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Description
The
third edition of this high
successful orchestration text
follows the approach established in
its innovative predecessor: Learning
orchestration is best achieved
through familiarity with the
orchestral literature; this
familiarity is most effectively
accomplished from the music notation
in combination with the recorded
sound. The text has been revised to
reflect the most informed reactions
to the first and second editions, as
well as Professor Adler's
revisions. For
comprehensiveness, conciseness, and
contemporaneity, The Study of
Orchestration remains without peer.
An ancillary set of six enhanced
compact discs and a workbook are
available separately to accompany
this textbook but are not included
with the textbook.
About
the Author
Samuel
Adler, Professor Emeritus at the
Eastman School of Music, is
currently teaching at the Juilliard
School of Music in New York. He has
held the title of visiting professor
at many schools throughout the
country and abroad, giving master
classes in composition,
orchestration, and conducting.
Professor Adler has gained
considerable recognition as a
composer (his compositions have been
performed by such ensembles as the
New York Philharmonic and the
Chicago Symphony), and has received
numerous awards and grants. He has
also been guest conductor for many
prominent symphony orchestras.
By Dr.
Christopher Coleman I've used
Adler's Study of Orchestration (2nd
ed.) each time I've taught
orchestration, and the quality of
the text coupled with the CD
examples make it by far the best
standard orchestration text I've
seen. That the reader is able to
hear not only examples taken from
music, but also able to compare
various spacings, doublings, and
orchestrations of even single chords
is invaluable. As I tell my
students, it's not so much who is
playing a line, it is who is playing
a line in a given place--and the
only way to learn what an instrument
sounds like in its various registers
is to hear it there.
Especially
helpful
are passages like Adler's discussion
of woodwinds in the symphony
orchestra (Chapter 8) in which
several possible orchestrations of a
single musical passage are
illustrated, discussed, and
presented on CD, allowing readers to
recognize and judge for themselves
the relative quality. It is this,
that much in orchestration is not
particularly wrong or right, and
that there are many many ways to
score a particular passage, that
makes orchestration so difficult to
teach; and Adler is sensitive to the
issue.
But
any book of this scope is likely to
have some problems, and this is no
exception. I'll mention only two
that have struck me in particular as
a trombonist, neither of which are
particularly serious in and of
themselves, but whose presence is at
best unwelcome and perhaps even
somewhat distressing in a textbook.
First, Adler's discussion of the
trombone glissando (chapter 10) is
inadequate and separated by several
pages from his discussion of the
overtone series as it relates to the
trombone. Given that the way a
trombone glissando works is
inseparable from the overtone
series, this seems strange indeed.
The situation is compounded by
Adler's example from Bartok's
Concerto for Orchestra, of which he
says "The following glissando, first
for the bass trombone, then for the
tenor, is perfect, since it extends
from seventh to first position." Any
trombone player will tell you that
in fact Bartok got it wrong, and the
bass trombone glissando is
impossible without doing some
serious cheating. On the bass
trombone using an attachment in F or
E one can only play a perfect 4th,
not a tritone, in that particular
harmonic; and bass trombonists have
come up with all kinds of ingenious
tricks to play this devilish passage
which looks so easy to the
ill-informed. It is FAR from
perfect.
While
this little quirk of the trombone
isn't really very important in the
grand scheme of orchestration it
makes me wonder how many other
instrumental quirks have gone
unnoticed. More important, however,
are some oddities of Adler's
observations and discussions of the
examples he chooses. In chapter 11,
in the unit on the brass choir as a
homophonic unit, Adler exerpts a
passage from Hindemith's Noblissima
Visione. He describes the passage as
"a 'dark' doubling" and ascribes
this to the fact that "neither the
trumpets nor the horns ever go too
high." Later he seems to contradict
himself. "The brilliance of this
passage as it is scored comes from
the unison of the horns and
trombones rather than of blaring
trumpets." Never mind the
prejudicial "blaring" (surely a
trumpet can be played in the high
register and sound brilliant without
blaring); which is it--brilliant or
dark? Try as we might, neither my
students nor I can ever hear this as
"dark". At best, the last measure of
a five measure passage might be
considered so because of the low
register, but in fact the trumpets,
horns, and trombones all do go
fairly high in one of the preceding
measures. If one fifth of a passage
is sufficient to consider the entire
passage "dark", why isn't one fifth
of the same passage sufficient to
consider it "bright"?
Adler
goes on to say "If Hindemith had
wanted an extremely bright sound, he
could have transposed it up a third
or a fourth and had the trumpets and
the horns at an extremely high
register." Well, no....the passage
is not complete in itself, but part
of a larger piece--a passacaglia, no
less. In order to transpose the
passage, Hindemith would have had to
either transpose the entire movement
(which would in turn have required a
transposition of the entire piece in
order to keep the same key
relationships) or have written some
modulating passage--unimaginable in
a passacaglia. It is simply wrong to
consider that transposing a
particular passage is an acceptable
way to orchestrate "brightness" or
"darkness" without regard to tonal
relationships of the whole. That is
not to say that the passage could
not be brighter or darker, but to do
so with orchestration requires
dealing with the instruments and
their registers, not the
pitches.
If
Hindemith had omitted the horns in
the first 4 measures, then brought
in horns and omitted trumpets in the
final 5 notes, perhaps even putting
the first trombone up an octave on
those notes the passage would have
been significantly brighter. There
is even more that is problematic
about this discussion--in fact it
seems the most poorly argued in the
book, but I believe I've made my
point.
However,
as
a classroom tool, The Study of
Orchestration is as yet unequalled,
and examples like the Hindemith
allow the careful teacher the
opportunity to develop the students'
critical and analytical skills. The
workbook has its own problems, which
I won't discuss here, but the book
and CD are well worth repeated study
and thought.
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