Orchestra

An orchestra is a large group of musicians who play instruments together. Orchestras are common in classical music and jazz. They bring together instruments from different families.

Most orchestras have four main sections. The string section includes the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The woodwind section includes the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon. The brass section includes the French horn, trumpet, trombone, and tuba. The percussion section includes the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals. Some orchestras also use keyboard instruments, such as the piano.

A full-size Western orchestra may be called a symphony orchestra or philharmonic orchestra. It can have between seventy and more than one hundred musicians, depending on the music and the size of the room. A smaller group, called a chamber orchestra, has no more than about fifty musicians. Orchestras grew larger during the 18th and 19th centuries. The biggest ones had as many as 120 players in the works of Richard Wagner and later Gustav Mahler.

Orchestras are usually led by a conductor. The conductor uses movements of the hands and arms to guide the musicians, often holding a short wooden rod called a conductor's baton. The conductor brings the orchestra together, sets the tempo, and shapes the sound of the group. The principal first violinist, called the concertmaster, also helps lead the musicians.

Orchestras play many kinds of music, including symphonies, concertos for solo instruments, and music for operas, ballets, and some types of musical theatre. Amateur orchestras include youth orchestras made up of students and community orchestras made up of amateur musicians from a particular city or region.

The word orchestra comes from the Greek word ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of the stage in ancient Greek theatre where the Greek chorus performed.

History

In the Baroque era, orchestras had no standard size or makeup. They differed a lot from one European region to another. Some were small, with one player per part, like the orchestras Bach had in Koethen, which had up to 18 players. Others were large. Corelli's orchestra in Rome had between 35 and 80 players for everyday performances and 150 for special occasions. In the classical era, the orchestra became more standard. It had a small to medium-sized string section and a core group of woodwinds and horns. Beethoven's orchestras almost always had pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, following Haydn and Mozart. A few works, such as his Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto, and Piano Concerto No. 4, used only one flute. In several of his symphonies, Beethoven carefully expanded this timbral "palette" to create new effects. For example, a piccolo, contrabassoon, and trombones add to the triumphant finale of his Symphony No. 5. His Ninth uses chorus and vocal soloists, an early hint that symphonies might grow in sound. For several decades after his death, symphonic instrumentation mostly followed his model.

New instruments also changed the orchestra. In 1815, Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blühmel, both Silesians, invented the piston and rotary valve for brass instruments. This was the first of many changes. Others included modern keywork for the flute by Theobald Boehm and the work of Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone. These advances led Hector Berlioz to write an important book on instrumentation. It was the first clear guide to using instrument sounds as a expressive part of music. The next big change came from Richard Wagner's Bayreuth orchestra, which was founded to play for his musical dramas. His score for Das Rheingold calls for six harps. Wagner believed the conductor should play an ever bigger role, as he explained in his book On Conducting. His ideas also looked again at tempo, dynamics, bowing of string instruments, and the role of principal players. They set the style of orchestral composition and performance for the next eighty years.

At the start of the 1900s, symphony orchestras were larger, better funded, and better trained, so composers wrote bigger works. Gustav Mahler was especially creative. In his later symphonies, such as the very large Symphony No. 8, he pushed orchestral size to its limits. Recordings raised performance standards, because listeners and critics could hear small mistakes that might not be noticed in a live concert. Later, audio editing and overdubbing could fix errors in recordings. This led to a renewed focus on star conductors and a high standard of playing.

Instrumentation

A typical symphony orchestra has four groups of musical instruments: the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. Piano, accordion, and celesta may form a fifth keyboard section or play alone. The concert harp and electric and electronic instruments can also play alone. A large orchestra has almost all the standard instruments in each group. The orchestra's instruments grew over time. By the Classical period, they were mostly standard, partly because of the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven. In the 20th and 21st centuries, new music led to more flexible use of classical instruments and new electronic instruments. In the mid 20th century, some groups in Germany and the United States used only one type of instrument. They used free-reed chromatic accordions that were changed to make a full range of orchestral sounds. The names symphony orchestra and philharmonic orchestra can tell apart groups from the same place, such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. These groups usually have over eighty musicians, and sometimes over a hundred. A chamber orchestra is usually smaller, with up to fifty musicians. Concert orchestra is another name, used by groups such as the BBC Concert Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.

