I can really recommend Peter Alexander's Revised Rimsky-Korsakow book. It has been greatly enhanced and extended. It is a very practically oriented book that also gives some nice insights into common film studio orchestration and recording practices. You can buy it rather cheaply as a (BIG) PDF file.

Great stuff, also his Applied Harmony series is very nice!

Thanks again Peter!

Peter Roos

Kent Kennan's book "The Technique of Orchestration" is a very good book. I agree with the other recomendations as well.

Dave Connor

There's also a two-volume french bible of orchestration by someone I think his name is Charles Koechler or Koechlin. Anyway, this is the book that Nadia Boulangier tought the schools of Stravinsky, Lalo Schifrin and Aaron Copland with which in turn educated Philip Glass and Elliot Goldenthal.

I am a 2nd generation student of this book and Nadia Boulngier's studies and I found the work this Koechlin guy put into his "bibles" was the most comprehensive of all.

But I also studied Adler, Blatter, Kennan, Rimsky-Korsakov, Piston , Forsyth, Stiller, Henry Mancini, Earl Hagen, and at UCLA Film Scoring from Don Ray's orchestration handbook (which had some value).

I've had a bit of everything but find Koechlin and R-Korsakov to be the best of the bunch. 3rd is Blatter for his wonderful diagrams of all teh instruments ranges and fingerings and techniques.

Evan Evans

The Guide To MIDI Orchestration, 3rd edition will be coming out soon:
http://www.musicworks-atlanta.com/

There is one non-technical, intuitive work called "Creative Orchestration" by George Frederick McKay. It's out of print, but sometimes it lurks in old bookstores. A first and second edition were published.

The author nearly dismisses every instrument with a paragraph. But he discusses with great energy the textures of orchestration, the mixing of structural elements. If you have a fundamental working knowledge of orchestral instruments, and you're tired of the umpteenth example of juxtaposing, interlocking, and superimposing, this book is a nice change of pace.

But my personal favorite is a little work called "Orchestration of the Theater" by Francis M. Collinson. It is long out of print and harder to find than McKay. It's great because he discusses theater arrangements for small pit orchestras in England. I love every humorless page, every hand-notated, microscopic example.

Evan is referring to C.L.E. Koechlin's "Traite de l'orchestration." The bibliography in Adler says "4 Vol. Paris: Max Eschig, 1954-1959."

Also try and see if there is in your area any kind of Performing Arts library. About 10 miles away from me there is such one and i regularly go there to borrow Composers conductors score and the CD's of the music of that score.
It is very enlightening following along to the music + also try programming in the scores with VSL into your computer. You will learn a hell of lot this way, + in can be fun to try and make the orchestra sound as realistic as possible. [[;)]]

@evanevans said:

There's also a two-volume french bible of orchestration by someone I think his name is Charles Koechler or Koechlin.
Evan Evans

Evan,

His name is Charles Koechlin (1867-1950). IMHO he is one of the most underrated composers in music history. I think it is partly because he was a complete outsider, unacademic -which was a sin in France at his lifetime- and completely out of any cultural context . He did start in life as an artillerie officer in the french army....... His most "popular" book is a symphony basesd on Kipplings book of the jungle (le Livre de la Jungle). He could be of particular interest for sample user, because he did write some music for films as early as as 1930. He was passionate of motion pictures. Some of his friends reported that he went to the movie as much as 3 times a day. He dedicated quite a few of his works to actors as Jean Harlow,Douglas Fairbanks, Greta Garbo, Charlie chaplin and others. One of these works is ¨The seven stars Symphony¨. as you see, the French did discover Hollywood quite a long time ago.

The book you mention is called ¨Traité de l´orchestration¨

Iwan

The French not only discovered Hollywood a long time ago, but valued its best work long before Americans. They invented the entire conception of "Film Noir" based upon the American films of the 40s which were done completely unconsciously in a uniform style, and in another example Chabrol and Rohmer published the first serious treatment of Hitchcock - who by Americans was dismissed as a mere entertainer. He was recognized for the first time by the great French critic/filmmakers (including Truffaut) as a true artist and only later did American critics start taking him seriously.

@evanevans said:

There's also a two-volume french bible of orchestration by someone I think his name is Charles Koechler or Koechlin.
Evan Evans

Evan,

His name is Charles Koechlin (1867-1950). IMHO he is one of the most underrated composers in music history. I think it is partly because he was a complete outsider, unacademic -which was a sin in France at his lifetime- and completely out of any cultural context . He did start in life as an artillerie officer in the french army....... His most "popular" book is a symphony basesd on Kipplings book of the jungle (le Livre de la Jungle). He could be of particular interest for sample user, because he did write some music for films as early as as 1930. He was passionate of motion pictures. Some of his friends reported that he went to the movie as much as 3 times a day. He dedicated quite a few of his works to actors as Jean Harlow,Douglas Fairbanks, Greta Garbo, Charlie chaplin and others. One of these works is ¨The seven stars Symphony¨. as you see, the French did discover Hollywood quite a long time ago.

The book you mention is called ¨Traité de l´orchestration¨

Iwan

The Koechlin book is actually four volumes, each costing roughly $100 each. They're in classical French on a 9x12 page with 9pt type, loads of examples. It's actually Max Eschig's revision of the Rimsk-Korsakov book (albeit greatly expanded). The first section has an instrumentation section that basically replaces Gavaert and Widor's book (which Ravel took with him wherever he went, according to his biographer). This is an enormously practical book, unfortunately, you need to translate it (thank you Google) to get what it says. Many, many subtle points.

Also, Koechlin wrote a complete harmony series (quite killer), counterpoint and even ear training.

Overall, a serious work that's never been translated.

The downside of the orchestration book is that many of the examples cited are published by Eschig, but unfortunately, aren't recorded, especially the examples by Koechlin himself.

Any suggestions for german orchestration books?