The orchestra and its instruments

The Orchestra, a great instrument, composed, as we have seen, of so many different instruments, voices, and human personalities, awaits the Conductor before it becomes of value.

He enters, takes his stand before his men, raises his tiny white bâton, and the large body is vitalized into sound. All these many vibrations and voices reach our ears; and we, following the unfolding patterns and musical phrases, put them all together in the shape and form that the composer heard in his dreams, reduced to writing and made permanent for posterity.

It is the Conductor’s work to make this musical pattern clear to us and to realize the composer’s intentions. If the Conductor did not understand the composition as preserved in the printed score, we could not put together all these musical fragments. It would be nothing but a broken-up jig-saw puzzle!

A Conductor has to know the score.

To read a score requires a very high order of musical intelligence. Some of us have never thought to ask what the big book looks like that lies on the Conductor’s desk. Facing page 276 is a page from the Conductor’s score of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It is the opening of the second movement, Andante con moto.

We know that the Soprano sings, or plays, in the Treble Clef, the Bass in the Bass Clef, and the Altos in the Alto Clef. Those who play the piano have learned to play in the Soprano and the Bass Clefs simultaneously; for the right hand plays the one, and the left hand the other. A violinist only knows the Soprano Clef; those who play the viola, play in the Alto, or Soprano Clef; and those who play the violoncello, play in the Bass, Tenor and Soprano Clefs, for they have to play in them all from time to time. The Conductor has to read all the parts of the Orchestra at once,—and in all the Clefs. Let us look at our illustration. The flutes on the top line and the oboes next play in the Soprano Clef; the clarinets play in the Soprano Clef but in a different key (B); then the bassoons play in the Bass Clef; then the horns in C (still another key); then the trombones in C; then the tympani, or kettledrums, in C and G; then come the strings: the violins and second violins playing in the Soprano Clef; the viola in the Alto, or Tenor Clef; the violoncellos in the Bass Clef; and the double-basses in the Bass Clef. Notice that a long line divides the bars, a line drawn, or scored,[87] through all the staves from top to bottom.

In our example we have twenty-two bars of continuous music. The viola[88] and violoncello begin the melody, with the double-bass playing pizzicato at first and taking up the bow in the ninth bar. All the other instruments are silent, as the rests show, until the violas and violoncello have finished their gentle, sweet melody, when the bassoons and violins add a finish to it. Then the cool woodwind plays a lovely little part, and the warm violins come in as the liquid flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons finish their phrase; and then the woodwind and strings play together, the horns, trumpets, and drums keeping silent; and—we cannot see what comes now, for we are at the end of this page. This one page gives an idea of what the Conductor has to do. He has to bring out the melody, get the right accents, give the right shading (the pianos and fortes), and make the right crescendos and diminuendos, besides adding a poetic conception, so as to render the melodies flowing and graceful and to bring out the composer’s inner meaning.

What a quick and trained eye a Conductor must have to read the score, both perpendicularly and horizontally at the same time!

Of course, an acute ear must be another of his gifts; and his natural ear is trained and rendered more acute by experience.

An innate sense of rhythm must belong to a Conductor. He must have also an appreciation of melody and an intuition that divines the subtle melodies, melodic phrases, and beautiful harmonies that lie hidden in the score. He must also have some of the qualities of a painter to bring out light and shade and varieties of color—glowing hues and delicate tints—from the instruments that are ranged before him ready to obey his magic wand.

The Conductor must also have a literary and a poetic sense to understand the romantic and historical subjects, which composers so often select as themes; and he must have imagination to visualize a picture in his own mind before he can make his own Orchestra and his audience follow the music, or the phrases, that go to make up that picture, or that musical impression of a picture.

In a certain sense, the Conductor leads his audience, though most of us are unconscious of his power in this particular. We, to a certain degree, see the musical picture that the Conductor sees; for we have only the threads he gives us—the scarlet and blue and green and purple and lilac and golden threads with which we may weave as we listen the beautiful musical tapestry, the cartoons for which may be said to lie in the pages of the score.

Though it is often said that the “virtuoso-conductor” was practically unknown until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, that statement is far from correct. If you will read again the description of Lully’s Orchestra (pages 162-172) you will see that he has a splendidly trained body of highly artistic performers. Lully’s methods of polishing his material were not unlike those in use to-day. Corelli, too, must have polished his Orchestra highly; for his violinists all played as one man (see page 180).

It is a great mistake to condemn performances of the past and to think that because tastes differed from ours that Orchestras were primitive. There was nothing primitive in the cultured days of the Renaissance, nor in those of Louis XIV.

We may be very sure that the lutes and viols, with their complicated strings and intricate system of tuning, required virtuosi to play them artistically and romantically to suit the culture of the age; and that the Conductors had something more to do than beat time, even if they sat at the gravicembalo, or harpsichord.

Moreover, the audiences of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries were highly cultured men and women. There were also many brilliant amateur musicians. Perhaps, on the whole, amateurs reached as high a degree of excellence as they do to-day.

Lully was undoubtedly a very great Conductor; and there does not seem to have been any one after him who stood for such perfect performances as his until Wagner pointed out the path for Conductors to follow.

Wagner’s criticisms in his Art of Conducting show that the Orchestras of Europe—even the famous ones—gave interpretations of the Classic composer that we, Americans, would not tolerate; for it is no exaggeration to say that the Orchestras of our country have for many years been the most brilliant, the most finished, and the most poetic in the world. This condition we owe to the guiding minds and high artistic aims of the versatile and intellectual Conductors who have developed our Symphony Orchestras, and to the fact that no national prejudice prevents them from taking the best players from any country; the woodwind from France and Belgium; the strings from Austria; the brass from Germany; together with an ever-increasing number of young Americans who show adaptability in all the orchestral groups.