10-22-2017, 05:49 PM
Since there have been posts demanding more composing and orchestration related posts in the “statistics-section”, I thought it would be good idea if I sit down and type something down, that I have been mainly doing for my own for myself. And that is analyzing singlechords out of larger orchestral works to see how they work regarding orchestration. Themost recent one I analyzed is from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Suite Op. 20 in the second Part No.2 Valse. And that would be this one or in another recording this one. I would recommend listening to the whole thing or at least the bars that come shortly before it and shortly after it to really get the feel for what it is happening and what the chord is doing. I used an Edition Eulenberg Score (No. 1336) for everything, but you can also find it on IMSLP, here is the link. The Chord in question would be on page 4 of the pdf, the first bar there.
The main questions I asked myself, while analyzing this chord is, why can we so clearly conceive a note as a start of a melody and as a leading note, while the chord still sounds very dense at the same time.
First of all I tried to find out, what chord we are dealing with anyway. Here it is without orchestral information or instrumentation, just the tones.
Looks pretty dense to me, right? We can see that the highest Note of the chord is an F#, which is what we perceive as a the melody. It being the highest note is one of the quickly
recognizable mechanics, that let's that tone stand out. But we still don't know what chord we're dealing with, so I stacked them in thirds and got this.
The chord that we're dealing with though is made up by the same notes as the sorted-in-thirds-version, but uses a totally different inversion. Most noticeably is the 7 just being placed in the deepest registers of the chord. That is something that I haven't encountered that often in romantic music yet (while you should take that with a grain of salt, I'm sure there are plenty I haven't heard of), except when the bass gets kind of a melodic function in the whole scheme of things. And indeed, if you listen to what is happening after the chord is played, is that the bass goes down in the A-Maj scale from the D like this: D, C#, B, A. This bassline is playing a little melody there and so it makes sense to put the 7 into the basses.
Back to the question of the melody: If we look at all the F#s that lead into the melody wealways find an E to be very close, in two cases also a G#. That kinda confused me at first sight. With notes so close to each other in seconds it is usually very hard to disguising them from each other (at least for me). As a test you can go to a piano and play d, e, f# at the same time. To me they merge into on tone color with not really on clear leading tone. But we clearly distinguish the F# as the lead. Even more confusing, I hear the F# in the brass the loudest and the most clearly, while it is heavily surrounded by other tones. To get down why it still works so well, we have to look at the different instrument choirs and how they outline the chord. I divided them in a very rough manner into Strings, Woodwinds and Brass, take a look.
Here we get more hints, to why the f# is so clearly against the rest of the chord, while the chord still appears really dense. First of all it should be noted, that the Strings offer a very open voicing, that just contains of two tones, of of them being the leading f#. On of the principles that is noted by George Frederick McKay in his book “Creative Orchestration” to achieve clear orchestration, is the use of dense choirs against open choirs. We can clearly see this in action here. It also helps that the lower f# in the string is not just played by the Violins, but also played by the Violas. If we look at the whole chord, we can see, that thisf# is surrounded by an E and an G, but they are in the brass. Placing the close notes in different choirs, helps our ears to perceive the f# as separated from the E and the G. We will notice similar mechanics when we look at the Brass opposing the Woodwinds. In the Brass we got not only the dense chord in the middle register, but also the f# in the Cornets. This is the Instrument I perceive as the clearest as the leading instrument are the Cornets. They are so far apart from the rest of the brass choir, that they quit stand out a bit and it is easily to distinguish them from the rest of the brass. Spacing is the key here. As a little experiment I tried playing the same chord with some brass patch, but with an E under the f#. What I noted is that the f# then becomes part of the larger chord structure and doesn't stand out as clearly as a lead line, as without the E. Similar things I noted with an D or an B instead of the E. You can try it out yourself just with a brass patch, it really is recognizable. The more notes you add into the brass choir between the g# and the f# here, the less the f# will stand out as a leading tone. Looking at the whole chord again, we'll see that the f# is surrounded by an e and a g#. Here the same principles that we noted in the string melody opposing the brass comes in place: The use of different choirs to make close notes more distinguishable. This time we got the f# being played by the Cornets against the E and G# being played in the Clarinets. Of course the sharp tone of the two doubled Cornets stands out against two Clarinets playing in division. It should be noted, that all the instruments should play ff in this chord,
but nonetheless doubled Cornets are way louder, sharper and penetrative then the tone of the Clarinet. Here it should noted though, that the register in which the Clarinets play here makes it sound more intense than in lower registers. Nonetheless the Cornets are louder. The Denseness of the chord always seems to be, where the melody is not regarding choirs and the dimension of depth. If the brass plays the dense chord, the nearby melody-tone is played in a another layer of the depth, the strings. If the woodwind plays a dense chord, the melody is in the brass and with that also in another choir and layer of
depth and sound.
