So I take it that you're sometimes in favour of "a large number of individuals entirely subsuming any individuality they might have in favour of blindly submitting ... to impersonal ideas of 'professionalism'" and that ideally an orchestral performance should "constitute a 'large-scale collaborative effort'"?

Well, even if 'clear delineation of parts, and relatively clear and distinct colouration' were always traceable back to Stravinsky (which it may be, but I'd like to think I'm not the only person who's largely deaf to this supposed centrality of Stravinsky to C20th music), I simply don't hear it in much orchestral music by Boulez, Stockhausen, Carter, Lachenmann, Donatoni, Birtwistle, Knussen, or Ades, which makes me wonder a bit about the 'countless others' too.

Just because someone hasn't counted them doesn't mean there are lots.

Don't know if getting all of us into the one studio would be the very best of ideas! 

Thanks for the clarification Ian. Just trying to locate some consistency amidst the nuance.

Fine, I do hear that, very much so. The 'centrality' was in terms of orchestral aesthetic, not necessarily all other aspects of composition. By the way, this is not to say there's anything wrong with such an approach, just that there may be further potential in a greater degree of exploration of others, or combinations of various mediated approaches (as I would say can be found in Ravel, or some Schoenberg) as well.

It's clear that the degree of possible individual spontaneity decreases rapidly as the number of players increases. I can't imagine a symphony-orchestra-sized group of improvising musicians producing anything very interesting. But fulfilment of one's desires as a musician doesn't have to be correlated to spontaneity. Nevertheless, Cardew's Great Learning mapped out some of the possible ways in which a large group of musicians can establish new forms of coordination, as do some of Cage's late pieces for unconducted orchestra, not forgetting Peter Wiegold's work in this direction (about which, I am given to understand, a long-awaited book will be materialising at some point).

It's also clear that the orchestra is very far from being a democratic institution, whether it's playing what you might call "democratically-organised music" or not. (And there's no reason why such music can be expected in itself automatically to overturn the attitudes of the players.) But to treat it as if it were, as if it were a model for closely-coordinated collaboration towards a shared musical aim, seems to me an honourable project, or at least not a total waste of time, if only because it encourages thought and discussion on the matter, but actually for other reasons too (like forming a basis to rethink what orchestral sound might be). Here B S Johnson's words might be apposite, as he exhorted writers to write "as though it mattered, as though they meant it, as though they meant it to matter".

Has anyone here applied recent computer technology as a means of orchestrational modeling (such as transcription of spectral analyses onto the orchestral palette, as is sometimes seen in the so-called "Spectralist school")? I understand that the results are hampered by problems with dynamic balance (i.e., the orchestra is practically not able to "re-create" the sound of the model) and, of course, that the sound of any given instrument is not a sine wave.

The reason I ask is not because I have any hope or ambition to make the orchestra really sound like a tractor shoveling mud or a glass recycling bin being emptied into a dump truck, but because such ideas might lead to unexpected and highly captivating instrumentational decisions. Who is working in this direction with any degree of success?
Thanks

Why not?

I certainly haven't come across any convincing application of that technique.

Hello and welcome by the way.