Orchestra

“ The clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the instruments, the patches of yellow light thrown by the green- shaded lamps on the smooth, varnished bellies of the cellos and the bass viols in the rear, the restless, wind-tossed forest of fiddle necks and bows-I recalled how, in the first orchestra I had ever heard, those long bow strokes seemed to draw the heart out of me, as a conjurer's stick reels out yards of paper ribbon from a hat. ”

“ Then the orchestra enters, with a passage of brilliant resonant chords, full of spirited 83 life and gay challenge, calling the dancers to their places, and the waltz proper begins. Its crisp, piquant rhythm and free elasticity of movement, its bright, graceful melody and cheerful major harmony, all express youthful elation, fresh, joyous excitement, thoughtless, hence unmixed, gaiety. ”

“ We shall watch the perfecting of the orchestra, its enrichment in sonority and in color. We shall see the Lied spring from the forehead of Schubert. We shall mark the development of the pianoforte and the growth of a noble literature of pianoforte music, rivalling that of the orchestra in proportion and in meaning. A new opera will come into being, discarding old traditions, alien myths, allying itself to the life of the peoples of Europe. ”

“ Is not an orchestra a confusing sight in one way? You look at all the violins and violoncellos, the flutes, the hautboys, the wind instruments, and finally the conductor, and even if he waves his baton ever so knowingly, you wonder how he knows just what to do. ”

“ The orchestra executes an independent piece of music, carefully worked-out and rounded in most delicate detail, which admirably renders the situation, and yet only serves as a foil to the independent voice-part. A tone of playful humour runs through the whole long piece from beginning to end; it is the merriment of youth, finding an outlet in jest and teasing, expressed with all possible freshness and grace. ”

“ As in an orchestra, amid the swell of many instruments, where deep-toned thunders mingle with sounds of softer influence, some one strain will rise, from time to time, suggestive of feelings apart from the rest, with higher and nobler sympathies around it, so did her voice, heard among the others, sound thus sweetly. ”

“ Toward the end, the orchestra quickens the time; then it ceases to be a dance; it is a genuine delirium, a frenzy; shouts and singing blend with the music, and the whirling mass passes before you like a railroad train. At that moment, the sight is truly miraculous, truly interesting to watch; and we know many people who go to the Opéra ball solely to sit in a box and watch the galop at their ease. ”

“ Their instruments are a big drum, hand tambours, huge cone-shaped basket rattles, a bent bamboo harp with a solitary string, and the indispensable güiro or nutmeg-grater. There is harmony in this outline of an orchestra, let him laugh who may. No actual tune is there, but you have all the lights and shadows—the skeleton, so to speak—of a tune, and if your imagination be musical, that will suffice to supply the melody. ”

“ At the same time, he makes much of his music out of wholly independent but appropriate melodic ideas, which melodies are oftener orchestral than vocal. He conceives his orchestra, not as a minute mirror of every reflection of the text, but as a stream that shall flow with the drama, taking course, speed, contour, substance, and color from it. ”

“ His great importance in the history of music is, of course, his development of the orchestra. No one else has ever observed orchestral possibilities so keenly and used them so surely. His musical ideas, as played on the piano, may sound banal, but when they are heard in the orchestra they become pure magic. He never was a pianist; his virtuosity as a performer was lavished on the flute and guitar. ”

“ We call the Orchestra an instrument, or even a machine; but let us think for a moment of these intelligent personalities behind their instruments, or merged into their instruments, and we shall realize what a sensitive organization a Symphony Orchestra is. ”

“ Thus we get the harmonious effect of a great orchestra, where, though every variety of instrument may be played, all are subordinated, or co-ordinated, to the musical scheme, and produce that impression of power and sweetness by cadences that may be now soft as the whispers of the summer winds over a field of wheat, and anon sweep like a tempest with the fury of thundering waves upon the utmost shores of sound. ”

“ And what a revelation is an orchestra the first time one hears it, even if it be but a poor one!—Music come bodily down from Heaven! And here in their musical darkness, the Americans in the provinces are having an orchestra of the very highest excellence burst upon them in full splendour. What could be more American? They always have the best or none!
At nine o'clock in the evening the concert was over, and we all returned to the hotel for supper. We were all desperately hungry after so much music and enthusiasm. ”

“ But I shall never forget the shock it was to me on arriving at the theatre to find the disposition of the orchestra in a fashion which I have never seen except at a circus. Out of two boxes at each end the bass brass on the one side and the drum on the other gave forth detached blares and pops which really frightened the life out of me. ”

“ An orchestra on a platform played rag-time music, while painted women in short dresses to give them a youthful appearance, sat on benches against the wall, or danced with swaggering men to the calls of a brawny bullet-headed floor manager. ”

“ In this, the warning voice of the small orchestra becomes continually more impressive, the earthly passions for the most part become gradually subdued, one almost seems to feel how their force is broken, and then again at frequent intervals they seem to rally, until the solemn moment, in which after a general pause both orchestras at length, in solemn unison of accords announce the victory achieved by the good genius in all its power. ”

“ Only a small orchestra is used, but it is handled in a masterly way, as the octave drums in the masterly finale, the charming staccato chords for wood-wind with boisterous interjections from the full orchestra, the running conversations between the violins and the basses, fully testify. ”

