Introduction

Why does one try to ‘read a score’, and what does it mean to do so? Conductors have two main reasons for undertaking this activity. The first is that the written or printed score is the key to understanding what happens in the music. As a conductor's principal task is to rehearse the music for performance, knowledge of the forces involved, the style, structure, and main features of the piece are vital in planning the various practical tasks that make up the rehearsal.

The second is to find out in detail what the piece sounds like, creating an aural image – ‘hearing the music in one's head’ – so that the conductor knows in advance what sounds the orchestra should make and, more specifically, the required details of balance, articulation, rhythm, tempo, and so on that distinguish a performance from a mere play-through of the notes. Some conductors go through this process of auralising the score entirely from the musical notation, while others use the piano to create the actual sound of the melodic and harmonic content of the piece.

Composers undertake this second process in reverse, trying to put on paper instructions for recreating the sounds that they have imagined. Some composers, too, use the piano in this process, generating ideas and fixing the main outlines of harmonic and rhythmic content in their minds. For the great majority, whose main active interest is in listening to orchestral music rather than creating or recreating it, the reasons for learning to read a score are less ambitious but more varied.

The composer and the orchestra today

‘Though the standard orchestra is not yet an anachronism, perhaps, it can no longer be used standardly except by anachronistic composers.’ Stravinsky's statement, made in the late 1950s, undoubtedly carries weight: first, from a historical angle and secondly, on account of the aesthetic/technical issues raised by such a succinct, yet perceptive, remark.

The purely musical is unavoidably bound up with practical, cultural and social issues whenever a composer writes an orchestral piece. If the creative spark has been kindled by a commission, the terms of the contract are usually clear, those who manage both chamber and symphony orchestras being primarily concerned with financial survival and, intertwined with such a concern, audience numbers. In short, money and ratings matter. As a result, outside the quasi-Utopian realm of public service broadcasting, an orchestra is a business whose very existence depends on pleasing the public, with all that this implies. Composers today cannot rely on the seriousness of mind displayed by Frederick the Great towards Bach (what contemporary monarch or arts administrator could set a composer a fugue subject?), nor can they expect the average listener to be versed in a particularly wide-ranging repertory at any level other than the most superficial. An orchestral concert is, historically, as well as by nature and intention, a public event, albeit the nature and scope of the ‘public’ having changed over the course of three centuries. There is no doubt that Haydn's late symphonies parade their virtues in a way in which his mature quartets do not; the brushstrokes are broader.

‘Will the Oracle in the Cave of Harmony please speak?’ According to legend, the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham would utter these words on completing a recording take. ‘The Cave of Harmony’ was the recording booth. ‘The Oracle’ was the recording engineer.

If Beecham's sarcastic wit endeared him to his champions, it probably upset some of his collaborators. Working (literally) at the cutting edge, his engineers, like today's, would have been doing their best to capture his performances in their full glory, but for most of Beecham's lifetime they were constrained by an inadequate medium. Not only was the sound quality deficient, but the performances themselves were also compromised. The maximum time that could be recorded on one side of a 78 rpm shellac disc was about five minutes. Domestic listeners to extended classical works were obliged to change record sides at frequent intervals, which impaired concentration, and broadcasters had to resort to multiple copies and deft changeover procedures in order to present a recorded work in uninterrupted form. Moreover, conductors were obliged to choose tempi that matched side changes to natural musical junctions, so when, for example, we hear Gustav Holst conducting ‘Mars’ from his own Planets suite in a very fast five minutes, it is unwise to deduce that this reveals the definitive tempo.

Introduction

Instrumentation and orchestration have been defined as ‘the art of combining the sounds of a complex of instruments (an orchestra or other ensemble) to form a satisfactory blend and balance’. If the two terms are separable, ‘instrumentation’ concerns selection of the ensemble, including the study of the technical aspects which determine the choice of instruments for a particular purpose, while ‘orchestration’ is used for the application of skills in an artistic fashion. Thus an orchestral realisation of a musical conception may be an original work, without any existence prior to its orchestral realisation; or it may be a transcription for orchestra of music by the person orchestrating it, or by someone else.

Orchestration is thus more than the effective disposition of pitches (not to mention rhythms) among the instruments of the orchestra; but this skill remains indispensable, and advice on the craft of instrumentation forms a substantial literature. The first celebrated example, though not the first publication of its kind, was by the French composer Hector Berlioz, and was for many years incomparably the most influential and most widely used in teaching. Orchestration treatises concentrate mainly on technical details, including some description of instrument mechanisms and a comprehensive listing of the possibilities and impossibilities of the various instruments, with examples of recent usage. The creative, aesthetic dimension of orchestration is less open to explanation in a textbook, but more vital to the composer and listener. Orchestral sonorities form an integral part of musical thinking in the European traditions of concert music, and a vital element of its expressive language and rhetoric.

