The constitution of the orchestra in the early part of the eighteenth century, then, had reached the basis on which it now rests, except for the fact that the harpsichord was still used. There was, however, a complete and well-organized body of strings, similar to that which we have to-day. The violoncello alone had not attained its true position. It was not always included, and generally when it was, it played in unison with the double-basses. To the body of strings were added such wind-instruments as the composer desired—two oboes, two bassoons, and two horns being, perhaps, the most familiar assortment. Two trumpets and a pair of kettle-drums were introduced when brilliant militant passages were to be written. Trombones were not heard in symphonic compositions, and the harp seemed to have fallen into oblivion. The clarinet had not yet entered the orchestra. Flutes were used often. The systematic use of wood-wind instruments in pairs was just beginning. The delay in this vital matter was due to the hold which the polyphonic style of composition still had. It was only when the musical world gave up writing fugues and canons and turned its attention to the harmonic style, in which a song-like melody is supported by an accompaniment built on chords, that the value of the wind choir in the formation of these chords was appreciated. That fact once known, composers speedily established the balance of power between wind and strings, and arranged a suitable list of wind-instruments.

The orchestral symphony came into existence about the middle of the eighteenth century, and with its advent we find the orchestra of Bach and Handel slightly modified and differently employed. Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is credited with being the father of the symphony, and he established the real basis of the modern orchestra. Yet something was due to the labors of two or three other men. Of these, I have already mentioned one of the most important, Johann Karl Stamitz, a Bohemian, who in 1745 became leading violin and director of the orchestra of the Elector of Mannheim. He spared no efforts to teach his strings to play with precision and refinement, to phrase beautifully, and to make all the shades of piano and forte. His orchestra became the best in Europe, and his methods survived him. Mozart heard at Mannheim for the first time in his life artistic orchestral performance, and he was deeply influenced by it.

Another, who has been mentioned and who exercised much influence on the orchestra through his study of its capacities, was François Joseph Gossec (1733-1829). He was a student of the orchestra in early life, and his first symphony was performed five years before Haydn’s. How much insight into orchestral effect Gossec possessed may be judged from the fact that in his “Messe des Morts” (1760) he wrote the “Tuba Mirum” for two groups of instruments, one of wind-instruments concealed outside the church, and the other of strings inside, the latter accompanying the former with a tremolo in the high register.

Haydn’s first symphony was written in 1759 for first and second violins, violas, basses, two oboes and two horns. His last symphony was composed in 1795, and by that time he had at his command the whole symphonic orchestra as it stood when Beethoven took up the work of orchestral development. Between the dates of Haydn’s first and last symphony, Mozart had lived the whole of his wonderful life, and Haydn, who at first had been his master, had in the end become his pupil.

It was from Mozart that Haydn learned the use of the clarinet, and we find it employed in his last symphonies. The clarinet proper, which was the successor of the schalmei or shawm, is said to have been invented by Johann Denner, of Nuremberg, in 1690. The claim is doubtful, yet the modern instrument probably originated about that time. Many improvements have been made in it, the most notable being the application to it by Klosé, in 1843, of the Boehm system of fingering.

Haydn’s familiar symphony in D, written in London in 1795, is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, kettle-drums, violins, violas, ’cellos, and bassos. It is a fact that Haydn first employed 2 clarinets and a bassoon as the wood-wind choir in his first mass, written in 1751 or 1752, but it was Mozart who revealed the real capacity of the clarinet and established its position in the orchestra. Haydn, however, must be credited with immense advances in the development of the orchestra, because in developing the symphonic form, he was constantly experimenting and discovering the values of the various instruments and their relations to one another. Some of the symphonies composed after he had been a symphonic writer for years, show great reticence in their scoring. For example, the symphony known as the “Queen of France,” written for Paris in 1786, is scored for 2 horns, 2 oboes, 1 flute, 2 bassoons, and string quartet. The introduction to the “Creation,” one of the master’s latest works, is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, a contra-bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tympani, and the usual strings. But when he was writing this oratorio Haydn needed a large orchestra for his newly invented effects of instrumental description. In the “Creation” and “The Seasons” he made the orchestra paint chaos, winter storms, and spring peace. He naturally sought for more instrumental voices, and employed the complete orchestra of his time.

