March 1, 1923
MUSICAL COURIER
26
PRACTICAL INSTRUMENTATION
For School, Popular and Symphony Orchestras
By FRANK PATTERSON
Author of The Perfect Modernist
[Ninth Installment]
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
Ex. 19 b.
some, and also in consideration of the fact that the melody is in octaves, and free space is left for the lower octave to move about in. The filling is in the center.
Now, this is a fairly good principle to hold by. It is no rule, but an understanding of it, and an appreciation of its excellence will help the composer over many a doubtful passage. If the harmony is well expressed, and given out with sufficient weight, in the center, in about the same octave as one would expect to find it in the piano, or a little lower, almost anything may be done above and below it, or within it. A whole-hearted acceptance of this fact is the real basis of modern orchestrations, where, more and more, the sustained harmony is being used—like a canvas upon which the painter puts his most brilliant colors.
The idea may be expressed in two ways. One may think of many colored paints in many complex forms resting upon a smooth canvas; or one may think, perhaps still better, of colors shining through an even-tinted surface of some neutral color that serves to prevent those spaces not more brilliantly colored from being bare, as if the paint had been forgotten or had faded.
We see this very clearly in the last three bars, and especially the last two bars, of Exs. 19 and 19a. Here the chords are sustained in the basses, cellos, horns, trombones and trumpets, which does not prevent from being heard the motion of the melody, the after beat on the violins and violas—repeating the very notes that are sustained on other instruments■—and the clarinet counterpoint.
The moderns, who have a thorough understanding of the meaning and application of basic harmonies and altered chords, go to the length of sustaining basic harmonies even where there result whole series of dissonances. The effect is, musically speaking, to explain the dissonances, just as harmony of the most simple kind explains the melody, which often strikes on dissonant notes. (See The Perfect Modernist.)
Ordinarily speaking, the harmonic background ought not to take on the nature of moving parts. If it does, it ceases to be clearly a mere background. In Ex. 20 it will be seen what is meant by this.
Ex. 20
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This is a passage for three solo voices (soprano, tenor and bass) and orchestra. The words of the vocal parts are omitted. The piano reduction of the orchestration is also give». It is to be noted that none of the singers have the melody, which is played, throughout the entire movement, by the orchestra, chiefly on the violins. The sustained chords are on the wood wind, the rhythm, shown on the piano part as chords, is given to the horns in octaves, and a counterpoint is added to the orchestra part, on the violas, to give a less lyric, more dramatic feeling to the whole.
[To he continued]
Motion
The examples selected to illustrate this show the ordinary, average method of arranging simple melodic music. As in other examples, two arrangements of the refrain are shown in Ex. 18 (Time After Time, Witmark, arranged by Trinkaus), the usual p—f chorus. The first time the trombone is omitted; bells and violins in the lower octave, oboe, cello and trumpet have the melody, and there is no counterpoint. The second time drums are used instead of bells (since noise is wanted, and the soft bells would hardly penetrate the sound of the entire orchestra playing forte)—the violins play the melody an octave higher, the cello has an obligato tenor part in octaves with the bass, trombones and trumpets play the melody in octaves, and the flute and clarinet have broken chords in octaves. The other parts, making the chord accompaniment, are the same.
Especial note should be taken of the use of the wood in this passage. It is very common to translate broken piano chords into wood passages in this manner, and almost always an octave higher than they would be useful on the piano. This is entirely a question of sonority. Such passages are used on the piano in the upper octave in concerted music, sometimes effectively and sometimes not, as will be illustrated further on. But where the piano is used as support—accompaniment—and sonority needed, they must be placed in a lower octave. The wood, on the other hand, would be too soft to be heard in the lower octave, and as the passage is here intended to be heard, it is put where the instrument is comparatively strong. The next example shows something similar. (Ex. 19a) Out of the Shadows, Remick.
Ex. 19a.
Here the counterpoint in the first two bars, which ends a phrase, and leads up rather strongly to the beginning of a new phrase, is well up on the violins on the strong E string. In the last two bars the clarinet comes through, although it is covered, because it is the only thing moving through the sustained chords. Were there other counterpoints it would be quite inaudible.
There are several other things to be noted in this passage: The steady central flow of the second violins, and, as far as possible, the violas, neither rising nor falling, filling in well between the melody and the bass; the occasional octaves between parts—in bar three and the following, between viola and bass—in bar one, viola, cello and horns—in bar three, cello, second trumpet ״apd clarinet—and so on. What this means is that the passage is quite clearly ¡written in parts, and the flow of the parts carried out. (Compare also Ex. 18.) How complete the chords are is shown in Ex. 19b.
*Í)| Here all of the parts are condensed onto the piano score, although not within the scope or reach of two hands, and the more intimate points of the arrangement may be noted. First: the melody in octaves in the upper voices, with one note between, filling in the chords, but the note below the lower melodic octave omitted. That is to say, the first chord reads, from the top: E, G, E, G, etc.; not E, C, G, E, C, G, etc., or even E, G. E. C. G. the C being omitted. This is simply in order to make the passage less thick and cumber-