That is perfectly adapted to its purpose; but the chances are that a composer of to-day would have used three flutes, three clarinets, and three bassoons, and would have thickened the harmony by raising the clarinet voices and bringing the first bassoon up nearer the middle, thus:
Brahms followed Beethoven’s early style of scoring for wood, which, it must always be recollected, lies at the foundation of the art. An example from Brahms’s C minor symphony will show the modern writer’s adoption of his predecessor’s plan:
The modern style of writing for the wood-wind choir introduces more passages in contrary motion and a more dispersed harmony. The close chords of the classicists cannot be excelled for their purpose, but the romanticists had new aims and they took advantage not only of unusual tone-tints but of the increased richness brought about by using more voices and extending their chords. Beethoven’s symphonies show a rapid progress toward the modern flexibility of methods in writing for wood-wind. For instance, note the lovely effect of this piece of contrary motion in the Fifth Symphony:
As we advance through the pages of the master’s symphonies we find a constantly increasing flexibility in the treatment of the wood, until in the Ninth we meet with passages containing effects which, when closely examined, seem to be almost amazingly modern. Of course, one never finds in Beethoven’s scores any attempt to make an effect for its own sake. The master symphonist was altogether too busy in giving his thought expression to think of little tricks of instrumental dress. Because of his continence in this matter some modern commentators have expressed the belief that these symphonies would be improved if re-orchestrated according to contemporaneous methods. I presume that someone will eventually try the experiment, and then it will be discovered that Beethoven’s instrumentation was perfectly adapted to his musical ideas. On the other hand, a good deal of our modern music would stand revealed in its naked thinness if it were re-orchestrated in the austere style of Beethoven or with the sunny simplicity of the Mozartian manner. The extreme development of wood-wind writing as known in our day is to be found in the scores of Wagner. No one has surpassed his treatment of the wood in his earlier dramas, and the reader may accept Elsa’s entrance to the cathedral in Act II. of “Lohengrin,” and the exit of Elizabeth in Act III. of “Tannhäuser,” as complete expositions of writing for the unsupported wood-wind. In the introduction to the third act of “Lohengrin” appears this passage, which shows how Wagner could use his wood in relation to the rest of his orchestra: