|
martle
|
 |
« Reply #120 on: 19:55:07, 07-10-2008 » |
|
Indeed I quite enjoyed it (though I would have enjoyed it more without the jetlag) because it's all new to me, orchestration I mean - I had to cover the second half of the "historical introduction" (a colleague is doing most of the lectures in this course), from 1900 to 2008 (though by composer rather than strictly chronologically). I had to postpone about the last quarter of my examples until the next session, because I ran out of time, but this session ended rather appropriately with Berio's Rendering. If any of the students can orchestrate Schubert as idiomatically as Berio I shall be very happy, apart of course where everything goes all out of focus and we enter... the Twilight Zone...
Just shifting this reply over to a more appropriate thread, being the good board citizen I am.  Berio does that kind of thing so well. Do you know the (fairly late) arrangement of that Contrapunctus from The Art of Fugue? Same effect – as if he’s actually composing out the squiggles and sketches and incomplete thoughts Bach left on the paper. Spooky. My Orchestration session was on the ‘classical’ orchestra and ‘classical’ approaches – so it was Mozart Haffner and Beethoven 5th. I find delving back into this repertory wonderfully stimulating. Beethoven’s solutions to the limitations of crooked horns, for instance, cause my jaw to drop. They’re not just clever, they’re catered for in the essence of the musical material. For me, that’s the mark of someone who understands the intimate blending of orchestrational strategy and compositional intent. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
richard barrett
|
|
« Reply #121 on: 21:09:53, 07-10-2008 » |
|
No, I don't know that Contrapunctus, though I would like to.
I heard Rendering for the first time after hearing Newbould's own "rendering" of the same piece, and as I may well have said before I think Berio's version sounds a lot more like I imagine Schubert's piece would have sounded like had he orchestrated it than does Newbould's somewhat dour and prosaic version. And the "out of focus" passages make more musical sense of the incompletion of the work than any musicological justification for this or that. Berio's work in a way is what musicology ought in my opinion to aspire to but very seldom reaches.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
martle
|
|
« Reply #122 on: 21:46:23, 07-10-2008 » |
|
Berio's work in a way is what musicology ought in my opinion to aspire to but very seldom reaches.
Well. Yes, 1000 times over. And this is what he himself avowed, in different ways, on numerous occasions. ‘…the best way to analyse and comment on a piece is to do something, using materials from that piece. The most profitable commentary on a symphony or an opera has always been another symphony or another opera’ (LB) Gotta love the guy. In terms of education, though, I do wonder how much of this matters to orchestration students who seem to want to get a little book of 'tricks', read Adler or Piston, get it 'right'. I find it very hard to explain to them that there isn't a 'right'; just a 'good'. Same goes for composition, increasingly.  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
time_is_now
|
|
« Reply #123 on: 21:50:21, 07-10-2008 » |
|
Mozart Haffner and Beethoven 5th. I find delving back into this repertory wonderfully stimulating. Beethoven’s solutions to the limitations of crooked horns, for instance, cause my jaw to drop. They’re not just clever, they’re catered for in the essence of the musical material. For me, that’s the mark of someone who understands the intimate blending of orchestrational strategy and compositional intent. The discussion's moved on a bit since this, but I just wanted to ask (maybe not irrelevant to your next post, either): how is this useful to students whose job is presumably going to involve orchestrating a pre-existing piece? How can it be anything other than depressing for them to be shown this 'intimate blending of orchestrational strategy and compositional intent' and then invited to practise orchestration on material over which they have no control? Hmm ... that sounded friendlier when I wrote the question in my head. Can't seem to re-word it now - it's been a long day, and it ain't over yet ...  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
|
|
|
|
martle
|
|
« Reply #124 on: 22:03:07, 07-10-2008 » |
|
No worries, tinners! Simply put, by showing them that kind of stuff, I feel I'm showing them an example of how 'orchestration' is more than the mere colouring-in of pre-existing musical material. It goes hand-in-hand (or should do) with compositional objectives. So, when students have to orchestrate a piano piece (I gave them an early Beethoven C minor sonata to have a crack at), they should be able to respond to this connection by deploying the forces according to the creative intentions. This may mean not much more than appropriate terracing of dynamics vis a vis orchrestral weight etc. But one important point in classical repertoire is that musical material was in large part dictated by instrumental limitations. The later symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, and almost all of Beethoven's, contain motto themes that can be played by crooked brass, i.e. basic arpeggiated, triadic, fanfarish stuff. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
time_is_now
|
|
« Reply #125 on: 22:08:44, 07-10-2008 » |
|
... one important point in classical repertoire is that musical material was in large part dictated by instrumental limitations. The later symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, and almost all of Beethoven's, contain motto themes that can be played by crooked brass, i.e. basic arpeggiated, triadic, fanfarish stuff.
