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In need for modern orchestration recourses - Viktor - 07-06-2017
Hey,
Does anyone have any good recourses regarding more modern orchestration? I'm talking about turn of the century 19. to 20. I find a lot of singled out tipes, by Thomas Goss, but is there a really good book on it, that really takes it through, that anyone can recommend?
Thanks a lot.
PS: I'm already familiar with Orchestration Online and JJay Berthume, if anyone also is looking for what I'm looking for these also might be good starting points for you.
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - peastman - 07-07-2017
When I took an orchestration class many years ago, the textbook we used was "The Technique of Orchestration" by Kent Kennan and Donald Grantham. I liked it a lot. I still have my copy, and still refer to it often.
There's also a free online orchestration course at https://www.garritan.com/principles-of-orchestration/. It's based on the textbook by Rimsky-Korsakov, which is considered a classic.[url=https://www.garritan.com/principles-of-orchestration/][/url]
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - Samulis - 07-07-2017
What you're looking for is probably either late-Romantic or post-Romantic. The former is stuff like Mahler and Sibelius, the latter being more like Stravinsky. There was also impressionism, that was functionally a different bridge.
The late Romantic was the sort of last hurrah of the Romantic period ideals that had been present in music for the better part of the previous century, with some composers starting to push beyond the expectations. On the other hand, the post Romantic was a reaction to Romantic teachings and philosophy that basically splintered composition philosophy into dozens of camps. As such, the question becomes more like who do you want to sound like and less like how do I write modern orchestration. On one hand, some people went totally 'out' at the dawn of the 20th century (e.g. Cowell, the Italian 'Futurists'), while others just started pushing things to their logical extremes past the bounds of Romanticism (Stravinsky, Charles Ives), and others still held on to Romanticism to the last breath (a few lesser-known composers- Marcel Tyberg).
You have to keep in mind that these people were intentionally interested in pushing and exploring where music could go- often with atonal and polytonal consequences that stand far outside of orchestration and do much more to define the modernity of the work. In fact, in speaking of modern orchestration, I would almost say there is no one standard to point you to. John Cage certainly didn't let traditional orchestral standards stand in his way! In fact, I might argue if you were to start orchestrating with no experience at it, you'd probably be closer to modern orchestration than if you took a class on traditional orchestration because the core at the heart of modernism is the ability to determine for yourself what sounds right without having to worry about rules or philosophies getting in the way of the music. If you want the violins panned to the right and cellos hard left, that's all part of modern orchestration at work; in some schools of modern composition, the MORE you break/shock the listener's expectations, the better!
Overall, there were a few trends to notice. For starters, orchestras typically got a little smaller. A lot of modern music is chamber music or of indeterminate or even infinite instruments, so the necessity for large orchestras, particularly with exotic doublings such as contralto clarinets, heckelphones, Eb clarinets, or wagner tubas, decreased significantly. At the same time, a very strong interest in exploring non-western musical ideals and, in some cases, instruments grew immensely across Europe and the United States (during the late Romantic, it was not uncommon for composers to do this, such as Brahm's and Rimsky-Korsakov's interests in folk music, or the general interest in approximating Eastern and Far Eastern musical styles). Here that resulted primarily in composers sourcing from American folk music, but in Europe this meant drawing from everything from folk tunes to eastern melodies. At the same time, this also meant exploring lesser-known and even obsolete instruments, as well as brand new instruments, such as theremin or the unconventional noises of the modern piano. Mallets instruments, which had widely languished in the realm of occasional effects (some of which at that time were still relatively undeveloped both physically and technically), took the spotlight for the first time, with composers reaching out to marimbas, xylophones, and other even stranger percussion instruments- some even inventing their own. This also brought some of those near-extinct instruments periods of limelight, but overall, they seemed to have been more interested in exploring more readily available instruments than functional oddities designed to fill gaps in massive orchestras. Half of 'modern' is how you use the instruments rather than what and how many you use.
If you want some modern perspectives, go seek out modern orchestration books or biographies/info on modern composers and their music, or if you can locate a modern composer in your area, go meet with them. I studied for about a year with a modern composer who uses a bi-tonal system and I learned a ton about both conventional and non-conventional orchestration and composition.
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - Viktor - 07-08-2017
(07-07-2017, 03:35 AM)peastman Wrote: When I took an orchestration class many years ago, the textbook we used was "The Technique of Orchestration" by Kent Kennan and Donald Grantham. I liked it a lot. I still have my copy, and still refer to it often.
There's also a free online orchestration course at https://www.garritan.com/principles-of-orchestration/. It's based on the textbook by Rimsky-Korsakov, which is considered a classic.[url=https://www.garritan.com/principles-of-orchestration/][/url]
Thank you for the tips! It seems to be rather expensive, but they all seem to be. The Rimsky-Korsakov book defintly is helping, while some parts just seem to be droppings of recomendations, rather then explenations why they work.