Much of Haydn’s success in developing the orchestra and the art of writing for it was due to his long occupancy of the post of director of music under Prince Esterhazy. Haydn was appointed to this post at Eisenstadt in 1761, and retained it till 1790. He had at his disposal a small company of singers, capable of performing opera or oratorio, and a small orchestra. In 1766 this orchestra numbered 17 instruments: 6 violins and violas, 1 violoncello, 1 double-bass, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, and 4 horns. It was subsequently enlarged to 22 and 24, including trumpets and kettle-drums when needed. From 1776 to 1778 there were also clarinets. That this arrangement did not prevail all over Europe even at that time is shown by the distribution of instruments and seating-plan of the orchestra at Dresden under Hasse, near the close of the last century. This plan is reproduced from Jahn’s “Life of Mozart.”

The preponderance of bassoons in the Dresden orchestra was due to the fact that it was an opera orchestra, and in it Handelian ideas still prevailed. Haydn, meanwhile, was proceeding along the true symphonic path, and an orchestra of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, tympani, and strings fairly represents the result of his contributions to its development up to the time when Mozart took up the work. It should be added that even Haydn was not sufficiently trustful of his instrumental army to leave it without the weak support of the harpsichord, and he frequently sat at this instrument during the performance of his symphonies and played with the orchestra, with extremely bad effect.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) applied his amazing genius to the development of the orchestra, as well as to all other departments of musical art. His work was rather that of exploring the capacities of the instruments in use than adding new ones to the extant list. That was in keeping with Mozart’s entire career. He was not a reformer; he took what he found and put genuine life into it. He found clarinets, for example, and he illustrated, to the conviction of all subsequent composers, their true place in the orchestra.

Indeed, he made a complete revelation of the powers of wind-instrument choirs in his suites and divertimenti for them, so that Haydn once complained to Kalkenbrenner: “I have only learnt the proper use of wind-instruments in my old age, and now I must pass away without turning my knowledge to account.” Mozart’s three greatest symphonies are those composed in the summer of 1788, the E flat major, G minor, and C (“Jupiter”). The E flat is scored for 1 flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, tympani, and strings. The G minor is written for 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings, but owing to Mozart’s insight into the effect of combinations, this small orchestra sounds marvellously full and noble. Clarinets were afterward added. The “Jupiter” symphony is scored for 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, tympani, and strings.

It will be seen from this that although Mozart established the place of the clarinet, he did not invariably make use of it, while even up to the date of these last symphonies, the trombone had not assumed a position in the symphonic orchestra. Mozart was always moderate in his use of this instrument. In his “Don Giovanni” he reserves his trombones to accompany the ghost of the Commendatore. In “Die Zauberflöte” they are used more freely, as, indeed, they always were in religious or masonic music. In “Die Zauberflöte” Mozart also used basset-horns, the tenor of the clarinet, now obsolete. In fact, at all times in the early and classical periods, a larger array of instruments was called into service in the operatic than in the symphonic orchestra. It is only since the romantic composers began to paint in gorgeous tone-coloring, rather than work out intellectual plans of thematic development, that the symphonic band has equalled the operatic in the variety of its component elements.

The development of the orchestra in the hands of the greatest of all symphonic composers, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), was of immense importance. Beethoven did not add greatly to the array of instruments, but he demonstrated the true relationships of the various bodies, and he enlarged them and their scope according to his desire for greater utterance. In the First Symphony, C major (1800), and the Second, D major (1803), he employs the same orchestra: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, tympani, first and second violins, violas, and basses. It is worthy of note that the ’cello is not specified. In the Third Symphony, “Eroica,” E flat major (1805), he used the same orchestra, except that he added a third horn part and wrote “violoncello e basso.”