Introduction

The life of an orchestral musician can be highly rewarding, challenging and exciting, but is just as likely to be frustrating, exhausting and unfulfilling. Between these two extremes there are many different realities. In order to understand and determine at which end of the spectruma player's life might fall, one must understand not only the individual's particular circumstances and attitude towards his or her position, but also the artistic, financial and political background in which he or she operates. It is also important to appreciate that most people take up music professionally because they have artistic aspirations, whereas their orchestral role is largely that of an artisan. Artistic creativity lies primarily with conductors and soloists, although there is significant creative input from principal players. Many orchestral musicians understand and accept this role and are able to find great fulfilment and enjoyment, as well as camaraderie, in their work. Those who fail to develop creative outlets often find that the inherent tension of an artist working primarily as an artisan leads to frustration and a lack of personal growth and creativity.

The orchestra as a community

An orchestra is a microcosm of society and a cross-section of people from all kinds of social backgrounds, working together in close proximity. As with any social system, there are many ways of organising its internal political structures, a topic that forms part of the discussion in chapter 15 of this book. As noted by Simon Channing in the previous chapter, orchestras have become ever more consultative throughout the second half of the twentieth century, so that the musical director is no longer a dictator, as was often the case in the past.

Introduction

As late as the 1970s historical recordings of orchestral music were virtually ignored. A few enthusiasts stored collections of 78 rpm records in their attics, and spoke reverently of the pre-war Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as a motoring enthusiast would talk of the red RR on an early Rolls-Royce. But almost no old orchestral recordings were available in transfers to LP, apart from a few concerto recordings valued almost exclusively for their soloists. The sixteen-year-old Yehudi Menuhin's 1932 recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto, conducted by the composer, was rightly regarded as extraordinary. But its value was taken to lie exclusively in the beautiful playing of the miraculous teenager. The fact that it was conducted by Elgar was of little more than sentimental interest. And as for the orchestral playing, the predominant view was that it was something of a mess, and demonstrated how much orchestral standards in Britain had improved since the 1930s.

By the early twenty-first century, reactions to orchestral playing of that period have become more complex and less dismissive. We have become accustomed to the sounds of early twentieth-century orchestras through the thousands of reissues now available on CD. Only thirty years ago the rare speaker who wanted to play a pre-war orchestral recording on BBC Radio 3 would have to find the original 78 rpm records in the BBC library or in a private collection. Now hardly a day goes by without a historical orchestral recording being played on Radio 3, and it is almost always taken from a CD reissue. Music shops are full of them, and they have become so widely accepted that in many shops they are not restricted to a separate ‘historical’ section, but mixed up with the latest digital recordings, often at the same price. The past is ever-present.

The orchestra before 1800

Any history of the ‘orchestra’ will depend significantly on how the term is defined. One can start from two quite different premises: that an orchestra is a corporation of instrumental musicians; and that an orchestra is a corporate musical instrument. The distinction is, in effect, that of the orchestra as an institution and as a sounding body. The history of the institution is a matter for economic, social and other historians dealing with the musical profession and its broader place in Western (or Westernised) art traditions. The history of the ‘instrument’ is more inherently musical, concerning how composers have been motivated by, and have motivated, changes in the constitution of the orchestra in different genres, forms and styles through the ages. These histories are contiguous – one cannot have the instrument without the body of instrumentalists – and yet not necessarily congruent: corporations of instrumentalists existed long before the orchestra as such came into being. For example, it is a moot point whether one can use the term ‘orchestra’ for a group of ceremonial trumpeters at a medieval court, for a Renaissance string or wind band, or even for the 24 violons du Roi in the Versailles of Louis XIV of France. It is no less moot whether one can speak of orchestration, as distinct from the use of instruments, in the works of Monteverdi, Lully, Bach and Handel or even, perhaps, early Haydn.

Introduction

The conductor is many things to many people, now more than ever. Until well into the twentieth century, for instance, the profession, with few exceptions, was an exclusively male preserve. Today, women conductors, while still a minority, are increasingly familiar. Ethel Leginska (1886–1970) and Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) were the great pioneers. Their successors include Veronika Dudarova, Iona Brown, Marin Alsop, Jane Glover, Odaline de la Martinez, Sian Edwards, Andrea Quinn and JoAnn Falletta, although at the time of writing, the principal conductors of all the world's major symphony orchestras remain resolutely male, and there is little evidence that this is likely to change in the immediately foreseeable future. And while the conductor still represents the very apex of glamour in the musical world, the profession itself has never been more seriously questioned.

Introduction

In recent years there has been an increasing amount of comment about changes in national orchestral performing styles and sonorities during the second half of the twentieth century. It has been argued that in the last few decades traditionally individual sounds and stylistic characteristics of orchestras from specific different countries have been all but eroded and replaced by a more internationally uniform sonority and approach that has gradually but steadily arisen. That is a generalised claim, but nevertheless recordings definitely do illustrate how some very distinctive traits that formerly existed in certain orchestras have now largely disappeared. For instance, fifty years ago there were striking differences between many of the colours, timbres and also styles of phrasing that could be heard in French, Italian, German, Russian, English and American orchestras. And as recently as only a quarter of a century ago this was still very much the case with four of the world's leading orchestras from different parts: the Berlin Philharmonic, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Philharmonic, London Symphony And New York Philharmonic. Their individually recognisable qualities, such as the Leningrad brass players' stridently strong vibrato and often, though not always, very marcato style (similar in most Russian orchestras) and the darker, richer and more generally blending sounds in Berlin existed to a greater or lesser extent, regardless of who was conducting.