(07-07-2017, 04:26 PM)Samulis Wrote: What you're looking for is probably either late-Romantic or post-Romantic. The former is stuff like Mahler and Sibelius, the latter being more like Stravinsky. There was also impressionism, that was functionally a different bridge.
Thanks for the big answer! Do you mean funtionally in the sense of funtional harmony? I'm pretty much into Debussy and Stravisnky right now. I think I'm using the term modern a bit too naive.
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - Samulis - 07-09-2017
No, I wasn't really talking about functional harmony- more about WHAT impressionism is about versus what post-Romanticism/early modernism is about.
Modern is a bit of a catch-all, but for the most part it means about 1900 to about the 1970's or so. We currently live in what is called "post-modern".
The core tenet to keep in mind is that anything goes. There are no rules and no demands.
Of course, as with all music, being a dick to your performers/instrumentalists doesn't win you any brownie points or favors. Many modern and post-modern composers think their music and interpretation of it is the most important thing ever and treat performers more like playback devices, while others leave a great deal up to the performer to determine and defer to their judgement.
Here's a piece called 'In C'. It has no instruments called for and the instructions are quite open-ended.
http://aleatoric.backporchrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/inc_score.gif
Here's one possible realization of it-
https://instaud.io/DL7
A simple google search will yield dozens of other versions with varying ensembles, interpretations, etc.
Here's a modern piece I wrote in the form of what is called "found music" (based on the concept of 'found poetry')-
https://s3.amazonaws.com/SamulisRandom/FoundMusic_Gossner.pdf
Unfortunately I don't have a recording of it, but the basic premise was I brought some snippets of music, paper, and glue sticks, and let the performers assemble their own parts- some are very conventional... others not quite so! The performers could rotate the music and on quite a few I intentionally cut off the time/key signatures. I drew snippets from pieces of early music, lead sheets, and even dug through the paper recycling bin in the copy center at the music college to unearth some poor student's fugue for a tonal harmony class (poor Wilbur).
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - Viktor - 07-10-2017
(07-09-2017, 11:30 PM)Samulis Wrote: Unfortunately I don't have a recording of it, but the basic premise was I brought some snippets of music, paper, and glue sticks, and let the performers assemble their own parts- some are very conventional... others not quite so! The performers could rotate the music and on quite a few I intentionally cut off the time/key signatures. I drew snippets from pieces of early music, lead sheets, and even dug through the paper recycling bin in the copy center at the music college to unearth some poor student's fugue for a tonal harmony class (poor Wilbur).
Sounds quit interresting. How did the sound turn out?
I listened to some interpretations of in C since yesterday, it seems to be able to go anywhere. How does it feel to play that? It seems kinda exhausting but also meditative.
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - peastman - 07-11-2017
I don't think the basics of orchestration have really changed that much in the last 200 years. The main sections of the orchestra are still the same, they still contain mostly the same instruments, and you still write for them in mostly the same way. Much of what you think of as "modern" orchestration techniques are really just minor variations on those basics.
The biggest thing that's changed over the years is that composers have always kept looking for new sounds. Partly that meant introducing new instruments. The percussion section especially got a lot of new options. And partly it meant trying to get new sounds out of old instruments. For example, the exotic bowing techniques the impressionists loved so much. But electronic instruments have (in my opinion) largely made that unnecessary. You can get a synthesizer to produce nearly any sound you can imagine. If you want an exotic sound, use a synth. If you're writing for an orchestral instrument, it's presumably because you want that instrument to sound like itself.
Then there's composition, which I think of as largely distinct from orchestration. That did all sorts of wild and crazy things in the mid 20th century. Thankfully, we survived that period and got past it.
I think composers just became obsessed with trying to be "new", so much so that they completely stopped caring about whether it was pleasant to listen to. Actually, I think it was worse than that. I think they actively avoided it, because if people enjoyed hearing your music, that meant it wasn't "serious" music. (The same illness affected other art forms around the same time too: painting, drama, dance, etc. But music possibly had the worst case.)Here's the funny thing though. This was the time period when classical music and popular music totally diverged from each other. Popular music was also going off in new directions: ragtime, jazz, rock, folk, etc. But classical composers, despite their desire to be "new", completely ignored that. A handful of composers (e.g. Gershwin, Bernstein) managed to bridge the two worlds, but most of them just tried to pretend popular music didn't exist.
All of that has changed a lot in the last few decades. Starting probably in the 1980s, it became acceptable again to write music that audiences actually enjoyed hearing. It also started becoming acceptable for classical music to have rock influences. When I hear a weird, atonal, aleatoric piece these days, I don't necessarily think of that as "modern" anymore. It's more like the sort of thing people were writing back in the 70s. Truly modern music is more likely to sound like the composer has a clue what's been happening in the world of popular music for the last hundred years.
