Join Q2 Music on Sunday, April 24 (with an encore presentation Tuesday, April 26) for our second annual Symphomania, a 24-hour marathon stream of music that offers a vision of orchestral repertoire composed in or after the year 2000. Hosted by musicologist and critic William Robin, Symphomania features an array of articles from conductors, composers, and critics examining the issues surrounding 21st-century orchestral music.
Composer Steven Mackey shares "Five and a Half Things I Say on the First Day of Orchestration Class."
#1 – This orchestration class is a sham because the only way to learn orchestration is by simply hearing your work rehearsed and performed. There are some lessons that can only really be learned by cringing at your own mistakes. However getting to the point where an orchestra will put your piece on the music stands requires some training and for that I say orchestration is best learned as an apprenticeship. It is a complicated network of decision-making criteria that overlap and intertwine. I ask my students to keep a diary as they work and I do the same so that we can discuss the considerations and trade offs of every decision. Which brings us to …
#2 – Orchestration books are misleading. They provide a great resource for ranges and such but I am suspicious of the value of reproducing examples. Consider the opening of Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms. It is plausible to make the observation that, if you have an e minor triad in close position down low, and another e minor triad up high and a G below middle C and nothing else in the middle, Stravinsky has a good way to orchestrate it. But why would you ever have those notes? Stravinsky owns those notes. He could have blown the orchestration, but the magic was there when he plunked those notes on his old upright piano. Which brings us to …
#3 – The most important decision one makes in orchestration is what note you use. The color of the notes, blue or otherwise, is the most potent marker for the sound of a passage. Even in a context where musical grammar is not foregrounded the frequency (ie. A – 440 Hz) speak as loudly as anything under the heading of orchestration. Can a note be played on an open string? Can it be a high note on a low instrument? … a low note on a high instrument? D5-G5 on a piccolo is so breathy it can stand for something exotic, even un-pitched. Open C on a viola is completely different than B on the cello only a ½ step away yet the viola can’t play it. Which leads us to …
#4 – Composition and orchestration should be inseparable to the listener but separated in the compositional process. This is probably the most controversial point I’m making. The great orchestrators of the early 20th century – Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel – composed at the piano and then orchestrated. However, in the second half of the 20th century the notion that one could or should compose directly in the orchestra took hold. Systems and methods that pre-compositionally determined what used to be orchestrational decisions was one factor. More importantly was the promotion of color, over grammar, harmony and line, to a privileged foreground. It seems logical that if the contours of a piece are delineated primarily with color then one should paint directly into the orchestra. However, in composing 18 orchestra pieces and working with hundreds of students I find that things usually(!) turn out better when a sketch, short score or through line is orchestrated rather than crawling from sound to sound and moment to moment in a full score. I think it is helpful to have some kind of framework in place to walk around and gain perspective on where the music is coming from and where it is headed. Again the goal is to fuse orchestration and composition for the listener so a compositional pass might have many assumptions about orchestration and I might compose some activity in this register or that when I am orchestrating in order to delineate the big picture, but there will be separate passes for the two activities. Which brings us to …
#5 – Orchestration should prioritize the big picture not the local event. In civilian language when people use the word “orchestrate” as in “It was a well orchestrated take over bid,” they are referring to careful and thorough planning over a long process. I advocate thinking of the practice of orchestration in that light – to clarify form. Dazzling moments happen easily enough but to orchestrate the unfolding of a piece through a satisfying arc is where the art is.
#5.5 – … oh and remember the sound of an oboe playing A/440 makes a bigger impact on our brains than the little dot we use to represent it.