Recent history

Conservatoire training for orchestral musicians has changed dramatically during the past fifteen years. This change has been reflected in a much more intensive and detailed curriculum, particularly at postgraduate level, designed to produce students who are fully prepared for the various demands of a rapidly changing profession.

When I attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London as a postgraduate student on the ‘orchestral training’ course, there was comparatively little on offer by way of officially organised training. The principal study lesson was the main focus, lasting an hour a week. As my teacher, Peter Lloyd, was principal flute with the LSO, I naturally learned a great deal about orchestral playing as well as attending LSO rehearsals at his invitation. As far as the syllabus was concerned, however, there was no official requirement to learn orchestral repertory and no formal assessment. Apart from my flute lessons, I played in the Symphony Orchestra three times during the year: Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Sibelius Symphony No. 2 and the concerto competition finals as well as accompanying the opera. For the rest of my time, I was free to practise and to use this relative freedom to make music with my fellow students. At the end of the course I left, the proud recipient of a ‘Certificate of Advanced Studies’ in ‘orchestral training’, and I still look back at the year as having been pivotal in my development, in spite of – or perhaps because of – the lack of institutional rigour. Such courses were typical of all music colleges in the UK at the time. Students were left to pick up certain skills by osmosis, and their readiness for entering the profession was, to a very large degree, dependent on the work done with the principal study professor. In that respect, I was simply lucky.

Introduction

The symphony orchestra is undoubtedly one of the great cultural achievements of European civilisation. It is also one of Europe's most significant cultural exports. What began as relatively small collections of musicians in the courts of central Europe in the seventeenth century has not only grown in size but also achieved a wide geographical spread. Indeed, the orchestra is now a truly world-wide phenomenon, and such globalisation can largely be explained as a result of two significant factors. First, European expatriation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whereby migrant communities from various European countries settled elsewhere, inevitably resulted in the transplantation of numerous aspects of European culture; Western art music and its most significant ensemble, the symphony orchestra, were invariably part of this process. Second, as Western culture generally and its music in particular became more widely disseminated, helped later by the growth of the recording industry and the global domination of a small number of Western record companies, Western art music achieved a degree of popularity – and sometimes cultural ascendancy – in areas where it was not part of the indigenous culture. Along with Western-style institutions of music education (conservatoires and exam boards, for example) the symphony orchestra became seen as an acceptable, even desirable, organisation, for rather complex and variable reasons relating to local cultural and political aspirations.

Development in context

Discussion of the development of musical instruments inevitably raises questions of cause and effect: did composers demand changes to instruments, were these encouraged by performers, or were the instrument makers responsible? A popularly held belief since the rise of organology as a discipline in the nineteenth century is that of a progressive and essentially evolutionary process. European citizens were surrounded by mechanical development, social engineering, and the maturation of scientific thought, while the theory of human evolution itself became formalised. Furthermore, in the processes of colonisation, European civilisation had encountered and subsumed ‘primitive’ cultures, while at the same time the artefacts and practices of these cultures started to be systematically catalogued and preserved. It was not difficult to draw general conclusions on the evolution of musical instruments by making direct comparisons between items collected from undeveloped cultures and those made and used within the Western sphere. Evolution of form and function seemed obvious. It is scarcely surprising that nineteenth-century organologists, embedded in their culture of progress and development, would theorise such a harmonious explanation.

An evolutionary theory of musical instrument development required a driving force. Given the lowly status of the artisan in the nineteenth-century social structure, it was unthinkable that developments which might influence higher intellectual pursuits could be driven from below. It was therefore necessary that the composer be charged with initiating invention.

Introduction

Think ‘symphony orchestra’ and a number of images come to mind: beautiful music; concert halls with chandeliers and gilded balconies; a hundred musicians, mainly men, elegantly dressed in tails. All of this may in fact exist, especially in the older capital cities of Europe, but even when the concert halls are dark, there is a lot more happening in the world of the symphony orchestra and the chamber orchestra, especially in the UK and the US. Administratively, there is a welter of fundraising, publicity, marketing and accounting activities, but there is another sphere that works symbiotically with the artistic and administrative areas of the orchestra. In the early twenty-first century, most professional orchestras have Education Departments specifically dedicated to the provision of a range of programmes for their subscribers and for the greater community.

Education programmes are not new: specially designated children's concerts have existed since the early twentieth century, when there was an enthusiastic audience of adults who regarded these concerts as an important supplement to children's general education and as an element in the continuation of family tradition. Nearly a hundred years later, most professional orchestras continue to consider children's concerts as the flagships of their education departments. Nowadays, however, these concerts constitute only a part of a wide array of programmes, serving all segments of the community.