Orchestra
The number of musicians employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred, depending on the work being played and the venue size.
[2] Orchestras that specialize in the Baroque music of, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, or Classical repertoire, such as that of Haydn and Mozart, tend to be smaller than orchestras performing a Romantic music repertoire such as the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms.
The third horn in the "Eroica" Symphony arrives to provide not only some harmonic flexibility but also the effect of "choral" brass in the Trio movement.
[6] The next major expansion of symphonic practice came from Richard Wagner's Bayreuth orchestra, founded to accompany his musical dramas.
Wagner's theories re-examined the importance of tempo, dynamics, bowing of string instruments and the role of principals in the orchestra.
By the late Romantic era, orchestras could support the most enormous forms of symphonic expression, with huge string and brass sections and an expanded range of percussion instruments.
Combined with the wider audience made possible by recording, this led to a renewed focus on particular star conductors and on a high standard of orchestral execution.
[8] The typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of related musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings.
In this configuration, the symphonic orchestra consisted entirely of free-reed chromatic accordions which were modified to recreate the full range of orchestral sounds and timbres during the performance of orthodox Western classical music.
While appearing only as featured solo instruments in some works, for example Maurice Ravel's orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, the saxophone is included in other works, such as Ravel's Boléro, Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suites 1 and 2, Vaughan Williams' Symphonies No.
The euphonium is featured in a few late Romantic and 20th century works, usually playing parts marked "tenor tuba", including Gustav Holst's The Planets, and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.
[18] Cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussy's La Mer, and several orchestral works by Hector Berlioz.
The concertmaster leads the pre-concert tuning and handles musical aspects of orchestra management, such as determining the bowings for the violins or the entire string section.
In modern times, the musicians are usually directed by a conductor, although early orchestras did not have one, giving this role to the concertmaster or the harpsichordist playing the continuo.
Contract performers may be hired for individual concerts when the orchestra is doing an exceptionally large late-Romantic era orchestral work, or to substitute for a permanent member who is sick.
[30] In February 1996, the Vienna Philharmonic's principal flute, Dieter Flury, told Westdeutscher Rundfunk that accepting women would be "gambling with the emotional unity (emotionelle Geschlossenheit) that this organism currently has".
Finally, "after being held up to increasing ridicule even in socially conservative Austria, members of the orchestra gathered [on 28 February 1997] in an extraordinary meeting on the eve of their departure and agreed to admit a woman, Anna Lelkes, as harpist.
In the Baroque era, orchestras performed in a range of venues, including at the fine houses of aristocrats, in opera halls and in churches.
These include the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the London Classical Players under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington and the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood, among others.
Few orchestras could fill auditoriums, and the time-honored season-subscription system became increasingly anachronistic, as more and more listeners would buy tickets on an ad-hoc basis for individual events.
One source of financial difficulties that received notice and criticism was high salaries for music directors of US orchestras,[41] which led several high-profile conductors to take pay cuts in recent years.
The American critic Greg Sandow has argued in detail that orchestras must revise their approach to music, performance, the concert experience, marketing, public relations, community involvement, and presentation to bring them in line with the expectations of 21st century audiences immersed in popular culture.
The primary duties of the conductor are to set the tempo, ensure correct entries by various members of the ensemble, and "shape" the phrasing where appropriate.
[45] A conductor's directions will almost invariably be supplemented or reinforced by verbal instructions or suggestions to their musicians in rehearsal prior to a performance.
Communication is typically non-verbal during a performance (this is strictly the case in art music, but in jazz big bands or large pop ensembles, there may be occasional spoken instructions, such as a "count in").
They may also attend to organizational matters, such as scheduling rehearsals,[46] planning a concert season, hearing auditions and selecting members, and promoting their ensemble in the media.
Leadership might also be provided by one of the chord-playing instrumentalists playing the basso continuo part which was the core of most Baroque instrumental ensemble pieces.
During the Classical music period (c. 1720–1800), the practice of using chordal instruments to play basso continuo was gradually phased out, and it disappeared completely by 1800.
The symphony orchestra Persimfans was formed without a conductor, because the founders believed that the ensemble should be modeled on the ideal Marxist state, in which all people are equal.
Some orchestral works specify that an offstage trumpet should be used or that other instruments from the orchestra should be positioned off-stage or behind the stage, to create a haunted, mystical effect.
