Orchestration book CDs?

[Musica42]

This may have come up before but I currently own three orchestration books: the Adler, the Rimsky-K, and the Berlioz/Strauss. Of the three I felt the Adler was the most informative chiefly due to the CDs I purchased with it. I really really wish I could find something similar for these other two excellent books.

I'm pretty sure no ones came out publically with CDs, particularly with the Berlioz/Strauss book which I'm currently working my way through. So I was wondering if anyone knows of an unofficial source I could look towards for this.

If not, could someone recommend a way in which I could relatively easily collect the great recordings of the dozens of works that are mentioned in both books? Is there a website out there that reviews classical label CDs and does the 'definitive recording of' thing? Anyway, my birthday is coming up and I'd love to ask some people for something related to the music of these two books.

Thanks

[dpcon]

Musica42,

I agree that the CD's are very helpful but you will still want to own the entire score of various seminal works as well as the standard repetoire. Dover publishing has these works for very little money.

Orchestration books have very brief examples. It's very important to see the arc of the writing and orchestration process. You only get this with the whole score.

Also, midi realizations of examples in an orchestration books work great because you seem to learn more by actually constructing it yourself. Stravinsky would copy scores to learn this way.

You are in for a long term investment on scores and CD's so keep those birthdays going for a good long while.

Dave Connor

My two cents.

[Glenn Morrissette]

The latest edition of the Adler book includes several CDs containing recordings of all of the written examples. Very helpful indeed.

[Musica42]

I agree that knowing the entire musical excerpt is a wise time investment. Luckily I'm currently a student a university with a very good music library at my disposal. I'm currently making my way through the Wagner operas mentioned so many times in the Berlioz/Strauss book.

And yes it would be a good idea for me to mock up the various excerpts, but considering that there's some 150 excerpts in the Berlioz book alone its a bit impractical to actually do.

So for now I'm going to check out Wagner's scores mentioned. I'll of course try and assimilate the entirety of these works, but as I go through them I'm going to also cut out the bits of the recordings that are referenced in these books and save them elsewhere for further study.

I'm sure I won't have any difficulty finding recordings and scores of Wagner, Berlioz, Strauss, and the like but there are some composers referenced that I'm completely unfamiliar with like Auber, Marsehner, Mehul, and Spontini. It'll prove a challenge hunting anything of theirs down.

On another note, which do you think wields better educational results: listening to a recording and then trying to emulate its performance via MIDI mockup, OR creating the MIDI mockup without specific reference to a recording and comparing it after the fact with the live version. Both scenarios involve a written score of course.

Thanks

By the by, I already use the Adler CDs as mentioned earlier. They are a fantastic asset.

[dpcon]

Musica42,

This is what I do and recommend. The books talk about things like balance, weight, color, doublings (unison and octave) homophonic and polyphonic textures and so on. As you are listening to a recording with score look for whatever principle (balance for example) you are currently emphasizing in your study. You can study a few pages (or even 1 page) or entire movement or aria or whatever. Then go over the same material and focus on another principle (whats playing inner parts what's playing melody and how is the composer contrasting the two for example.) Keep doing this (emphasizing a different principle each time) until you feel your overall comprehension of a number of elements is going to a more comfortable level. BTW I listen, stop, study a few measures, listen, rewind, study them some more, stop, rewind and study some more, over and over until I think I've got it. Then I go on.

Also read and listen to entire scores or movements in a very relaxed way, following wherever your eyes take you because it all goes into your subconcious and will come out more than you would think in your writing.

Conversely, don't be shy about spending a whole lot of time on a couple measures (of even one instrument group like Fr Hrns) either because huge insight will result.

During the study process you will find sections and passages that really intrigue you. That's when you do a mock up of that material from the score via midi. It just deepens the understanding to reconstruct something that is put together so well. But don't bog down in doing to many time consuming mock ups because the score and recording will tell you exactly what it sounds like. It's the structure and composer's thought process that you really want to understand and that's the time to do a mock up.

Above all, make notes (if only mental) of general textures that different composers seem to use that give them their sound i.e. harmonic, melodic, orchestral. Then you can always go to a score to approximate that particular sound: Copeland, Debussy, Bartok, Wagner etc., all have a very distinct sound and we all want to know how and why.

I've been doing a lot of this lately.

Dave Connor

[William]

Wow, those are really good ideas for study Dave - better than a lot of full-time music professors I've encountered.

[Peter Roos]

Building a collection of the quite cheap Dover editions is really worthwhile. Also get at least 3 or 4 books on orchestration, as there are errors and different opinions in all of them.

[dpcon]

William,

The approach I suggested is the only thing that really works for me. If there was an easier way I would do it.

Peter

Yes, thank God for Dover publishing! I have three orchestration books: Piston, Kennan (which is a great book in it's strait forward simplicity) and Rimsky-Korsakov (revised by Peter Alexander) which is basically a lot of examples.

Dave Connor

[Peter Roos]

Ah! Peter Alexander's revised edition! I also purchased that from him in PDF format, and I think it is absolutely great!