It is believed that three horns were employed in the symphonic orchestra for the first time in this work. Mozart used four in “Idomeneo” (1781). The Fourth Symphony, B flat (1807), is a smaller work, and its orchestra is the same as that of the First and Second, except that only one flute is required and the ’cello is named. The great Fifth Symphony, C minor (1808), is scored for 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contra-bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, drums, and strings. Sir George Grove notes that “the piccolo, trombones, and contra-fagotto are employed in the finale only, and make their appearance here for the first time in the symphonies. The contra-fagotto was first known to Beethoven in his youth at Bonn, where the Elector’s orchestra contained one. He has employed it also in ‘Fidelio,’ in the Ninth Symphony, and elsewhere.”

The Sixth Symphony, known as the “Pastoral” (1808), is scored for 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, drums, and strings. The piccolo and trombones were used for special descriptive effects in this work, and when he came to write the great Seventh Symphony (1813), Beethoven employed the same array of instruments as he had in his First and Second symphonies. The same orchestra sufficed for the Eighth Symphony (1814), but the Titanic Ninth (1824) demanded a larger instrumental body. The score calls for 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 1 contra-bassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tympani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, and strings. Four horns are here used for the first time in the symphonic orchestra, and their introduction completed the development of the classical body of instruments.

When the romantic writers began to advance along the path opened by Beethoven and to seek for broader and more influential emotional expression, they introduced one or two more instruments for special effects. The English horn was known to Bach in its primitive form of oboe da caccia. It was used by Gluck in his “Orfeo” and “Telemacho,” but, as Berlioz notes, without apparent appreciation of its tone-quality. In its modern form it was introduced into the orchestra by Rossini in “William Tell” (1829), and Meyerbeer in “Robert le Diable” (1831). Modern symphonic writers use it freely. Its employment in their music is probably due to the demonstration of its utility by the eminent French composer, Hector Berlioz (1803-69), who had a truly wonderful insight into the powers of all orchestral instruments, and who laid down the principles of the post-Beethovenian style of orchestral writing. We find Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and other immediate followers of Beethoven using precisely the same orchestra, sometimes with two horns and sometimes with four, and seldom without trombones, throughout an entire work. Berlioz, however, began at once to give variety to the instrumental body. For instance, so small a work as his arrangement for orchestra of Weber’s “Invitation à la Valse” is scored for 1 piccolo, 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 1 cornet, 1 trumpet, 3 trombones, 2 harps, tympani, and strings. The harp, as we have noted, had been used in the opera, but Berlioz was the first to explore its possibilities. Many of Berlioz’s other advances in the use of orchestral instruments were owing to the introduction, in 1832, of the system of boring and keying wind-instruments invented by Theobald Boehm. This system vastly increased the agility of these instruments and improved their intonation.

Naturally, some of Berlioz’s ideas were borrowed from the operatic composers, who frequently employed unusual combinations for dramatic effects. In the “Quorum hodie” of his “Requiem,” for instance, Berlioz calls for 3 flutes, 8 tenor trombones, and strings to accompany a chorus. The “Dies Iræ” of the same mass calls for 4 small brass bands to be placed at the corners of the main instrumental body, and for 14 kettle-drums tuned to different notes. But at present we are more concerned with the direct development of the orchestra than with special combinations. The bass clarinet was seldom used till Adolph Sax, the famous instrument-maker, perfected its construction. Meyerbeer, who was a great friend of Sax, introduced the instrument in his opera scores. He gives to it a fine declamatory passage in “Les Huguenots” (Act V.), and gives it a melodic part in the coronation march in “Le Prophète.” It was Wagner, however, who fully illustrated the capacity of this noble instrument, and by his employment of it, both as a solo singer and a fundamental bass of the wood-wind, led contemporaneous symphonic writers to employ it freely.