The only exception here is the piccolo flute being, that is on the top of the woodwind choir. It has flutes playing an E and an B right under it. I don’t really concisely perceive the piccolo there, it’s effect seems more subconscious. It being the highest note again reinforces the f# as a melody note. The E and B under it, are not as destructive to this structure for the following reasons: The f# is really ingrained into the listener's ear through the isolated cornetts and strings playing the f#. That way the piccolo gets support as a leading note as well as it is supporting the leading note f#. And on top of that there is no
higher sound. If there was another piccolo on top playing a g#, the f# might not cut through as well and with that maybe disrupt the structure of the whole chord. If we look at the at the woodwind choir we also notice that the choir is here even a little bit denser with the the second between the f# and the e. No other choir ever comes this close to each other. Why is that? Well, we can use the overtone series to determine how we wanna build and orchestrate our chords. The lower, the less close the notes should be and the higher we go, the closer we can get. The same voicing an octave lower in one choir
wouldn’t sound as clean. On this note, shoutout to Otto for pointing me out to the principle. If you wanna learn more about this principle, here is a short article going into more detail then I will here
Conclusion:
After analyzing this chord and it’s orchestration, we can note and recognize the following principles (and hopefully apply it our own music):
1. Amplifying the leading note:
Tchaikovsky made the leading note quit loud (as stupid as it sounds). For that he used doublings through different registers as well as sharp tones, like of the cornett to cut through. We can also use different dynamics, which he didn’t do. What he did do though regarding dynamics is being conscious of the loudness of different instruments. Two cornetts beats a clarinette.
2. Putting close notes into different choirs to make them distinguishable:
Two very close notes in different choirs will be way more distinguishable, than the same notes in the same choir or even the same instrument. You can try this basically with every two instruments. We can use this knowledge in our music, to guide our listeners ears to what he or she should perceive as a chord and what he should perceive as the leading melody.
3. Putting the leading note as the highest note:
The sharp tone of the piccolo outlines the chord perfectly and makes it once again clear, which tone is the leading tone.
4. Contrasting dense choirs against open choirs:
That kind of refers back to the second principle. Every note in the more open choir is more easy to recognize than in the dense choir. In this way every note in the open choir gets highlighted.
I don’t think any one of these principles work on their own, but the combination is what makes this chord so effective. I hope I made my thoughts as clear as possible, English is not my mother tongue, especially not music-related theory english. Any thoughts, questions? If you’re interested in this kind of analysis, let me know. You also might consider checking out the already cited “Creative Orchestration” by McKay. Most of the principles I noticed, I first learned in this book and it is not tooo expensive (regarding it’s an orchestration book). Please don't bust my ass regarding the shitty picture links being inserted, I couldn't figure it out any better yet
Have a good one.
The main questions I asked myself, while analyzing this chord is, why can we so clearly conceive a note as a start of a melody and as a leading note, while the chord still sounds very dense at the same time.
First of all I tried to find out, what chord we are dealing with anyway. Here it is without orchestral information or instrumentation, just the tones.
Looks pretty dense to me, right? We can see that the highest Note of the chord is an F#, which is what we perceive as a the melody. It being the highest note is one of the quickly
recognizable mechanics, that let's that tone stand out. But we still don't know what chord we're dealing with, so I stacked them in thirds and got this.
The chord that we're dealing with though is made up by the same notes as the sorted-in-thirds-version, but uses a totally different inversion. Most noticeably is the 7 just being placed in the deepest registers of the chord. That is something that I haven't encountered that often in romantic music yet (while you should take that with a grain of salt, I'm sure there are plenty I haven't heard of), except when the bass gets kind of a melodic function in the whole scheme of things. And indeed, if you listen to what is happening after the chord is played, is that the bass goes down in the A-Maj scale from the D like this: D, C#, B, A. This bassline is playing a little melody there and so it makes sense to put the 7 into the basses.
Back to the question of the melody: If we look at all the F#s that lead into the melody wealways find an E to be very close, in two cases also a G#. That kinda confused me at first sight. With notes so close to each other in seconds it is usually very hard to disguising them from each other (at least for me). As a test you can go to a piano and play d, e, f# at the same time. To me they merge into on tone color with not really on clear leading tone. But we clearly distinguish the F# as the lead. Even more confusing, I hear the F# in the brass the loudest and the most clearly, while it is heavily surrounded by other tones. To get down why it still works so well, we have to look at the different instrument choirs and how they outline the chord. I divided them in a very rough manner into Strings, Woodwinds and Brass, take a look.
