Orchestration

When I was a youngen, or relatively youngish, I played in a youth orchestra, an experience that I learned a lot from as a composer.

I would sit in the 2nd violin section — a place in the orchestra I actually really enjoyed since you’re a little more in the center of the orchestra where you can hear what each section around you is playing, plus I found that you can kind of tell a lot about a composers orchestration creativity by what he does with the 2nds.

I became a lot more aware of orchestration styles throughout different eras and composers. When playing something by Mozart or the classical era, for example, the orchestration tends to be a lot more straightforward. Look at a Mozart quartet for example, often the 1st violin plays lots of melodies while the 2nd violin and viola play accompanying 8th notes. I’m not critiquing or saying one way of orchestrating is better than the other, I’m just mentioning the differences.

But then…Dvorak’s 9th Symphony was put on the stands and I fell in love. Sitting there and seeing what’s on my stand, while the violins to the right are playing something else, to the left the violas and cellos each get their own treatment to make them feel special, not to mention what all the woodwinds, brass and percussion are doing. I’d studied and listened to scores of intricate orchestration plenty before then but for some reason sitting there in the middle of the orchestra and playing the part while hearing it all around me was an experience in a whole new dimension.

There were other pieces that we played which I appreciated for their orchestration such as some Bernstein.

In film scoring you see the same, and again, it’s not a case of one style of orchestration is better than the other. It depends on what one is trying to create and what a scene or film works best with. The Star Wars score has incredibly intricate orchestration whereas some other great scores might purposely have very minimal orchestration to acheive a more transparent sound.

Just some food for thought, as obvious as it might be.