Originally the word ‘orchestra’ did not mean a group of people playing music at all. Instead, it was the place where they stood or sat. In a Greek amphitheatre, the natural slope of the seats was called the ‘loilon’; the backdrop to the stage was known as the ‘scena’, and the semi-circular piece of flat ground between the two was the ‘orchestra’. Eventually, it came to mean the people who played there, too.
The modern orchestra, like the ancient one before it, was also born in the theatre, where it accompanied plays and operas. The Dresden Staatskapelle is the world’s oldest orchestra, tracing its roots back as far as 1548. It was soon joined by others, as churches, courts, cities and towns across Europe founded their own ensembles over the following couple of centuries. The virtuoso Mannheim orchestra (run by the local Elector) was particularly important in advancing the cause. The UK’s oldest surviving symphony orchestra is the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, which was founded in 1840 and became a fully professional band in 1853.
Orchestration is the part of a composer’s job that sorts out who plays what. Usually it comes after the initial composing itself, once the central ideas have been created. Many composers consider it a completely separate procedure, and some are thought of as being greater masters of the process than others. Maurice Ravel, Hector Berlioz and Paul Dukas, for example, are all considered experts in the field.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was another such expert, making a habit of superbly orchestrating virtually everything that he laid his hands on. He was already strong in the area of orchestration while he was still at college, writing musical arrangements for the student band. He perfected his craft while he was in the navy, when he made a point of learning how to play just about every instrument of the orchestra.
Richard Wagner is worthy of a mention at the start of this book, too. When he could not get quite the right combination of orchestral colours to do justice to the sound that was in his head, he simply invented his own instrument to create it. The ‘Wagner tuba’ was the result. It is, in fact, more of a big horn than a tuba. Wagner employed it to great musical effect in his mammoth four-opera cycle, The Ring.
The biggest section of the orchestra is made up of string instruments. In a standard-sized symphony orchestra, you might find around thirty violins, a dozen or so violas, maybe ten cellos and around eight double-basses. That is a total of around sixty or so players in all – roughly two-thirds of the band. The reason that these numbers are not exact is that different composers call for slightly different musical configurations for each of their works, and in some repertoires conductors and managers can exercise a degree of choice.
The brass section typically comprises three trumpets, three trombones, four French horns and a tuba – allowing the composer to paint musical pictures with three high, four middle, three low and one very low brush. The brass section is undoubtedly loud: these eleven players alone can often drown out the entire string section because of the sheer volume of sound that their instruments are capable of producing.
Next are the woodwind instruments, which these days are not necessarily made of wood. This section is made up of two or three flutes, often a piccolo, a couple of oboes, four clarinets and perhaps a bass clarinet, two bassoons and possibly a contra-bassoon.
The final part of the orchestra is a percussion section of three or four players, playing various instruments, such as timpani, cymbals, side drums, bass drums, xylophones and triangles.
One or sometimes two harpists and a pianist, who might play the celesta when required, more or less complete the complement of a full standard symphony orchestra.
A chamber orchestra operates in a similar way to a symphony orchestra, but on a smaller scale, usually having a total of only around thirty players on stage. Again, the exact range of instruments that turns up on the night will be dependent on the demands of the composer’s score, but each of the sections of a chamber orchestra will have fewer musicians than its symphonic big brother.