Evolution of the Orchestra
Early groupings of instruments without definite plan—Significance of the work of Monteverde—Scarlatti's use of the string quartet—Handel and the foundation of the modern style—The symphonic orchestra of Beethoven—Berlioz, Wagner, and special instrumental coloring—Plan of the contemporaneous orchestra.
THE modern orchestra is about two hundred years old. That is to say, the first skeleton of our present arrangement of instruments is found near the close of the seventeenth century. Earlier than that the distribution of instruments and the manner of writing for them contained none of the essential elements of the present style. Three centuries ago lutes and viols were employed in combination with drums and trumpets in a very confused manner, and even for this assembly of instruments there were no special compositions. An orchestra as such can hardly be said to have made its appearance until the time when the development of music as a part of dramatic entertainments compelled the preparation of some sort of substantial accompaniment to the choruses and dances. In the "Ballet Comique de la Royne" (1581) of Beaujoyeux there was an array of oboes, flutes, cornets, trombones, violas di gamba (precursor of the violoncello), lutes, harps, flageolet, and ten violins. This looks like a tolerable orchestra, but the manner of writing for it prevented it from being one. The performers were separated into ten bands, each designed to accompany some particular character or set of characters. Neptune and his followers, for example, used harps and flutes. The ten violins were employed only in one scene. In those days, as we have already seen, compositions were written "da cantare e sonare," and a canzone for strings was simply a piece of vocal polyphony played instead of sung.
The advent of Italian opera and oratorio ushered in the first organized use of the orchestra. Cavaliere's "Anima e Corpo," an oratorio, had an orchestra consisting of a viola di gamba, a harpsichord, a bass lute, and two flutes. This orchestra, like that of the Bayreuth theatre, was concealed. But it was not used like a modern orchestra. For instance, the composer recommended that a violin be employed to accompany the soprano voice throughout the work. This oratorio was produced in February, 1600, and in December of the same year at the first performance of Peri's opera, "Eurydice," the orchestra consisted of a harpsichord, a viola di gamba, a large guitar, a theorbo (large lute), and three flutes. These last instruments were used only to imitate the sounds of a Pandæan pipe, played by a shepherd in the opera.
A decided advance in the development of the orchestra was made by Claudio Monteverde, whose "Orfeo" (1608) had an accompaniment of two harpsichords, two bass viols, ten tenor viols, two "little French violins," one harp, two large guitars, two organs (small ones), two violas di gamba, four trombones, one regal (a little reed organ), two cornets, one piccolo, one clarion (an instrument of the trumpet family), and three trumpets. But even in this opera Monteverde showed that he had not discovered the true relations of the instruments. The "little French violins" seem to be the first modern violins used in the orchestra, yet they may have been somewhat crude instruments, for the first maker of real violins of whom we know anything was Gasparo di Salo (1542-1610). He was a much better maker of violas than of violins, and it was Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1631) who left us the violin as we have it today. Monteverde may have regarded violins from Salo's Lombardy home, Brescia, as French, because the French and Italians were continually at war there. The violin, having once entered the orchestra, however, speedily began to move toward its proper position as the principal voice, and as soon as composers recognized its sphere, they began to employ the other instruments with due regard for their relative capacities. Monteverde was the first composer who took advantage of the contrasting qualities of tone in the orchestra. His position in regard to the treatment of orchestral music shows a remarkable advance, and had a direct and wide influence upon the development of the orchestra.
Monteverde's operas contain many bits of independent orchestral music, but it was in attempting to illustrate the incidents of his dramas by means of the orchestral part that he divorced the accompaniment from the voice parts and discovered the relative values of some of his instruments. In one of his operas he uses a string quartet, composed of three violas and a bass, and while the voices sing the text to a recitative, these instruments depict the rushing together of horses in combat, the struggle of the opponents, and other actions not described by the text, but performed by the actors. In writing this passage Monteverde invented two well-known effects: the tremolo (a rapid tremulous repetition of a single note), and the pizzicato (plucking the strings with the fingers). The feeling for instrumental description displayed in this score led Monteverde to emphasize the essential utility of the strings, and at the same time it led him to use the other instruments to produce contrasts.
In the opera "Giasone" (1649) of Cavalli we find a song accompanied by two violins and a bass in a style which lasted till Handel's day. Alessandro Stradella in 1676 used a double orchestra in which violins were the principal instruments. About the same time we find Alessandro Scarlatti writing for first and second violins, violas, and basses, distributing the parts in quartet form, in the same way as composers do today. He used his first violin as the soprano of his string quartet, his second violin as the alto, his viola as the tenor, and his bass as the fundamental bass. Wind instruments continued to be used to add color and contrast to the foundation of strings and in tutti passages (passages enlisting all the instruments of an orchestra at once) to strengthen them.
It is hardly necessary to stop to consider the orchestra employed by Sebastian Bach, because his system of writing for orchestra was not in the direct line of development, though modern composers have learned much from it. In his string writing he is an excellent master for the present, but his wood wind parts (flute, oboe, or bassoon) are written usually in such a way that they become separate solo voices. In short, his instrumental scores lean toward the polyphonic, rather than the monophonic style. Handel (1685-1759) employed an orchestra much like that of today, and methods not unlike those of the present in writing for it. In fact Handel's orchestra may be regarded as the foundation of the modern symphonic band. In his big oratorio choruses Handel used a number of oboes to strengthen the violin parts, and a number of bassoons to strengthen the basses, but in other parts of the same works he used the wind instruments to enrich the general score with independent parts. Again, he employed the wind and strings separately, contrasting one with the other just as modern composers do.
