conflicting remarks on the use of instrumental color made by Morton Feldman and Elliott Carter.

According to the editor, the selected texts have been reprinted here with minimal editing, and changes were normally made only to clarify nomenclature or to restore performance indications in score excerpts to their original language, where earlier authors had translated them. Music examples have been re-engraved based on recent editions of the scores in question, and a few "redundant examples" (preface; page unnumbered) were omitted and footnoted.

Section 1, "The Early Nineteenth Century," focuses on issues concerning Beethoven's orchestration, especially the Ninth Symphony, which was particularly challenging for nineteenth-century musicians as it required many more instrumentalists than was the norm, and a conductor to prepare and lead them in performance, also a new departure. The debate evolved along mainly nationalist lines, with German composers arguing for clarity above all, even offering various "improvements" to Beethoven's score, while French and Russian composers insisted on fidelity to the original even if that meant sacrificing clarity in performance. Claiming that deafness caused Beethoven to lose "the distinct consciousness of [the orchestra's] dynamic values" (p. 20), and noting the "limitations" (p. 24) of the natural brass and other instruments of his era that caused "distort[ions in] the established melodic curve" (p. 26), Wagner proceeded to correct "defects in the instrumentation of the ... Ninth Symphony" (p. 22), calling his action a "restitutio in integrum of the master's intention" (p. 25).

On the opposing side of the issue, Gounod "[did] not admit the right of anybody to correct the masters" (p. 37), insisting that "it is better to leave a great master his imperfections, if he has any, than to impose on him our own" (p. 39). Stravinsky, too, felt it a "fundamental error" to consider "instrumentation as something extrinsic from the music for which it exists" (p. 41).

Section 2, "The Late Nineteenth Century," focuses on "the dialectic of French and German orchestral styles" (p. 45) and the growing size of the orchestra, although Beethoven's orchestration still evokes comment. For example, Mahler concurred with Wagner, arguing that "all Beethoven's works need a certain amount of editing": "one has to add all sorts of dynamic indications to the parts, so that the principal voice stands out" (p. 47). Note the intrusion of his own orchestral practice into his performances of Beethoven. Mahler also insisted that it would "seem...