Compositional Techniques

Yes, that's right.  He's probably referring to the very first part of the sample where it does sound like glissando happening.  Definitely not the same as staccato!

Yeah, your right.

I've seen it written like that though someplace. Involved sliding the bow along the "fret board" of the violin while moving up and down to get the notes.

Glissando isn't quite a slide, because it pauses on notes; it's a rapid slide up or down a scale.  A straight slide is a portamento.  In regard to "like an accent but not quite", I was thinking sforzando (sfz), or maybe forte piano (fp).

oh on a violin, forgot that was possible lol.

But still it does sound like stacatto too.

If you were to guess... what would you say?

I'm guessing szforzando from the recording.

As to my opinion that Beethoven being among the worst examples to follow for orchestration, I'll clarify a bit...

Mendelssohn among the best to learn the basics from.  It's not overly elaborate, but the balance between the parts tends to be excellent.  His style was very straightforward without a lot of 'tricks'.  The Russians (especially Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, in my opinion) are also very good ones.  They tended to build up somewhat heavier sections than Mendelssohn, but still quite simple to follow and emulate.

It's when we get into heavy brass that I quarrel with Beethoven as an example to follow in learning.  It's not even so much a quarrel with Beethoven particularly; it's that brass design and construction has changed a lot since then, and writing for horns in ensemble has unique challenges -- you really need to know something about the history of the instruments to appreciate some of the choices that Beethoven made, and an awareness that he may well have made different orchestration decisions writing for modern horns.  I'd have the same quarrel with taking Haydn or Mozart as the principle example for orchestration study, but they didn't rely on the brass in ensemble to nearly the degree that Beethoven did.

When it comes to writing for brass, I'd pick Wagner to emulate.

From what i know of Brass, its always safe to just play like fan-fare and arpeggio's no very 'thick' melodies.

is that right?

That's true of trumpets, yes.  Horns are often written for four-part harmony, though... and trombones for three part (sometimes with the tuba taking the fourth part).

Brass can be tricky to write -- the overtones they produce can be a lot more pronounced than those of most instruments, so being able to correctly envision the effect is harder to do than with strings.

Modern brass can play just about anything you might write (well, not too fast anyway), but I don't know what would sound good.

yeah tunes in brass sounds kinda uhhhhhhhhhhh.

i prefer to write the tunes in the high woodwind and violins.. and to build up tension make the brass play single notes..

like as tension is building in the tunes getting louder and louder i would use the brass to either play suspended intervals or act like its leading up to a huge perfect cadence or something like that.

so i wouldnt really want to write anything big in the brass.

Hi NoteBoat, I still have to disagree about Beethoven:-)  Simply because he had to arrange for horns that were not of the modern design does not make him a bad example for orchestration.  Saying something like that is more of a red herring than a real argument ;) Every composer who ever orchestrated anything had to do so with whatever limitations were present at the time – it's the same today.  Even when the valved horn came into use, composers didn't do anything different with them at first.  Would have Beethoven written different parts for horns had they been valved?  We can only speculate.  The fact is, Beethoven is a great example for orchestration, as are all the great composers who made orchestral arrangements.  There is something to learn from all of them, horn arrangements notwithstanding.  Besides which, there are plenty of other things to look at.      

I agree that Beethoven may not be the absolute best place to start a study of orchestration; I would pick Haydn since most schools start with Common Practice Period for music study and Haydn is a solid standard.  But, I don't think that Beethoven is bad place to start (I started with Mozart and then Beethoven).  I personally don't think it really matters which composer you start with in a study of orchestration; if you stick with it, you'll have to pretty much cover all of them.  And whatever you don't grasp the first time around, you'll get it eventually.  I think the best way is to approach it is to study orchestrations by composers that you already study – that way, you won't run into harmony and forms that you're not already somewhat familiar with.  In college, you get good deal of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in the first two years so that's why I think any of those three would be a good place to start.  Wagner is so grandiose and so innovative (read “out there”) with his harmony that you may have a difficult time wading through all that.  I did a lot of orchestral composing for film projects in college and I have to say that Beethoven was my biggest influence in terms of arranging.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course.  I just find your position a little surprising.

It's certainly true that when the valve horn was introduced, composers did nothing different at first -- perhaps the cause was that they didn't know what particular instruments might be at their disposal for a given performance until they were in wide usage.

I also agree that all great composers have something to offer in their arrangements (except Chopin, I guess), and that eventually you'll want to dabble in all of them.