“ Yet the very latest work, the clarinet quintet, shows the same freshness and originality of invention, wonderful thematic net-work, variety of distinctly expressed moods, and the finale displaying an unsurpassed skill in variations.
The two orchestra serenades are real gems of spirited, delightful, well constructed music, one being for complete orchestra, the other for violas, ’celli, basses, reed instruments and horns. Besides the lively first and last movements and adagios they contain each a scherzo and one of them two minuets. ”

“ Though composed of a collection of individual instruments, the Orchestra has an individual character of its own. It is a personality that speaks to us in the beautiful and inspiring language of music; and, therefore, after we learn about the instruments and what part each instrument has to play in forming this little orchestral city, as it were, we shall then turn our thoughts to the Orchestra itself.
The Orchestra is composed of three groups, or families, and one accessory group. Each of these three groups forms a choir of its own, of four parts,—soprano, alto, tenor and bass. ”

“ Not only is the orchestra capable of rendering at one time a multiplicity of independent themes, but by virtue of the many different tone colors which characterize the various instruments, the melodic line traced by each individual voice may be easily followed by the attentive ear, while all the voices blend in one harmonious whole. It is this complete independence of each voice in respect to power, tonal quality, and style of phrasing which makes the orchestra unapproachable as a means of musical expression. ”

“ But many can not resist the rollicking music back of the paying booth. Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a bass viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. ”

“ The orchestra and its music, therefore, represents the extreme height of man’s work in music, for even when choral forces are joined to the orchestra, the instrumental idea dominates, as, for example, in the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, in which the chorus is simply a vocal band added to the other groups. The orchestra is a great means for musical expression because it offers to the composer the maximum of resources. ”

“ A full orchestra was employed, violins, cellos and mandolins, flutes, cornets, horns and trombones, a fine organ as well as a piano, while several hundred men and boys cassock-clad, chanted and sang in wonderful harmony with the exquisite orchestral music. ”

“ At many times the singers and the orchestra seem to be pursuing each their own path, and the orchestral tones are not always a guide to what the singers' tones are to be. But from this seeming confusion the master's hand has evolved a higher harmony than the periwigged classicists ever dreamed of. ”

“ And we know how even in the best men of this period the great creative organism, in which every part conditions its own subordinate part, gives place to a mere isolation and to total want of system. In the concertos, after the traditional mutual compliments of orchestra and piano, the solo instrument starts, with surprising suddenness, on its passages, which are strung together from étude-pieces, selected haphazard. ”

“ Lully; Wagner; our Symphony Orchestras.
The Orchestra, a great instrument, composed, as we have seen, of so many different instruments, voices, and human personalities, awaits the Conductor before it becomes of value.
He enters, takes his stand before his men, raises his tiny white bâton, and the large body is vitalized into sound. All these many vibrations and voices reach our ears; and we, following the unfolding patterns and musical phrases, put them all together in the shape and form that the composer heard in his dreams, reduced to writing and made permanent for posterity. ”

“ The average theatre orchestra is an eloquent demonstration of the bad [Pg 127] effects of poor balance among the instruments. The desperate struggles of two first violins, one second, one viola, one ’cello, and one double-bass to produce sufficient sound to make themselves heard in forte passages against the sonorous pealing of a cornet, a trombone, and a pair of tympani, are as vain as they are ridiculous. Such efforts are repeated on a larger scale when modern symphonic music is performed by an orchestra whose strings are led by six first violins. ”

“ This was nearly a century and a half after the birth of the orchestra as an adjunct to the opera, and the same length of time after the beginning of independent composition for the clavichord. In other words, although the modern art of music may fairly be said to have begun at least as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, when the fundamental principles of counterpoint were enunciated by the French masters, the most splendid and powerful of all musical instruments, the orchestra, is to-day in its infancy. ”

“ Under the hypnotic influence of the orchestra with its disturbing rhythm and moving harmonies, ravished by the seeming beauty of those sentimental voices, soaring, floating, dropping deep to caress and moan and shiver, all unconscious of the mediocrity, the coarseness, the bold [Pg 72] sensuality, her little being stirred, and her senses, waking slowly in their chaste prison responded to the appeal of the man behind her in the shadow, who took on a little the romantic look of the hero on the stage. ”

“ The orchestra, then, becomes as much an integral part of the music-drama, in its actual current movement, as the chorus or the leading performers. Placed on the stage, yet out of sight, its strains might almost be fancied the sound of the sympathetic communion of good [Pg 143] and evil spirits, with whose presence mystics formerly claimed man was constantly surrounded. Wagner’s use of the orchestra may be illustrated from the opera of “Lohengrin.” ”

“ In a general way, I may say that composers in writing a passage for the entire orchestra can give the melody to all the soprano instruments, the alto to all that have an alto compass, the tenor to all the tenors, [Pg 63] and the bass to all the basses. For example—flutes, clarinets, oboes, and violins may utter a melody in unison, while the remaining instruments supply the accompaniment. But it is rare that a composer writes in only four parts for orchestra. He usually spreads his chords out to six or eight parts, thus gaining in richness and sonority of tone. ”

“ In modern days, when the esthetic principle of Unity in Variety receives the most elastic interpretation due to the demand for the greatest possible contrasts in tone-color, power and in nuances, all, however, intended to exhibit and illumine the themes invented by the composer in their various transformations, in these days the orchestra is truly the most complete art-means known. ”

“ There is, however, a quite unusual handling of the instrument, and again, a breath in the orchestra, which make us look forward with delight to the study of the score; we have seldom been so enthralled by the composer's genius. ”