Oh my oh my...

Where would we be without Paul on the VSL forum? I laughed so many times at that last one that I had to keep finding my place.

The first time I ever responded to a post of his, it went something like this, "Who would have thought that the most brilliant mind on the forum would show up in the form of comic relief?" I must confess it was a response to one of Evans posts (shocker there.)

Well I'm satisfied to finely know the answer to the Herrmann riddle, so can we drop this now and continue in this very serious vein about.........? gee.... what's this thread about again? where...? what...? who...? wherefore art thou...
hmm...
is this a Shakespeare thread?

David Connor

btw sorry about the redundant posts guys. I tend to edit after a glance, then find myself in duplicate later. A few peole have posted their IQ's on the forum. Obviously there's no need here. Can't operate a web browser so, no mystery there.

Cheers

DC

I decided to delete this not on any legal grounds but because of excessive silliness. I get that way at times and I guess this should be a more serious discussion.

....

PaulR,

That is very sneaky of you. My goodness. Well, kudos for your good research but I guess you sort of got the answer from the person asking the question. I will send you your prize.

Email please.

[:)]

Evan Evans

LOL!!!!

Now I truly understand! I am the reincarnation of Elfman! I know, he is still alive, but his music has changed so much over the years, hasn't it? I must have swallowed his soul in some moment, wanting so hard to become a composer... maybe I also have even swallowed John William's, JNH's or Thomas Newman's soul too... GREAT!!! ... but I must say I prefered Beethoven or Mozart's, but their souls are actually in hands of some Hollywood Lawyers and they are not letting them go...

Thanks for the clarification...

Regards [:D]

(sorry I could not resist)

....

In attempted recovery from certain other disturbing things going on here, I thought I would mention one other great composer/orchestrator - Bartok. Specifically, one of his greatest scores - Concerto for Orchestra. Another of the defining pieces of modern orchestration. The whole concept of the piece was to create a work that exhibited the different facets of the orchestra in the manner of a solo concerto, but for the entire ensemble.

William,

Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra is great on so many levels as you mentioned. We forget how modern and unique that piece is in almost all it's elements: Melody, Harmony, Modality, Rhythm, Color, Form, Orchestration and even Instrumentation if I'm not mistaken.

I like his entire body of work from Bluebeards Castle to Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste to his incredible String Quartets.

We would never have had the original theme from "The Outer Limits" (Dominic Frontiere) without Bartoks 2nd Piano Concerto. Which brings to mind his totally original writing for that instrument. He's a giant among composers of the last century.

Dave Connor

Dave,

I agree and another thing remarkable about Bartok is his incorporation of irregular meters and modalities, among other elements, from the folk music traditions he was an expert on.

[quote=dpcon]William,

Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra is great on so many levels as you mentioned. We forget how modern and unique that piece is in almost all it's elements: Melody, Harmony, Modality, Rhythm, Color, Form, Orchestration and even Instrumentation if I'm not mistaken.

I like his entire body of work from Bluebeards Castle to Music for Strings Percussion and Celeste to his incredible String Quartets.

We would never have had the original theme from "The Outer Limits" (Dominic Frontiere) without Bartoks 2nd Piano Concerto. Which brings to mind his totally original writing for that instrument. He's a giant among composers of the last century.




Bartok: absolutely. Thinking about the music for strings percussion and celesta, with its amazing whirring insect music - prefigures Ligeti, Grisey, FSOL, etc. Also a gorgeously worked out fugue in the first movement, and we don't get too many of those around here these days...



BTW quite a nice Ligeti Hommage in the score for the remake of Solaris. I'm not sure about the marimba-type stuff though. Who was this? Jonathan Larsen?

I think that Rimsky-Korsakov was the greatest orchestrator of all time in a vertical sense. His tutti chord voicing and instrumentation was incredibly well balanced and 'crystal clear'. No instrument intrudes on any other and all are blended but can still be heard individually. My biggest gripe about his compositions is that they sound too vertical. Kind of like one beautiful balanced chord after another, not enough horizontal tension in the orchestration in my very very humble opinion.
BTW, I have taken all the examples from Volume 1 of 'Principles of Orchestration' (the section with all the words and short examples) and created Sibelius 2 and 3 files out of them. I figured I would never really be able to hear those examples if I didn't play them back some how. I had some real 'aha!' moments when I listened to them and read the explanations. If you are interested, let me know and I'll post a link to the Sibelius files or Midi files if they are of any interest to any of you.
thanks,
Julie

Yes, very interesting! Very gracious. T think it would be great for all here if you´d post a link!

Thanks!
- Mathis

Yes indeed that would be wonderful! [:P]

I too just bought that book and was thinking it would be so much better if it had a CD to go with it. I thought of making one myself but it'd be hard to find recordings of all those examples especially excerpts from his operas (I didn't even know he wrote any). Not even sure there are available recordings for all his work anyway unless you'd go hunting for old 78rpm in garage sales in St-Pertersburg! Hmm, [I] come to think of it, that sounds like it could be a lot of fun!