In the Hallelujah Chorus of Handel's "Messiah" the orchestra consists of two trumpets, kettle-drums, violins, violas, and basses. In the chorus, "How Excellent," in "Saul," the composer uses three trombones, two trumpets, kettle-drums, three oboes, violins, violas, and basses. For the purpose of comparison, it may be stated that in his mass in B minor Sebastian Bach used three trumpets, tympani (kettle-drums), two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, violins, violas, basses, and organ. The use of the wooden wind instruments in pairs is noteworthy because subsequent composers followed that practice. Haydn's earlier works are written for two horns, two oboes, two flutes, and the usual array of strings. In his later works Haydn employs nearly the full modern orchestra. In "The Creation" he uses two trumpets, tympani, three trombones, two clarinets, two horns, two oboes, two flutes, two bassoons, a contra-bassoon, violins, violas, and basses. Haydn introduced the violoncello into the orchestra, thus completing the modern list of bowed string instruments; and Mozart demonstrated the value of the clarinet, thus completing the wood wind.
Beethoven's full orchestra consisted of two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tympani, and the usual array of strings. These instruments stand in this order in Beethoven's scores, reading from the top of the page downward, and subsequent composers have followed this arrangement. When voices appear in the score, they are placed between the violin and violoncello parts. Contemporaneous composers incline to abandon that custom, and to place the voices just above the first violin part. This will keep the string parts, the foundation of the accompaniment, together below the voices, thus making the score easier for the conductor to read. Beethoven's orchestra was substantially that of Schubert, Spohr, Mendelssohn, Weber, and Schumann.
Later composers began to use various characteristic instruments in their scores in order to obtain special effects of what is called instrumental color. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) did very much to advance this line of development, and Richard Wagner (1813-1883) carried on the work. Not only are special instruments, such as the English horn (a wooden wind instrument with a pastoral tone, heard, for instance, as the shepherd's pipe in "Tannhäuser" and "Tristan and Isolde"), introduced, but the general mass of instruments is enlarged or diminished according to the composer's design. For instance, in the first scene of Act III., "Die Walküre," in which is the famous "Ride of the Valkyrs," Wagner uses two piccolos (small, high-pitched flutes, with a fife-like tone), two flutes, three oboes, one English horn, three clarinets, one bass clarinet, eight French horns, three bassoons, four trumpets, one bass trumpet, four trombones, one contrabass tuba (a very deep-toned brass instrument), four tympani, cymbals, snare-drums, two harps, and the usual body of strings. Wagner specifies thirty-two violins (sixteen first and sixteen second) as necessary to produce the proper balance of tone. Older composers were content to take their chances in such matters. In "Götterdämmerung" the funeral march is scored for three clarinets, one bass clarinet, four horns, three bassoons, two tenor tubas, two bass tubas, one contrabass tuba, one bass trumpet, four trombones, tympani, and strings. The absence of flutes, oboes and trumpets shows that Wagner was aiming at a gloomy color, to be obtained only by the omission of such instruments and the use of an increased number of those of low pitch.
The orchestra of today consists of four groups of instruments, which can be enlarged or curtailed according to the design of the composer. These are, in the order in which they usually stand in the score, wind instruments of wood (the "wood wind"), wind instruments of brass (called simply "the brass"), instruments of percussion (drums, cymbals, etc.), and strings. The general plan of the orchestra, which has developed from the earliest attempts at instrumental contrast, contemplates such a distribution of instruments in each department as to make that department capable either of independent employment, or of combination with the whole or part of some other department, or of incorporation in the mass of tone produced by the whole orchestra. The wood wind, for example, consists of flutes and oboes, which are purely soprano instruments, clarinets, which extended from upper bass to moderately high soprano, English horn, which has a tenor range, bass clarinet, which runs from deep bass up into treble, and bassoons, which comprise bass, baritone, and tenor registers. That organization of instruments is capable of independent performance, possessing, as it does, all the components of full and extended harmony and a wide variety of color.
The brass choir consists of trumpets, which are soprano instruments, French horns (bass to alto), trombones (bass, baritone, and tenor), and tubas (bass). This band is capable of independent performance, or of being joined in a body with the wood, as in military music, or of combining with the strings on the plan seen in its infancy in Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus. The strings, of course, contain all the elements necessary to independence or combination. The modern orchestra, however, has gained enormously in power from the development of methods of using parts of the separate choirs independently or in combination. For instance, flutes, clarinets, and bass clarinet can produce rich four-part harmony, and so can play alone. Flutes, oboes, and bassoons can do the same thing and produce a wholly different instrumental color. Bassoons and French horns make fine deep-toned harmonies; and four French horns can play alone in full harmony. Any of these little groups can be joined with strings to get a new quality of tone. Thus it is not difficult to see that the modern orchestra offers to the composer a great variety of instrumental combinations, giving him a remarkable range of coloring, and it is equally plain that these conditions have been gradually developed by successive composers since the days of Monteverde.