Composer's Rationale Part 2: Instrumentation
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed the first part of my Rationale on where the melodies and harmonic structures came from. I should include a clarification to prevent misleading some of you—many of the conclusions I reached in the first part were found through experimentation and synthesizing knowledge about music I had previously studied. If I felt like something told the story well, I decided to roll with it. There are probably better ways at least some of the time.
Now I have more conclusions to share with you. These conclusions have to instrumentation, an aspect of the score with which I’m rather pleased. With respect to orchestration, I considered several questions here. They fell mostly under a few categories:
My general conclusions are as follows. Keep in mind that there are always exceptions.
From here on forward, these notes are more focused on songs, rather than general conclusions:
The Scent of Temptation, one of my favorite numbers, I made numerous exceptions. Here, the actors needed the most doubling since there was a difficult harmony section in the middle. I varied the orchestration based on the verse, and the cellos switch from doubling Edward to playing a waltz bass during Bella’s verse, which creates a dance-like effect, giving a new meaning to “dancing with death.”
In the Lullaby, the alternation between two violin sections (one section plays during the other’s long notes) creates a sort of restlessness, since even in the long notes, something else is always going on. One section doubles the melody, and one has a disjunct harmony. The piano creates the “sparkling effect” with arpeggios in the middle section, but at first, it plays a constant rhythmic outline of the chord structure, which also never rests.
Many of the conclusions I reach here are also found through experimentation and synthesizing knowledge about music I had previously studied. These conclusions come from my experience as an orchestral musician. My favorite master composers of orchestral music that I’ve studied through playing violin in the Central Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra for several years are as listed here, again in no particular order.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy—we are currently (as of May 28th) working on his “Reformation” Symphony. Mendelssohn was one of the few great composers born into an aristocratic household. His father would hire an orchestra to play his new compositions, and as a result, he became intimately familiar with the capabilities and colors of each instrument.
Ludwig van Beethoven—consistently on my list of favorites in any sort of music he wrote (string quartets, orchestral music, piano music, concerti, etc.), Beethoven wrote the 9 Symphonic masterpieces. His Coriolan Overture is a brilliant depiction of the story of Coriolanus, previously a play by Shakespeare, whom he greatly admired. I especially love his use of the bass to depict a heartbeat motif, which I was unfortunately not able to use.
Camille Saint-Saëns—perhaps one of my favorite orchestral pieces, on par with Beethoven’s Seventh, is Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, which I describe in my last part of Rationale. The depiction of the clattering bones and mock sentimentality in the strings’ passages are some of my favorite moments, as well as the opening chimes of the clock striking twelve, which I borrow for Twilight’s Overture.
Maurice Ravel was perhaps the greatest master of the orchestra’s tonal possibilities. Several years ago, we played Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess, but I probably gained this respect for Ravel by listening to his orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in my music theory class. The Pictures were written in memory of Mussorgsky’s recently departed friend Viktor Hartmann after Mussorgsky visited an exhibition of Hartmann’s works. Ravel uses woodwinds to depict birds, low brass instruments for the abysmal darkness sometimes seen in the paintings. He also uses percussion to depict the terror of the witch, but unfortunately, there were few parallels, since the only thing I could take (with my orchestra and my source material) were the uses of strings and flutes.
Thanks for reading,
Ian Duh
I hope you enjoyed the first part of my Rationale on where the melodies and harmonic structures came from. I should include a clarification to prevent misleading some of you—many of the conclusions I reached in the first part were found through experimentation and synthesizing knowledge about music I had previously studied. If I felt like something told the story well, I decided to roll with it. There are probably better ways at least some of the time.
Now I have more conclusions to share with you. These conclusions have to instrumentation, an aspect of the score with which I’m rather pleased. With respect to orchestration, I considered several questions here. They fell mostly under a few categories:
- When do actors need to be doubled? How strongly do they need to hear their own melodies? Do I want them to stand out from the orchestra? Do I want them to blend in?
- What kind of accompaniment texture do I want? Should there be mostly doubling, harmony moving with the melody, or harmony moving separate from the melody? How strongly do chords need to be outlined?
- What kind of mood do I want here, and which instruments best create that mood? What characters are the points of focus, and which instruments best portray them?