Other instruments are sometimes needed, including the flugelhorn and cornet. Saxophones and classical guitars appear in some works from the 19th to 21st centuries. The saxophone is a solo instrument in Maurice Ravel's version of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. It is part of the ensemble in Ravel's Boléro, Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suites 1 and 2, Vaughan Williams's Symphonies No. 6 and No. 9, and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. The euphonium appears in some late Romantic and 20th century works, such as Gustav Holst's The Planets and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben. The Wagner tuba, a changed horn, appears in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, several works by Strauss, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Béla Bartók, and Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E Major. Cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussy's La Mer, and works by Hector Berlioz. Orchestras usually hire extra musicians for these parts. Sometimes a player "doubles" on another instrument, such as a bassoon player switching to the contrabassoon. Over time, the orchestra became much more flexible. In the time of Felix Mendelssohn and Beethoven, its core was fairly standard and composers rarely changed it. In the Romantic period, composers such as Berlioz and Mahler sometimes used several harps and sound effects like the wind machine. Later, with contemporary classical music, composers could choose instruments almost freely. These included electric instruments, electronic instruments such as synthesizers, ondes martenot, trautonium, bandoneon, free bass accordion, harmonica, jews harp, mandola, and water percussion.

The orchestra can be studied in five eras: the Baroque era, the Classical era, the early and mid Romantic music era, the late Romantic era, and the Modern/Postmodern eras. Baroque orchestras, such as those of J.S. Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, were smaller. They used a basso continuo group, such as a harpsichord or pipe organ with bass instruments, to play the bassline. Classical orchestras, such as those of Mozart and Haydn and the early Beethoven, used fewer players and fairly standard instruments. Early and mid-Romantic orchestras were typical of composers such as Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann, and Brahms. Late-Romantic and early 20th-century orchestras, such as those of Wagner, Mahler, and Stravinsky, led to the common 2010-era modern orchestra. Composers such as Adams, Barber, Aaron Copland, Glass, and Penderecki have used this modern orchestra.

Organization

Orchestras have a clear order of leaders. Each instrument group has a principal who leads the group and plays its solos. The concertmaster, the principal first violin, is second in command of the whole orchestra, behind only the conductor. The concertmaster leads the tuning before concerts and helps make musical decisions. The second violins often play an accompaniment part or copy the melody of the first violins. Most modern orchestras have a conductor, but early orchestras did not. Instead, the concertmaster or a harpsichordist playing the continuo led the musicians. Some smaller orchestras, and those that play baroque and older music in a historical style, perform without conductors. Orchestras mostly play classical music or opera. They also appear in popular music, film music, television, video game music, and symphonic metal. The word "orchestra" can also describe a jazz big-band.

Musicians usually audition for orchestra jobs by playing solo pieces, a Bach movement, and difficult parts of music. The audition is often judged by a panel. Some auditions include sight reading, and some orchestras have a test week. Permanent positions are tenured. Other musicians are hired on contracts for a single concert or a season. Substitutes may be hired while a permanent member is on parental leave or disability leave.

In the past, major professional orchestras had almost only men. The first women members hired in professional orchestras were harpists. The Vienna Philharmonic did not accept women as permanent members until 1997. That was much later than similar orchestras that were ranked in the top five by Gramophone in 2008. The Berlin Philharmonic was the last major orchestra to appoint a woman to a permanent position.

In 1996, the Vienna Philharmonic's principal flute, Dieter Flury, told Westdeutscher Rundfunk that accepting women would be a gamble. In 1997, the orchestra faced protests during a US tour. The protests were led by the National Organization for Women and the International Alliance for Women in Music. Its members then agreed to admit a woman harpist. By 2013, the orchestra had six female members. Violinist Albena Danailova became one of its concertmasters in 2008. The orchestra's president, Clemens Hellsberg, said it now uses completely screened blind auditions.