I personally think Beethoven was a brilliant composer... but as an orchestrator, he falls short of others (at least in my book).  Look at the Alto trombones in his 5th symphony - a tad too high for the instrument, perhaps?  As instrumental as Beethoven was in expanding the orchestra, and the brass in particular, the trombones are often an afterthought, and perhaps one he didn't really understand.  To quote from Guion's "The Trombone":

No other instrument in Beethoven's orchestra was so consistently mistreated for so long.

There's also the question of balance.  Here I side with Adam Carse, who notes that Beethoven's orchestral arrangements often overpower the woodwinds with the strings, or with the combination of the brass and strings.

As I mentioned, it's the treatment of the brass that causes me to fault Beethoven as an example to emulate.  I absolutely agree that he has much to offer in the study of orchestration, as do all composers for large ensembles - we can learn just as much from the study of 'oh, I don't want to do THAT' pieces as we can from examples of brilliance.

It's just my opinion, of course, but I still think beginning orchestrators should leave Beethoven for later study.

By the by, Serickso... after I posted just now, I started to think about the impact that conductors have on the presentation of music.  It's entirely possible that in my lifetime, I've never heard a presentation of Beethoven's works properly interpreted -- as he's one of the war horses of music, everyone's done him, and everyone's performance no doubt steps into their own realm a bit.

Even changes in seating have a dramatic effect on what's presented to the audience, let alone the dynamic instructions at rehearsal that we aren't privy to as audience.

I'll curl up with a score or two and just imagine it, and see if my opinion changes any.

Oh, and thanks for that, by the way... it's easy to settle into my comfortable 'old dog' ways sometimes and not critically re-think my opinions.  Whether I change it or not... I'll let you know :)

Tom

Ah yes, I agree with the odd treatment (“mistreatment”) of some instruments and the question of balance between the instruments.  I always took it to be purposeful and really a matter of style and taste – Beethoven's of course.  I just thought of Missa Solemis and I had to laugh – those vocal parts are just about impossible for anyone but freaks of nature who don't need oxygen ;)  I'm definitely getting your point here.  Beethoven asked more from his performers than anyone before him, like a drill sergeant.  I personally don't take that to mean abuse or lack of knowledge on his part (although certainly possible); it seems to me he was saying that the status quo wasn't good enough, that the standard had to be raised (and that he personally didn't care what was difficult and what wasn't).  

Yes, the presentation is also a variable.  Conductors like Stokowski tend to elicit a “love-it-or-hate-it” response from people because of that very issue.  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Beethoven could time-travel to the present and hear some of his work performed (“No, it's not like that you morons!  Are all you people deaf!”) ;)  When you think about it, it's a pretty amazing (and maybe unusual) thing to have an orchestra really properly deliver to an audience what a composer hears in his head.  

Ok, I've done my woodshedding on Beethoven.  I sat with a few scores, and I've read through them in solitary.  Then I read through them again accompanied by performances on CD led by Guilini, Barenboim, Haitink, von Karajan, Tilson Thomas, Titov, Furtwangler, and Tate.  Not the gamut of conductors, but I think sufficiently different in style to give me a better appreciation of how much is orchestration vs performance.

Beethoven brought a lot of good stuff to orchestration, there's no doubt about that.  Thinking about it in a historical context, he may have been the first to build an orchestral creschendo by adding a voice at a time, rather than a simple dynamic indication to the voices already present.  There is a uniform presentation of his ideas, so in the sense that he was uniquely his own man, he was brilliant in his orchestration.  Other than some errors in instrument range, which Serickso has already pointed out may have been caused by him setting the bar higher than the status quo (I note that in the symphonies after #5 he didn't score the trombones quite as high), I don't see technical flaws that I can say weren't deliberate.

As a composer, he was truly brilliant - excellent contrast in themes, innovative development, molding standard forms to his own design.  He definately demanded more of his musicians than other composers of the period - aside from the trombones I've already mentioned, his string bass lines and horn parts (especially 4th horn in #9) certainly stretched the abilities of many performers of his day.

Writing that off as demanding a higher standard, I'm still troubled by the question of balance.  I would emulate Beethoven's use of dynamics, silence, contrast in tempos, keys and themes, but not his division of parts.  To my mind, that's the basis of what you do in orchestration -- you take your four-part piece and divvy it up for the sections.

I suppose after this exercise my opinion of him as an orchestrator is tempered, but unchanged at the core -- I think there are better orchestral examples to follow.  As a composer, though, he ranks among the giants, and I hope I've never given indication otherwise.  As an orchestrator, I would look to Mendelssohn and Tschaikovsky first.

Tom