The Evolution of Modern OrchestrationCoerne, Louis Adolphe
History
The Evolution of Modern Orchestration
Coerne, Louis Adolphe
Instrumentation and orchestration
Orchestration in its present development would seem to have reached
its highest possible attainment of effectiveness and virtuosity. The
problem of the future, therefore, deals not so much with material
increase of orchestral resource, as with what manner of thought
and music the orchestra is destined to portray. What are to be
the musical ethics of the twentieth century composers? The most
subtle thinkers of the world have generally taken an idealistic
view of the social mission of musical art. Eminent psychologists of
Germany, France and England, who otherwise represent distinctive and
frequently antagonistic schools of philosophy, all agree on this
point, as illustrated by a few quotations selected from the writings
of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emile Montegut and Herbert Spencer. Music,
according to Hegel, should "fill the heart and bring to consciousness
everything developed and undeveloped which human feeling can carry,
experience and bring forth, in its innermost and most secret parts;
whatever the human heart in its manifold possibilities and moods
desires to express or excite; and especially whatever the spirit has
in its idea of the Most Essential and High; the glory of the Honored,
the Eternal and the True." Schopenhauer declared that music "never
expresses phenomena, but solely the inner being, the essence of
phenomena, the will itself. It expresses, therefore, not this or that
single and particular joy, this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror,
or exultation, or hilarity, or repose of mind itself; but, as it were
_in abstracto_, the essentials of these without their concomitants,
therefore without their motives. Nevertheless, in such quintessence
we understand it perfectly. Hence our fancy is so easily excited
by it and tries to clothe this invisible spirit world, that speaks
to us so immediately and eloquently, with flesh and blood, _i.e._
to embody it in an analogous example." Emile Montegut expresses
himself to the effect that this magic sound of what is called music
"pierces the material barriers which limit human words; it gives
to hearts the means of communicating among themselves; it creates
a language of which the most ignorant and the poorest perceive all
the power and all the sweetness. Music speaks, and suddenly the
hearts which were chilled with consciousness of their own isolation
are thrilled with tenderness and radiant with happiness." Herbert
Spencer believed that "music ought to take rank at the head of the
fine arts because it is the one which adds most to human happiness.
Not content with exciting powerfully our better instincts, it awakens
sentiments lying dormant in us, of which we had not conceived the
possibility, of which we do not understand the sense. This obscure
presentment of an unknown happiness, which music awakens in us, this
confused dream of an ideal and new life, all this is but a prophecy
of something which music itself ought assuredly to accomplish." In
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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