Orchestral Shrinkage

[Magpie]

= When an orchestral score is condenced down to it's bare essence of individual lines minus unison and octave doublings ...........


I have always been under the assumption that an orchestral score is an orchestration of the four lines SATB , but after casually browsing through
some scores and shrinking them down in my head I am a little confused
because I am finding instances where there appears to be more happening
than SATB :confused:

Can someone please explain a little theory of what is going on in a score
when there is more than SATB ?

[falcon1]

= When an orchestral score is condenced down to it's bare essence of individual lines minus unison and octave doublings ...........


I have always been under the assumption that an orchestral score is an orchestration of the four lines SATB , but after casually browsing through
some scores and shrinking them down in my head I am a little confused
because I am finding instances where there appears to be more happening
than SATB :confused:

Can someone please explain a little theory of what is going on in a score
when there is more than SATB ?
It can be two to over eight lines going on at a time...

Also sometimes composers do some minor variations on the doubling line so it doesn't always just be a copy/paste line :)

Btw. Could you post an example of the page your are wondering about?

[concerto]

I think what you are discovering is how surprisingly complex orchestral textures can be, especially when compared to keyboard writing. I would suggest to you, besides cracking open some orchestration texts, to actually do some reductions of a few bars of orchestral passages on paper so you can see how the music is put together. The other thing you might try is to get a hold of some piano pieces that were later orchestrated and compare the two scores. It's very instructive to see how orchestral textures are usually not simple expansions of piano parts, there are a lot of expansions in texture that are often made. The pieces that come to mind of course are those by Ravel, ie, "Pictures at an Exhibition," "Mother Goose," "Barque on the Ocean," "La Valse, Valse Nobles & Sentimental, (pardon my French) a couple of others that Ravel orchestrated that I cannot remember right now.
I guess the take home message is that orchestral thinking is not usually a simple expansion of keyboard texture.

[belkina]

You might want to look at:

http://www.musique.umontreal.ca/personnel/Belkin/bk.o/index.html

Good luck,

Alan


= When an orchestral score is condenced down to it's bare essence of individual lines minus unison and octave doublings ...........


I have always been under the assumption that an orchestral score is an orchestration of the four lines SATB , but after casually browsing through
some scores and shrinking them down in my head I am a little confused
because I am finding instances where there appears to be more happening
than SATB :confused:

Can someone please explain a little theory of what is going on in a score
when there is more than SATB ?

[Jonny Lost]

Magpie,


Good observation. What these other fellows suggest is a pretty good explination. Or, the composer, like me, could be trying to give as many individual parts as possible. This can create some very interesting and complex music!

Jonny

[Magpie]

Thank you all for your replys and an extra big thank you to Belkina
for writing the books he gave the link to and making them available
for free , it is greatly appreciated and I will be reading them from virtual
cover to virtual cover :)

Falcon1 when I have a little time I will browse through some scores and
try and find some good examples to post referances to ;)


I am reasonably well grounded in harmony theory and practice , melody
writing and the rules of correct part writing etc , mostly self taught from
books by Piston , Shoenberg , and Prout, but also took a bunch of evening
classes to round things off and give some structure to my musical education .

The thing is that everything I have learned so far has focused around four
part writing and I have not encounterd anything that deals with the theory
and rules of writing more voices and I am thinking that adding more voices
will result in the rules and laws I have already learned ( yes I know they
can be broken when you know how ) either made very hard to implement
or been throwen out the window altogether .

The questions that come to mind are .......

If the piece was say for example eight part writing , could the extra four
voices be thought of as secondry soprano secondry alto secondry tenor
and secondry bass .

How do the voices now move without obstructing or crossing each other
in contrary motion, as the available staff space for each voice would now
be reduced by 50% not to mention the difficulty of avoiding parallel 5th's
and octaves .

And what about harmony .......

Eight parts will result in eight notes stacked vertically at any given point
(excluding rests ) thus it is quite possible that the entire eight notes of
the scale are sounding simultainously or even that the only thing that is
happening harmonically is that this eight note chord is doing nothing but
taking on differant inversions from beat to beat from bar to bar .

[Skysaw]

Many ways to answer that last question, and it all depends on what style you're writing.

When following traditional voice leading, you're going to have a lot of trouble trying to keep everything in place once you go over four voices. But that's not how it's really done. If this is the sort of harmony you want to write, it's traditionally approached with doublings (at unison and at the octave). In filling out multiple octave doublings, it's ok to have voices cross each other... octave doubling of tenor above original alto, for example. It's generally best not to have any bass part go higher than any other voices, though. The bass is usually only doubled at the octave downward for this reason. -- All of this is really still four-part writing. It's just filled out four-part writing.

To have more parts, you are either breaking more voice-leading rules, or you're inserting more rests for individual parts. Nothing wrong with either of those solutions either.

[Styxx]

I fired the whole bass section once, does that count? :D

[Daag Nabbott]

Many ways to answer that last question, and it all depends on what style you're writing. <edit>...-- All of this is really still four-part writing. It's just filled out four-part writing.

To have more parts, you are either breaking more voice-leading rules, or you're inserting more rests for individual parts. Nothing wrong with either of those solutions either.

Eloquently stated Sky! Couldn't have done it better, myself.
And if it helps, it might help an arranger to visualize those octave doublings (and unision doublings) as simply one voice, not two. It's a single voice with a special texture...a different instrument in and of itself, as it were.

[Daag Nabbott]

I fired the whole bass section once, does that count? :D

NEVER fire the bass...fire the drummer! :D

[Styxx]

NEVER fire the bass...fire the drummer! :D
I am the drummer.:D

[concerto]

Magpie,

Maybe you'd like to jump in on this thread over here:
http://www.composeforums.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=320&