A 2013 article in Mother Jones noted that women outnumber men in the New York Philharmonic's violin section. It also said that several groups, including the National Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony, are led by women violinists. However, the double bass, brass, and percussion sections of major orchestras were still mostly men. A 2014 BBC article said that blind auditions, where players perform behind a screen, have slowly changed the balance of men and women in orchestras that were once mostly male.

Amateur ensembles

There are also many amateur orchestras. School orchestras are made up of students from elementary or secondary school. They may come from a music class or program, or from the whole school. A music teacher usually leads them. Some school orchestras are string orchestras, with only students who play string instruments. Students who play woodwinds, brass and percussion are often grouped together in a concert band. University and conservatory orchestras are made up of students from a university or music school. Some are open to all students at a university, no matter what they study. Larger universities may have more than one orchestra. A conductor, who is usually a professor or teacher, leads them.

Youth orchestras are made up of teens and young adults from a whole city or region. The ages of members vary from group to group. Some youth orchestras include young people from an entire country, such as Canada's National Youth Orchestra. Community orchestras are made up of amateur players from a whole city or region, and most of their members are adults. Some are beginner groups that practice without performing for an audience. Others are intermediate groups, or advanced groups that play the same music as professional orchestras. Most community orchestra members are unpaid. However, some orchestras hire a small number of professionals to act as lead players and section leaders.

Repertoire and performances

Main article: Faking (music)

Orchestras play many kinds of music. Some play dance suites from the 1600s, divertimentos from the 1700s, film scores from the 1900s, and new works from the 2000s. Orchestras are often linked with the symphony, a long musical composition with several parts. The parts change in key and speed. Symphonies are written in a musical score, which shows every instrument's part. The conductor studies the score, decides how the music should sound, and leads the group. Each musician plays from a page with only their own notes. A few symphonies include singers, such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Orchestras also play overtures. An overture was first the instrumental start of an opera. Later, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn used the word for pieces that stand alone. This led to the symphonic poem, which was created by Franz Liszt. In a concerto, the orchestra supports a soloist, and it sometimes plays its own tunes. Orchestras also play in operas, ballets, and some choir works.

Orchestras have performed in many places, from the homes of wealthy families and churches to public concert halls. In the 1900s and 2000s, governments became important supporters of orchestras. New technologies have helped orchestras earn money. These include sound recording, radio broadcasting, television broadcasting, and streaming. Some musicians practise faking, which means playing parts of music without reading every note. An article in The Strad says that even top orchestras sometimes do this with certain passages. Today, some smaller groups play older music in styles based on old books about playing. Examples include the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the London Classical Players led by Sir Roger Norrington, and the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood.

In the United States, some orchestras had money problems. The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Louisville Orchestra went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra stopped operating after it went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and Esa-Pekka Salonen said that new music could help orchestras grow again. The critic Greg Sandow has written about how orchestras might change. Some composers, like John Adams in his opera Nixon in China, still write for large orchestras. Philip Glass has also written works such as the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra and the Violin Concerto No. 2. Orchestras with fewer players often reduce the number of players in the string section.

Role of conductor

Main article: Conducting

Main article: Conductorless orchestra

Conducting is the art of leading a musical performance, such as an orchestra or choral concert. A conductor sets the tempo, makes sure each musician starts at the right time, and shapes how the music is phrased. Conductors often use hand movements, sometimes with a baton. During rehearsals, they give more detailed directions. They stand on a raised platform called a podium and read the full score, which shows the musical notation for all the instruments and voices. Conductors also pick the pieces to perform, study the scores, plan concerts, and hold auditions. Orchestras, choirs, concert bands and big bands are usually led by conductors.

Some orchestras have had no conductor. In the Baroque music era, the group was often led by the concertmaster, the first violinist, or by a keyboard player such as a harpsichordist. Some groups still use this older approach. In 1922, the Persimfans orchestra was formed in the Soviet Union without a conductor. Instead, it was led by a committee. It lasted ten years before Stalin's government stopped paying for it.