The brass choir has been enlarged since Beethoven’s day by the addition of the bass tuba, an instrument which came into use only after Sax had perfected its mechanism. Before that the ophicleide, a bass instrument of the keyed bugle family, was occasionally employed. Mendelssohn calls for it in the score of his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Berlioz has four in the score of his “Requiem.” These parts are now played on tubas. Additional trumpets are often used to strengthen the brass, and Wagner even caused tenor tubas to be made to give certain tone-tints, together with sonority, to the funeral march of “Götterdämmerung.” All kinds of instruments of percussion are introduced when their peculiarities are desired, and, as already said, bells, gongs, triangles, and even the vulgar xylophone, find something to do in the modern orchestra.

In the first opera, Peri’s “Eurydice,” as we have seen, the orchestra consisted of a harpsichord, a large guitar, a viol, a large lute, and three flutes. Two centuries and a half later, in 1850, the overture to Wagner’s “Lohengrin” called for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 bass tuba, kettle-drums, cymbals, and strings. In the third act of “Die Walküre” the same composer calls for 2 piccolos, 2 flutes, 3 oboes, 1 English horn, 3 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 8 horns, 4 trumpets, 1 bass trumpet, 4 trombones, 1 contra-bass tuba, 4 kettle-drums, cymbals and bass drum, harp and strings. How this enormous growth has been accomplished the author has endeavored to outline. The reader will perceive, however, that the fundamental arrangement of the orchestra, as left to us by Haydn and Mozart, has not been altered, but simply extended. As I have already noted, the aims of the romantic composers in the direction of tone-coloring have led to this extension. Yet by means of modern methods of instrumentation, glowing results can be obtained from the symphonic orchestra employed by Beethoven. An excellent instance of this is the “Symphonic Pathétique” of Tschaikowsky, which adds only the bass tuba to Beethoven’s orchestra. Gounod, in his “Redemption,” a richly orchestrated work, employs 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tympani, bass drum and cymbals, strings and organ in one of the most effective passages. On the other hand, Jean Louis Nicode, in the “Phosphorescent Lights” movement of his symphonic ode “The Sea”—a movement of purely descriptive and imitative music—calls for a concealed brass band consisting of 3 trumpets, 7 trombones, and a bass tuba, together with 1 piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 tenor tubas, 1 bass tuba, 2 pairs of kettle-drums, 1 pair of cymbals, 1 triangle, 1 bass drum, 1 gong, 1 set of bells, 2 harps, and the usual strings.

The proportion of power and the balance of tone in the orchestra are preserved by having more stringed than wind instruments. It requires many violins and basses to balance the wood and brass in a forte passage, and, furthermore, the strings themselves lack solidity if there are only a few. As an example of a well-balanced orchestra, we may take the Boston Symphony, which is organized as follows: 16 first violins, 14 second, 10 violas, 10 violoncellos, 8 double-basses, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 trumpets, 4 horns, 3 trombones, 2 tenor tubas, 2 bass tubas, 1 contra-bass tuba, 2 pairs of tympani, 1 bass-drum, 1 pair of cymbals, 1 harp. The additional wind-instruments are, of course, used only in compositions which call for them. An excellent example of a great festival orchestra was that conducted by Theodore Thomas at the New York Music Festival of 1882. It consisted of 50 first violins, 50 second violins, 36 violas, 36 violoncellos, 40 double-basses, 6 harps, 6 flutes, 2 piccolos, 7 oboes, 2 English horns, 6 clarinets, 2 bass clarinets, 6 bassoons, 2 contra-bassoons, 9 horns, 2 Sax horns, 11 cornets, 3 trumpets, 1 bass trumpet, 9 trombones, 3 tubas, 4 pairs of kettle-drums, 2 bass drums, 2 pairs of cymbals, 3 small drums, and 2 triangles.