Grand Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modern

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Frontispiece of the 1855 edition

Grand Traité d'Instrumentation et d'Orchestration modern ( French for large treatise on modern instrumentation and orchestration ) is a treatise by the French composer Hector Berlioz (1803–1869). This instrumentation theory first appeared in 1844 by Henry Lemoine . At the suggestion of Alexander von Humboldt , whom Berlioz had met in Paris in December 1842, the author dedicated his work to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. It experienced an immediate success and was in Italian (translated by Alberto Mazzucato ), English during the author's lifetime, Spanish and German (in two different versions,translatedby Schlesinger in Berlin , translated by Johann Christoph Grünbaum , and Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig ). In 1855 a second edition was published, which was expanded to include information on orchestral conducting . In the German-speaking world, the work is known in the arrangement of Richard Strauss , who published a version in 1905 under the title Instrumentationlehre . Hector Berlioz himself considered the treatise to be so important that he named it Opus 10 in his catalog raisonné published in 1852. The book contains numerous examples of classical scores , with works by Mozart ( Don Giovanni , Die Zauberflöte , Ave verum ), Beethoven ( 5th piano concerto and symphonies No. 3–9), Gluck ( Iphigénie en Tauride , Orfeo ed Euridice ), Weber ( Der Freischütz , Oberon ), Spontini ( La vestale ) , Méhul , Rossini ( Wilhelm Tell ), Meyerbeer ( The Huguenots , Robert the Devil ), Halévy ( La Juive ), Wagner and Berlioz himself: Benvenuto Cellini , La damnation de Faust , Les Troyens , L'enfance du Christ , Harold en Italie , Lélio ou Le retour à la vie , Symphonie fantastique , Te Deum , Requiem .

construction

The second, expanded edition from 1855 contains, after an introduction, 67 chapters arranged by instrument group:

introduction

1. Instrument families

Strings

2nd violin
3rd viola
4th viola d'amore
5th violoncello
6th double bass

Plucked instruments

7. Harp
8. Guitar
9. Mandolin

Keyboard instrument

10. Piano

Wind players

11. Transposing and non-transposing instruments

Reed instruments

12. Oboe
13. English horn
14. Bassoon
15. Tenor bassoon
16. Contrabassoon
17. Clarinets
18. Alto clarinet
19. Bass clarinet
20. Basset horn
21. Perfecting the clarinets

Woodwinds without reeds

22. Flute
23. Piccolo flute

Wind instrument with keys

24. Organ

Brass

25th horn
26th horn with three valves
27th trumpet
28th cornet
29th trombone
30th alto trombone
31st flugelhorn
32. chromatic flugelhorn
33. flugelhorn with valves
34. bass ophicleide
35. alto ophicleide
36. double bass ophicleide
37. Bombardon
38.Bass tuba

Woodwind with mouthpiece

39. Serpent
40. Bass Serpent ( basson russe )

Voices

41. soprano , alto , tenor , bass

Drums

42. Instruments with fixed and non-fixed pitch
43. Timpani
44. Bells
45. Jeu de timbre
46. Glockenspiel
47. Glass harmonica
48. Crotales
49. Bass drum
50. Cymbal
51. Tamtam
52. Frame drum
53. Tambourine
54. Snare drum
55. Triangle
56. Schellenbaum

New instruments

57. Introduction
58. Saxophone
59. Saxhorn
60. Sax tromba
61. Sax tuba
62. Concertina
63. Melodium organ
64. Liszt organ
65. Octobass

66th orchestra

67. The conductor: theory of his art

meaning

The plant treats range and timbre of the current in the middle of the 19th century orchestra - instruments . The author writes at the end of Chapter 56:

“Our work aims only to convey acquaintance with the instruments used in today's music and to indicate the laws according to which they are to be harmoniously united or used for effective contrasts, taking into account the expressiveness and the peculiar character of each of them. "

That he did not consider the discovery of such laws to be an easy thing can be seen from the final sentence of the introduction:

"It takes a lot of time to find the oceans of music, but much more to learn to navigate."

- Hector Berlioz

In the first chapter of his Grand Traité, Berlioz draws the line between the learnable and the unlearnable and accordingly treats the instrumentation theory as a traditional, experience-conveying craft theory, while he regards the actual art of instrumentation as belonging to the creative inspiration ; for him this art is a compositional process. The mastery of the instrumentation technique is tied to two prerequisites: on the one hand to the ability of an inner sound imagination (sound fantasy), which with creative artists goes their own and new ways; on the other hand, the exact knowledge of the instruments and their tonal possibilities in solo and combined interplay.

The composers who have dealt with Berlioz's theory of instrumentation include R. Strauss in particular Rimski-Korsakow and the other representatives of the Group of Five , Widor , Gevaert , Paul Dukas , Leoš Janáček , Edvard Grieg , Frederick Delius , Georges Bizet and Gustav Mahler , who recorded the stereophony in Berlioz 'orchestral works in the final movement of his 2nd symphony .

Camille Saint-Saëns comments on the work as follows:

“This Traité d'Instrumentation is a highly paradoxical work. It begins with a foreword of several lines unrelated to the topic, in which the author makes a front against musicians who abuse modulations and whose predilection for dissonance corresponds to the taste that certain animals have of salty plants and thorny bushes. Then he turns to the orchestral instruments and mixes strange assertions with the most genuine truths and valuable advice. [...]
In his treatise, as in his instrumentation, Berlioz is simply fabulous with all the oddities. My generation owes its training to him, and, as I dare to say, a good one. Berlioz possessed the inestimable gift of igniting the imagination and awakening a love of the art in which he was teaching. [...] These seemingly superfluous music samples made one dream, they opened the door to a new world, to a wide one and a fascinating look into the future, on the promised land. "

- Camille Saint-Saëns

expenditure

  • Hector Berlioz: Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modern . Ed .: Peter Bloom. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2003. ISBN 978-3-761-81586-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ with references to new instruments by Adolphe Sax
  2. ^ Grand traité d'instrumentation. New Edition of the Complete Works, Vol. 24. S. XLI.
  3. ^ Walter Gieseler :  Instrumentation. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, subject part, volume 4 (Hanau - Carthusians). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1996, ISBN 3-7618-1105-5  ( online edition , subscription required for full access) (p. 923)
  4. ^ Grand traité d'instrumentation. New Edition of the Complete Works, Vol. 24. S. LVI.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Berlioz - Traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration  - Sources and full texts (French)