- Which instruments blend together best? Which instruments can best double the melody, and which instruments can best accompany?
My general conclusions are as follows. Keep in mind that there are always exceptions.
- Actors more often than not need to be doubled, and most of them should be doubled fairly strongly. Some songs need to have the actors stand out more, since some are crucial to the plot, but some songs could have the actors more as singers blending with the orchestra since the intent is more a mood than anything else.
- The accompaniment texture nearly always has at least a violin section, a flute, or both doubling, while the other instruments outline the chords definitively. Cellos sometimes serve as melody, but inevitably serve as the bass instrument most of the time. I use whole notes in the flutes a lot to create an “aura” of a chord that may extend for a few measures. When a violin section or flute doubles the melody, the other section plays a harmony that moves apart (disjunct motion) from the melody or a parallel harmony. I personally think disjunct motion is more interesting.
- The mood really depends. The piano serves as a core in every song, but “happy” or capricious songs feature flutes, which portray and double Alice and Jessica Stanley. The strings often double more serious characters. Violins portray both Edward and Bella, and cellos sometimes depict Edward. In She Made Him Smile, the mood overrides the instrumental character portrayals—the strings create the calming mood better on the melody, even when Alice is singing.
- In terms of exchanges, I find they work best between two flutes, or two sections of the violins. Exchanges between flutes and violins don’t always work in musical theatre (or at least not in Twilight, though I can think of plenty of examples when they do work). In Who Are They, Bella is portrayed by a flute, because the song is capricious, and because Jessica’s portrayal as ditzy and gossiping is more important than Bella’s depiction
From here on forward, these notes are more focused on songs, rather than general conclusions:
The Scent of Temptation, one of my favorite numbers, I made numerous exceptions. Here, the actors needed the most doubling since there was a difficult harmony section in the middle. I varied the orchestration based on the verse, and the cellos switch from doubling Edward to playing a waltz bass during Bella’s verse, which creates a dance-like effect, giving a new meaning to “dancing with death.”
In the Lullaby, the alternation between two violin sections (one section plays during the other’s long notes) creates a sort of restlessness, since even in the long notes, something else is always going on. One section doubles the melody, and one has a disjunct harmony. The piano creates the “sparkling effect” with arpeggios in the middle section, but at first, it plays a constant rhythmic outline of the chord structure, which also never rests.
Many of the conclusions I reach here are also found through experimentation and synthesizing knowledge about music I had previously studied. These conclusions come from my experience as an orchestral musician. My favorite master composers of orchestral music that I’ve studied through playing violin in the Central Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra for several years are as listed here, again in no particular order.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy—we are currently (as of May 28th) working on his “Reformation” Symphony. Mendelssohn was one of the few great composers born into an aristocratic household. His father would hire an orchestra to play his new compositions, and as a result, he became intimately familiar with the capabilities and colors of each instrument.
Ludwig van Beethoven—consistently on my list of favorites in any sort of music he wrote (string quartets, orchestral music, piano music, concerti, etc.), Beethoven wrote the 9 Symphonic masterpieces. His Coriolan Overture is a brilliant depiction of the story of Coriolanus, previously a play by Shakespeare, whom he greatly admired. I especially love his use of the bass to depict a heartbeat motif, which I was unfortunately not able to use.
Camille Saint-Saëns—perhaps one of my favorite orchestral pieces, on par with Beethoven’s Seventh, is Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, which I describe in my last part of Rationale. The depiction of the clattering bones and mock sentimentality in the strings’ passages are some of my favorite moments, as well as the opening chimes of the clock striking twelve, which I borrow for Twilight’s Overture.
Maurice Ravel was perhaps the greatest master of the orchestra’s tonal possibilities. Several years ago, we played Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess, but I probably gained this respect for Ravel by listening to his orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in my music theory class. The Pictures were written in memory of Mussorgsky’s recently departed friend Viktor Hartmann after Mussorgsky visited an exhibition of Hartmann’s works. Ravel uses woodwinds to depict birds, low brass instruments for the abysmal darkness sometimes seen in the paintings. He also uses percussion to depict the terror of the witch, but unfortunately, there were few parallels, since the only thing I could take (with my orchestra and my source material) were the uses of strings and flutes.
Thanks for reading,
Ian Duh