The Evolution of Modern OrchestrationCoerne, Louis Adolphe
History
The Evolution of Modern Orchestration
Coerne, Louis Adolphe
Instrumentation and orchestration
RHEINBERGER'S orchestral works cannot be regarded in
the light of important contributions to musical literature. The
instrumentation is thoroughly refined, marvellously smooth, and
perfectly rounded in every detail; but the essential elements of
individuality and novelty do not enter into the orchestral scheme to
any appreciable extent.
CHAPTER XI. THE NEW MOVEMENT.
The "New Movement" dates from the innovations simultaneously
introduced by Berlioz in France and by Liszt and Wagner in Germany.
BERLIOZ was practically the first representative of the New
Movement, but contrary to the natural course of evolution, he was
not only its founder but at once its most radical exponent as well.
The laying out of his musical scheme was inseparably connected with
a _series_ of events or ideas. As the chief French representative of
romantic musical art, he combined dramatic and symphonic effects. His
contributions to the development of "program" music and to modern
science of orchestration loom up in gigantic proportions. One of
the primary objects of his orchestral conceptions was to display
tone-color in its own right, an object that was foreign to the more
æsthetic ideals of the classicists. The distinctive features of his
orchestration are power of musical description; new combinations,
new effects, new treatment; insight into the characteristics of
the instruments whereby their possibilities both individual and
collective are demonstrated; excessive polyphony and complicated
rhythm. Berlioz must be accredited with having anticipated many
effects subsequently elaborated upon by Wagner, as discovered, for
example, by his frequent use of homogeneous tone-color in independent
three and four part harmony. Berlioz represents the ultra-realistic
school of instrumental music and was the most daring orchestral
writer that has ever lived.
LISZT. The importance attached to the rich and heavy
orchestration of Liszt consists of the bearing it has upon the
unfettered form, the freedom of tonality and the novelty of treatment
that characterize the New German School. His scoring is masterful,
highly colored and ingenious, but contains nothing conspicuously new.
He was led to modify the cyclic form of the symphony which became
transformed into the symphonic poem with its continuity of music,
monothematic principle and absence of conventional formulas.
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