Here we get more hints, to why the f# is so clearly against the rest of the chord, while the chord still appears really dense. First of all it should be noted, that the Strings offer a very open voicing, that just contains of two tones, of of them being the leading f#. On of the principles that is noted by George Frederick McKay in his book “Creative Orchestration” to achieve clear orchestration, is the use of dense choirs against open choirs. We can clearly see this in action here. It also helps that the lower f# in the string is not just played by the Violins, but also played by the Violas. If we look at the whole chord, we can see, that thisf# is surrounded by an E and an G, but they are in the brass. Placing the close notes in different choirs, helps our ears to perceive the f# as separated from the E and the G. We will notice similar mechanics when we look at the Brass opposing the Woodwinds. In the Brass we got not only the dense chord in the middle register, but also the f# in the Cornets. This is the Instrument I perceive as the clearest as the leading instrument are the Cornets. They are so far apart from the rest of the brass choir, that they quit stand out a bit and it is easily to distinguish them from the rest of the brass. Spacing is the key here. As a little experiment I tried playing the same chord with some brass patch, but with an E under the f#. What I noted is that the f# then becomes part of the larger chord structure and doesn't stand out as clearly as a lead line, as without the E. Similar things I noted with an D or an B instead of the E. You can try it out yourself just with a brass patch, it really is recognizable. The more notes you add into the brass choir between the g# and the f# here, the less the f# will stand out as a leading tone. Looking at the whole chord again, we'll see that the f# is surrounded by an e and a g#. Here the same principles that we noted in the string melody opposing the brass comes in place: The use of different choirs to make close notes more distinguishable. This time we got the f# being played by the Cornets against the E and G# being played in the Clarinets. Of course the sharp tone of the two doubled Cornets stands out against two Clarinets playing in division. It should be noted, that all the instruments should play ff in this chord,
but nonetheless doubled Cornets are way louder, sharper and penetrative then the tone of the Clarinet. Here it should noted though, that the register in which the Clarinets play here makes it sound more intense than in lower registers. Nonetheless the Cornets are louder. The Denseness of the chord always seems to be, where the melody is not regarding choirs and the dimension of depth. If the brass plays the dense chord, the nearby melody-tone is played in a another layer of the depth, the strings. If the woodwind plays a dense chord, the melody is in the brass and with that also in another choir and layer of
depth and sound.
The only exception here is the piccolo flute being, that is on the top of the woodwind choir. It has flutes playing an E and an B right under it. I don’t really concisely perceive the piccolo there, it’s effect seems more subconscious. It being the highest note again reinforces the f# as a melody note. The E and B under it, are not as destructive to this structure for the following reasons: The f# is really ingrained into the listener's ear through the isolated cornetts and strings playing the f#. That way the piccolo gets support as a leading note as well as it is supporting the leading note f#. And on top of that there is no
higher sound. If there was another piccolo on top playing a g#, the f# might not cut through as well and with that maybe disrupt the structure of the whole chord. If we look at the at the woodwind choir we also notice that the choir is here even a little bit denser with the the second between the f# and the e. No other choir ever comes this close to each other. Why is that? Well, we can use the overtone series to determine how we wanna build and orchestrate our chords. The lower, the less close the notes should be and the higher we go, the closer we can get. The same voicing an octave lower in one choir
wouldn’t sound as clean. On this note, shoutout to Otto for pointing me out to the principle. If you wanna learn more about this principle, here is a short article going into more detail then I will here
Conclusion:
After analyzing this chord and it’s orchestration, we can note and recognize the following principles (and hopefully apply it our own music):
1. Amplifying the leading note:
Tchaikovsky made the leading note quit loud (as stupid as it sounds). For that he used doublings through different registers as well as sharp tones, like of the cornett to cut through. We can also use different dynamics, which he didn’t do. What he did do though regarding dynamics is being conscious of the loudness of different instruments. Two cornetts beats a clarinette.
2. Putting close notes into different choirs to make them distinguishable:
Two very close notes in different choirs will be way more distinguishable, than the same notes in the same choir or even the same instrument. You can try this basically with every two instruments. We can use this knowledge in our music, to guide our listeners ears to what he or she should perceive as a chord and what he should perceive as the leading melody.
3. Putting the leading note as the highest note:
The sharp tone of the piccolo outlines the chord perfectly and makes it once again clear, which tone is the leading tone.
4. Contrasting dense choirs against open choirs:
That kind of refers back to the second principle. Every note in the more open choir is more easy to recognize than in the dense choir. In this way every note in the open choir gets highlighted.
I don’t think any one of these principles work on their own, but the combination is what makes this chord so effective. I hope I made my thoughts as clear as possible, English is not my mother tongue, especially not music-related theory english. Any thoughts, questions? If you’re interested in this kind of analysis, let me know. You also might consider checking out the already cited “Creative Orchestration” by McKay. Most of the principles I noticed, I first learned in this book and it is not tooo expensive (regarding it’s an orchestration book). Please don't bust my ass regarding the shitty picture links being inserted, I couldn't figure it out any better yet
Have a good one.