True enough. The Marriage of Figaro overture springs to mind too (it often seems to, recently, in all sorts of contexts) as a piece whose first two themes (or simply "types of material"?) have a sort of in-built orchestration: strings for the slidy chromatic stuff, brass and timps for the fanfare. Tied together by D major scalic motion and with the woodwind as a potential mediator, I suppose. Is there any repertoire in which musical material isn't dictated in large part by instrumental limitations, though? |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
|
|
|
|
martle
|
|
« Reply #126 on: 22:17:59, 07-10-2008 » |
|
Is there any repertoire in which musical material isn't dictated in large part by instrumental limitations, though?
Of course not, in absolute terms. But it's a question of degree. A 21st century composer of orchestral music is rather freer in the extent to which s/he may map material onto orchestral capabilities than Mozart was. The relationship between the history of musical syntax and orchestrational techniques is utterly fascinating, I reckon. The impact of valved horns and trumpets? Phew! |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
Ron Dough
|
|
« Reply #127 on: 22:39:44, 07-10-2008 » |
|
Isn't there a sense of the best music written for a Classical orchestra being composition from the inside out, whilst most written for the Romantic orchestra and beyond has orchestral imposition from the outside in? Most of the Classical repertoire's orchestration is inherent: thereafter, with the arrival of new instruments and the broadening and subdivision of orchestral forces, doesn't the orchestration almost become an end in itself?
Sorry, it's been a long day, perhaps I'm talking bulwarks....
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
time_is_now
|
|
« Reply #128 on: 22:43:21, 07-10-2008 » |
|
No, I don't think you necessarily are, Ron ... Indeed part of me was rather hoping martle would answer 'Yes' to my last question. It would make for an interesting discussion, to say the least: it does strike me there's a sort of musicological capital in finding ways composers of all periods tie orchestration into material considerations, and I wonder what it would take to be able to get away with saying that's just not true of, say, chunks of the late-C19th Romantic repertoire. I was also anticipating a strongly pro-orchestration-as-disposition-of-material point of view from Richard, but maybe he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
|
|
|
|
martle
|
|
« Reply #129 on: 22:59:18, 07-10-2008 » |
|
Isn't there a sense of the best music written for a Classical orchestra being composition from the inside out, whilst most written for the Romantic orchestra and beyond has orchestral imposition from the outside in? Most of the Classical repertoire's orchestration is inherent: thereafter, with the arrival of new instruments and the broadening and subdivision of orchestral forces, doesn't the orchestration almost become an end in itself?
Well (to sound like Ian), I didn't quite mean an unqualified 'no' to your question, tinners. And Ron focuses the issue succintly. But I don't think there is necessarily any less correlation between orchestrational practice and compositional intent in the C19th onwards than there was in the C18th, irrespective of advances in instrumental availability and technical capacity (at least in the hands of imaginative composers). It seems to me, for example, that Wagner, Strauss, Debussy and Mahler - to name but four - found a a way of absolutely defining the relationship between the two things, in their respective terms. And, moreover, allowing orchestrational evolution within a given piece to marry together with harmonic and gestural development. You guys like La Mer, right? Check out how the role of the brass evoles in the first movement, as a direct reflection of the gradual solidification of harmonic identity into that wonderful final chorale. D stands the traditional, punctuational and proclamatory role of brass on its head here. |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
Green. Always green.
|
|
|
|