=m=a=r=c=

Julie

I agree it is a good idea to actually hear orchestration examples rather than just study them silently in a book.

I also agree about the balance and individual audibility of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, but disagree with the idea that his music is too vertically oriented. Two examples that come to mind: March of the Nobles and Capriccio Espagnole. In both of those, even though the orchestation and voicings in a vertical sense are masterfully done, the immediate impression is one of pure melody with accompaniment - a very horizontal sound moving dynamically forward. Especially the Espagnole - it moves to a tremendously energetic climax. The opposite of stagnant vertical harmonic structures.

Just a minor disagreement though - always interesting to hear different opinions especially about Rimsky-Korsakov.

@William said:

Julie

I agree it is a good idea to actually hear orchestration examples rather than just study them silently in a book.

I also agree about the balance and individual audibility of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, but disagree with the idea that his music is too vertically oriented. Two examples that come to mind: March of the Nobles and Capriccio Espagnole. In both of those, even though the orchestation and voicings in a vertical sense are masterfully done, the immediate impression is one of pure melody with accompaniment - a very horizontal sound moving dynamically forward. Especially the Espagnole - it moves to a tremendously energetic climax. The opposite of stagnant vertical harmonic structures.

Just a minor disagreement though - always interesting to hear different opinions especially about Rimsky-Korsakov.

Reputedly Rimsky-Korsakov flew into a rage when someone complimented him on his orchestration of Capriccio Espagnole; he supposedly said "I didn't orchestrate it, I wrote it for orchestra". I think that this is a valid point, as they are very different skills, although they do have an overlapping skill base [:)]

DG

Ok, here are the links to the files:
http://home.comcast.net/~layabout5/orchestrationtemplatesib3.sib">http://home.comcast.net/~layabout5/orchestrationtemplatesib3.sib

http://home.comcast.net/~layabout5/orchestrationtemplatesib2.sib

http://home.comcast.net/~layabout5/orchestrationtemplatemidi.mid

Also, I agree with you William that those pieces are great, but I also think those are his best pieces: Capriccio, Nobles. But I think in one of his other famous works - 'Russian Easter' is a good example of what I'm talking about. A little to consonant and vertical for my taste. No biggie though, I still love all of his music.
-Julie

Yes, that is a good point Julie. I agree. Even the greatest orchestrator could sometimes go off on a "vertical" tangent.

Though of course Ligetti has written entire pieces that exist solely to explore vertical sonorities in a fascinating way.

DG - yes, I can see why he would get irritated. Because he wrote pure musical ideas explicitly for each instrument, and didn't merely "translate" his conception into an orchestration like any hack.

That reminds me of what Varese said about Brahms vs. "great orchestrators." He said that in Brahms, no one comments on the brilliant orchestration because they are simply thinking about the music. On well-known orchestrators people always say "what a magnificent orchestration" as if it is something that sticks out, divorced from the music. With Brahms, it is perfectly integrated into the entire basic conception.

@William said:

That reminds me of what Varese said about Brahms vs. "great orchestrators." He said that in Brahms, no one comments on the brilliant orchestration because they are simply thinking about the music. On well-known orchestrators people always say "what a magnificent orchestration" as if it is something that sticks out, divorced from the music. With Brahms, it is perfectly integrated into the entire basic conception.

Yes, Brahms is the perfect example. People often mistake colour for "good orchestration".

DG

William,

My .03567889 cents... Stravinsky, Mahler, Rihm - and when you're feeling particularly interested in "icy" colours, Saariaho. I know, everybody's saying, "Rihm, what the f**k?"

What I noticed about your choices is that they were all somewhat similar - except perhaps Debussy. For the most part, these are all what I think of as "rich" orchestrators, meaning that they are brilliant at making full, rich, colours. However, for me personally, a great orchestrator is not someone who necessarily makes the orchestra sound best, but rather someone who makes the orchestra sound as though it was designed to play that particular piece. This, to me, was Stravisnky's greatest strength - his ability to make, and re-make, the orchestra each time he needed a new and unique sound for a given work - think of the enormous difference in colour between the strings of Le Sacre and those of Orpheus. Prokofiev was great at this also, though he didn't tend to re-invent the orchestra for each piece, as Stravinsky did, but rather had some generally endearing "signatures" - that great Tuba in the bass, so common to his later works, or his nose-bleed-high, contrapuntal, molto espressivo string writing...

Mahler. Well. He was simply the Grand Master of the absolutely massive orchestra. To dispute that would be silly.

Rihm. First of all, I seldom see _any_ contemporary concert music composers discussed here. Secondly, he has a similar ability to Stravinsky, in that his orchestras seem to morph into the specific needs of his musical idea/argument - he has a particular talent for dense textures in winds and brass, which seem to defy harmonic categorization - not simple-minded clusters, but seemingly not "chords" either...
I would also classify Berio in this group - his quasi-viola-concerto "voci" is a particularly great example. And Bent Sorensen's violin concerto "The Echoing Garden" has some really wonderful colours as well...

But that's just me.

J.