But it also could easily sound like something that could have been written a hundred years ago. For example, listen to most orchestral film scores: John Williams, Hans Zimmer, etc. The style is very heavily based in the late romantic period. There will be some more recent touches thrown in here and there: maybe a rock beat, maybe some ethnic influences. Perhaps it will go atonal just before the monster jumps out. But the base it's all built on top of is mainly romantic.
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - Samulis - 07-11-2017
^^ Spot-on. In contrast to modernism, post-modernism is the embracing of fusion. Now we have things with "Neo-" prefixes (e.g. "Neo-Baroque", "Neo-Classical", etc.) with people, a la Renaissance, going back to the roots and exploring what's there, then bringing it back to the contexts of today. Styles in music has always behaved cyclically, moving between emotion and logic, romanticism and classicism... now from abstract back to popular. Of course, this is just "the most common line"- I can point out people writing in the style of high Romanticism from 1920, 1940, 1960, and today... or the styles of the Renaissance centuries after. People do what they want to do, but histories mostly focus on the vanguard and the common denominators, rarely the old guard or the oddball.
Williams' style is really a homage to an old guard that died out with the addition of popular instruments and styles in the 70's and 80's- the composers he grew up hearing and played on the compositions of. I would argue current film scoring styles and techniques, compared to film scoring of the Golden Age (40's, 50's) has about as much to do with Romanticism as Skrillex has to do with Scott Joplin- same audience, different language and mindset. Frankly, very few current (2015+) film composers (possibly excepting themed works or the usual handful of hold-outs) write in a style like the Romantic era because it's just too complex and has too small of a market share compared to rock- and EDM-infused scores, with people like Zimmer at the head of the charge (although he appears to have grown rather sick of all the copycats and stated he will no longer be composing in the burgeoning 'cinematic' style spawned by his works). This trend towards popular music over Romantic/Post-Romantic has been going on since the 70's and 80's with just a brief turnaround in the 90's and early 2000's with the popularity of Williams, Shore, and so on. If you don't believe me, go pick up a book with a bunch of interviews with more modern composers- about a third of them (probably a majority today) used to be in rock bands and very few of them have formal music composition educations from conservatories like virtually all the old composers did (I don't really either, so whaddyaknow).
So, although in the academic world, I definitely think there was that pressure to write weird "out" things that has now at least diminished (having been surrounded by such an environment for four years, I can tell you that there are still tons of people who would think tonality and pleasure are some sort of primitive and silly notion to be avoided at all cost), I think in the film scoring world people have simply changed what they liked and Hollywood has responded... but (if you watch Cinema Sins, you can say it along with me now) they always beat the dead horse until it becomes nutrients that becomes grass that becomes food for another horse that becomes a baby horse that they keep beating. The Golden Age stuff got so ungodly cookie-cutter that they HAD to spice it up. The 80's became so... well... 80's... yeah, thank god for John Williams. Then after iPods became a thing they said, "hey, kids like this electronic dance thing" and it'll probably be another decade until the current style goes away.
I'm not going to say whether I think all of this is good or bad, or who I think did it right and wrong, but I seriously believe that the original ideals and intent of the Romantic era composers has been eaten completely away to leave it as simply another dish in the buffet-line of post-modernism. You can put it on your plate, or leave it off... If you want to write like [fill in the blank], then there is nothing stopping you from skipping around the buffet and putting your peas all up inside your mashed potatoes and grabbing the last piece of cake. Just never feel like because other people are taking the sizzling hot chili that you gotta man up and take some of it too.
RE: In need for modern orchestration recourses - Viktor - 07-13-2017
I think the thing with being a composer today and starting with a rock background, is that a rock background is just waaay more accessible. I'm pretty happy, that is changing more and more through free Samples like SSO or VSCO2, but getting into composing orchestral music was just really expensive I think all these years ago. So if you wanna be creative and you can do classical compositions, that will probably never be performed or just have a band, i would (and did) go with having a band. (While that is oversimplifing a lot. I think getting into rock music is also way easier, then listening to classical stuff. It is so way more demending and at least for me it took years after really getting into music to really appreciate it.)
I think scores today are not borrowing so much from romanticism but more from minimal music. Some examples of what I mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQTGEAqqRzs and also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNlE-RF5hoc
I feel like a very big distinction to me is that movie score today are way more modal, while romantic compositions focus a lot around building harmonies with dominants. While you hear that also in movie scores (like Pirates of the Caribian), but it is always more of a colour to produce the aura of something "old", noble and like bourgeoisie.
All seems to be more about textures in generell then about melodies.
I think orchestration has changed in so far that mixing is now a bigger deal. I think they both are actually very related though. They both seem to be having enough and the right space for everything in the end.
EDIT: I'm not sure what I think of that though. I think there is this tendency to just judge this things as lesser music. I can see why, but I could also argue that Mozart is pretty boring from the textures he used. I think in the end music that is melodicly interresting as well as sonical is probably the best, but thats just my opinion. And a very non-confrontetial one probably. A lot of people would probably argee with my wishes in music but still have very different ideas of what it sounds like.