7
MUSICAL COURIER
May 17, 1923
PRACTICAL INSTRUMENTATION
For School, Popular and Symphony Orchestras
By FRANK PATTERSON Author of The Perfect Modernist
[Twentieth Installment]
(This series of articles was begun in the issue of January 4)
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
The clarinet is added not in order to reinforce or add to the weight of the upper cello voice but to give a certain color to it, and, particularly, to add to the clarity of the passing ascending and descending scales. It is especially to be noted that a single solo horn is sufficiently strong to penetrate the־ strings and wood. (Compare what is said of the four horns in the Tschaikowsky example. Ex. 35.) Those are effects of balance that can only be secured through long experience.
The best experience is to hear one's own scores, as every man learns best by his own mistakes. The next best experience is to hear the scores of others, or even the study of other scores, if there is enough of it and if it is done in the right way. And the only right way is—as has already been pointed out— reduction of the score to its simplest form so that the mind and eye may fully grasp not only what instruments play but what they play, what part they take in the whole fabric, and, as far as possible, the working of the composer’s mind.
Now from this same lovely Sakuntala overture we will take another passage in two diverse yet similar arrangements, pages 14 and 16 of the score. (Ex. 54.)
Ex. 54
Here we have a very beautiful and, at the same time, a very orthodox, and therefore very valuable piece of orchestration. There is nothing in any way remarkable about it except its beauty, and beauty is always remarkable, and, unfortunately, not the result of technic, though lack of beauty is often the result of lack of technic. (The notation of the composer has been carefully copied, and its lack of uniformity, sharps and flats all jumbled up together, should be observed. The individual player in the orchestra does not see the score. He only sees his own part. And composers do well, as Goldmark has here done, to consider the player’s convenience.)
This example has all of the ordinary elements of this sort of score writing: pizzicato on the bass, motion on the middle strings, harp chords, sustained horns and wood. A special color is given it by the stopped horns, the sustained low cellos and bassoon, and the melody on the reeds.
A word about this. The oboe in this register is not particularly reedy, but its gentle sweetness is overborne by the strong reedy quality of the English horn. The melody and the harp are marked piano, the other parts all pianissimo. The violins are slurred for the first two bars. The slurs are then discontinued but are to be played in the same manner until a change of movement. This is not a wise practice. It is always better to write out in full exactly what is wanted.
Compare the upper violin voice with the melody. The final notes of the first bar are D sharp, F sharp in the violins—E, F sharp in the melody. The last beat of the next bar there is E, C sharp in the violins against D sharp, C sharp in the melody. In the first beat of the next bar the A sharp is taken by the violins immediately before it is taken by the melody.
This is similar to passages already commented upon. The student must familiarize himself with them until they cease to produce any sense of shock, until he has thoroughly unlearned the unfortunate things he may have learned (to respect, or fear, or avoid) in the course of his study of harmony and counterpoint—if he ever can unlearn those things. Which may be doubted. For there are many composers today who deal in fifths, hidden octaves, false relations and the like, solely because they were once forbidden. It was Casella, was it not, who called that the “school of protest?”
(To be continued next week)
Melody Arrangement
It would, evidently, be impossible to orchestrate this with any weight or force, or with the use of brass to any great extent, if all the parts were required to move. Even if the brass could play it, it would be far weaker than it is in this form. The arrangement of the parts is as follows: piccolo, flute, flute, clarinet, oboe, oboe, bassoon, bassoon. The horns׳ are written in this score between the clarinet parts and the bassoon parts, but are generally (and best) placed between the wood and the brass. The string chromatics are played by first and second violins and violas. The bass, after the first beat, is left to the tuba, evidently with the object of avoiding overbalance so as not to lessen or interfere with the sweep of the chromatics.
This is a matter which must never be overlooked, even when, apparently, there is no melody. We have chosen Tschaikowsky scores to start because he so clearly demonstrates this necessary feature of weight upon essentials. It is a point that is generally overlooked, in fact the most common error in orchestral arrangement, not by any means confined to second rate or immature writers.
It is surprising how much may be left to the imagination if only the melodies and the countermelodies are given plenty of weight. And this, it may be added, would appear to be a basic principle, for it is one of the things that has carried through all musical arrangement from the earliest times, both in popular and serious music.
In quiet music, especially in soft passages, one must have in mind the color, force, and power of penetration of the various instruments which one proposes to use, and one must decide with very great care and infinite caution how much the clarity and characteristic color of their individual tone is to be destroyed by mixing.
Let us examine, for instance, a passage from Goldmark’s Sakuntala overture where the cello tone is manifestly sought. (Ex. 53.)
Ex. 53
Here the cellos are divided into five, and are printed in the score as here shown, the division among stands being left to the conductor. And the parts are all doubled on other instruments, except the very part that one would expect to find doubled—the upper part. Speaking of the first three or four bars, the upper part is played by one or two cellos or more according to the discretion of the conductor—the next part, B flat, is played by a division of the cellos and one clarinet-—the next part, F, is played by a division of the cellos, one clarinet and half of the violas—the next part, D, is played by a division of the cellos, one bassoon and a half of the violas—the bass is played by a division of the cellos, one bassoon and a pizzicato on the basses. It looks like a case of “playing safe”—and no one who has heard a small orchestra struggle with the opening of the William Tell overture will be inclined to blame Goldmark for his caution, if, indeed, he had any such thing in mind.
It is very possible that he did not, for the arrangement as here written gives the cello effect, that luscious sonority that is found nowhere else in the orchestra, and, at the same time, a certain solidity that the cellos alone, and even the cellos and wood, would not offer.
The final bars of this example have been included as an illustration of an effect that cannot be made or played on the piano—the passing of the countermelody on the horn through the melody and its parallel support on the strings.