The Evolution of Modern Orchestration

by Louis Adolphe Coerne

The successors of the original schalmei are described in detail by Praetorius, who wrote in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Of the six varieties of pommer mentioned by him, the treble pommer became transformed into the hautbois (high wood); the alto pommer into the cor Anglais (cor anglé, bent horn),—known during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the oboe da caccia; and out of the bass pommer, likewise styled bombarde, emanated the fagotto (bundle of fagots). As a commentary to the above enumeration one should take note of a quite remarkable tendency which was, indeed, already in vogue during the Hellenic age. Namely, that from each parent instrument whether string, wood, or brass, there germinated a complete family representing the four ranges of the human voice. And again from these the process of tribal expansion was carried yet further. Moreover it must be remembered that before the Middle Ages, the art of combining human voices in polyphony was but in a nascent state, and probably existed in classic Greece not at all. Therefore families of instrumental species cannot have been constructed for the purpose of obtaining homogeneous harmonic effects. An extensive range of con-natural tone-color was then the objective. It will be found that this tendency was uniform throughout the history of instrumental evolution. Of course when we reach the sixteenth century, we find that the advantage of distributing the components of harmony among the members of assimilated instruments began to be appreciated. It is possibly due to this natural evolution that innovators in orchestration at first accustomed themselves to the use of pure tone-color rather than of mixed tints. Thus in the sixteenth century, the flûte à bec, predecessor of the modern flute, was employed in groups of four. Praetorius makes mention of no less than eight different kinds as prevalent in his day. Our chief representative of the single reed, the clarinet, which was not invented until the end of the seventeenth century, owes its origin to a primitive form of instrument with clarinet mouthpiece:—the mediæval chalemiax or chalumeau, whence the phonetic rendition, schalmei. The now obsolete basset-horn belongs properly to this genealogy. It was frequently used during the time of its development by the composers of the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From it were devolved the short-lived alto and tenor clarinets, and the better qualities of all three are now embodied in the subsequently perfected bass-clarinet. Mention is also due to the saxophone, invented by Sax in 1840. It should be classed under the heading of wood instruments rather than of brass, since its tone-quality partakes somewhat of the nature of the clarinet. It has a single-reed mouthpiece, and the fingering is akin to that of the clarinet; but the over-blowing produces the octave as in the flute and oboe, whereas in the clarinet the twelfth is produced. Sax made seven different sized saxophones, of which four are commonly in use, and that particularly in French and American military bands.

IV.

The history of brass instruments is extensive; at the same time their development is easy to trace. But it must be remembered that only those instruments possess pedigree from which upper harmonics are produced, i.e. those constructed with long tube and narrow bore. Even this statement must be qualified in that the French horn is of modern extraction. Only trumpets and trombones, therefore, are directly descended from the early Roman instruments with cup-shaped mouthpieces, such as the lituus and buccina. And in the Middle Ages there existed side by side two such families,—the Zinken, and the trombe and tromboni. The Zink or cornetto had a wooden tube pierced by sounding holes, and was constructed in different sizes. The larger species was, at the close of the sixteenth century, transformed into the Serpent, which had a bell of brass. This instrument is still in use in some Italian military bands. The Zinken were extant in the hands of the "town musicians" even into the eighteenth century. Akin to them are the simple Alpine Horn and the Lur of Norway.

In the Middle Ages the trumpet was generally made of brass, and the tube was at first unbent. The principle of sliding tubes for the purpose of procuring additional tones to the natural ones of an instrument was of ancient origin. It was applied to trumpets as well as to trombones, a practice still in force in England. The obvious advantage of this device was that a complete chromatic scale could be obtained, impossible for all other brass instruments at a time when crooks and valves were unknown. The earlier name for the trombone, i.e. bass trumpet, was sackbut, but the original appellation, buccina, has been perpetuated in the German Bosaun, now Posaune.

In the sixteenth century, the tromba, synonym for clarino, trummet, together with the three genres of trombones as used by the subsequent great classicists, was already perfected as a sliding-tube instrument. Or one might include both instruments under one heading by speaking of the tromba as a treble trombone. However, in order to obtain more efficient high brass instruments, constant experiments were made. The earlier improvements had obviated the clumsy length of brass instruments by bending and rebending their tubes. Then followed the application to the brass of the finger-hole system of the wooden Zinken. Finally, in the eighteenth century, the introduction of removable crooks improved the trombe as far as quality of tone is concerned. But the highest point of evolution was arrived at early in the nineteenth century, when the perfection of the chromatic valve principle revolutionized not only the mechanism but also the manner of writing for trumpets as well as for horns and bugles.

As has been intimated above, the history of the French horn is short. There is but a slight analogy between it and the cor de chasse of the Middle Ages, an instrument that possessed but few tones. The genuine French horn made its appearance in the first half of the seventeenth century, and the stages of its development may be regarded as centennial. In the eighteenth century was added the crook principle, in the nineteenth, the valve system. These improvements were attendant upon those made upon trumpets. Like the trumpet, the "natural" horn was conducive to purity of tone, the chromatic horn to greater practicability without material loss of purity.

The family of bugles belong more properly to the subject of military bands, but a word is due to their evolution on account of the orchestral importance of one of their members—the bass tuba. The bugle-horn, also known as the sax-horn, is constructed on acoustic principles diametrically opposed to those of the trombe family in that the bore is wider and the tube shorter, whereby the principle of obtaining harmonics is reversed.

The date of Beethoven's birth signalized the first application of key mechanism to wood instruments. Simultaneously, experiments were made upon the now obsolete brass Zinken. The new instrument was called bugle à clefs, and was the forerunner of a group of different sized opheicleides, of which the lowest supplanted the sixteenth century Serpent. Subsequently the opheicleide itself was superseded by the bass tuba, a more noble instrument of the same general family.