# Composing for orchestra



## anahit (Dec 10, 2018)

i am interested to know how great composers (mostly late romantic, impressionistic and beyond) composed music for orchestra. is there any good book out there, except reading numerous biographies? how they started to compose, if they used piano reduction first, speed of composing etc etc.
i am mostly interested in strauss, tchaikovsky, ravel, debussy, stravinsky, mahler, berg, messiaen... even varese, bartok, respighi...

post whatever you know!

i know it might be a difficult question, but i try!  :angel:


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

A few of the great Romantic composers wrote books on their theories of orchestration, including Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov. Both are tangential to the composers you've listed, but undeniably great orchestrators nonetheless. Remember that Ravel, Debussy, and especially Stravinsky learned much from Rimsky-Korsakov. May be a place to start. Hope that helps.


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## anahit (Dec 10, 2018)

thank you very much, flamencosketches, 
...but no, i don't mean to start subject on the orchestration nor questioning "how to orchestrate", but how they composed their own pieces for orchestra.

i know that debussy used to write a "particello-like" music (in 4-6 staves) than he orchestrated.
...now about debussy, i would like to know how quick he orchestrated, what approach he had etc., some more deep personal path of doing his own orchestration. perhaps both biographic and scientific/artistic.

so if you know for some sources of info (usually books), i would be more than happy to hear more about it.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

The concept of scoring is often intertwined with composing, one feeding off the other. Mastery of the idiomatic traits of instruments and their combinations will inform a good composers choices at the actual composing stage. So for example he/she may imagine string arpeggios in multiple stops with a particular sort of bowing that accompanies a brass forte. Knowledge of what is possible in string technique will then influence the writing in order to make it practical and still effective. 

Good sense in terms of spacing will also affect the decisions made for the notes and their acoustic position within the whole. Doubling and combinatory techniques (that is within each section and in turn between sections) based on acoustic principles and a long history of musical and performance success also influence compositional choices. Some composers may well imagine a particular timbre or timbral combination before composing and then proceed with their writing in order to maximise the expressive capabilities of the instrument(s) involved. Again, the practicality and the know-how informs the writing.

As you've pointed out, some composers may work with a short score first (this can be as many staves as they like), but even then, they will already have formed some idea of what will be playing what because the sound is utterly linked to the expression and the practicality.
This is a big topic and many more exceptions and deviations will exist - it is as much science as it is art - but I hope I've given you a little insight into the process.


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## anahit (Dec 10, 2018)

dear mikeh375, thank you for that. 

for myself, i am not interested "to learn" how to compose nor orchestrate. 
i am very interested to know what they did: i guess, the most of the masters i mentioned above knew what stroke can be used on the string instruments, yet all of them had different approach. this "how" is more above the surface of spacing, bowing etc, but more everything else around.
maybe i am not so clear, sorry for that.

now i read about strauss. he could compose directly in the full score from piano. no sketches were needed. amazing. some pieces were composed in 2-3 months. wow....


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Strauss' way of composing is quite normal actually Anahit - I do it too. That again is because he heard combinations in his minds ear and wrote for them (exploited them) accordingly, he was of course an exceptional orchestrator, one of the greatest. I don't quite follow what you wish to know, so I'll just say that the composing and the scoring are often one and the same thing, the notes are influenced by the timbre and medium and vice versa.
btw, don't believe all the hype about no sketches...some are needed.


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## anahit (Dec 10, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> Strauss' way of composing is quite normal actually Anahit - I do it too.


do you compose by hand on large sheets? if yes, do you play it "somehow" on piano to get a good timing and hear harmonic progressions? how about presto tempo and form - pages must pass quickly, no? do you use combined staves (such as a2, a3, a4) or each instrument separately in your scoring? i would love to know more!!

my considerations would be:
- time to compose a piece (some known examples, particularly extremes  )
- using reduced prior orchestrating (who did it, how much details etc)
- revisions (i know mahler did it often, i would like to see versions for comparison...)

i am particularly interested now in ravel's daphnis&chloe and wozzeck. any info available (on the topics above)?
thank you.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Mahler, for instance, did his composing -- ie. how the music itself went -- in short score, which he annotated in places with notes about instrumentation. Then when he wrote out the full score he often changed how some lines went and added things to make it richer or made more musical sense to him as the inspiration hit him. Then as he rehearsed or played it with full orchestra, he often revised the orchestration when the balance was off, or it didn't "sound" quite right to his extraordinary ear. It was a very fluid game to him.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I knew someone in college who would write out arrangements starting with the parts! No score of any kind. Always amazed at that kind of talent. Once a composer has achieved a certain level of skill, they could dispense with the time consuming and numbing task of writing a short or piano score. They wrote directly into full score - with many corrections, scratch-outs and such along the way. Then they went back and made a "fair copy", tidying up things, and sometimes making orchestral changes. Bruckner, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky worked this way - and often they'd have someone else do the fair copy. Beethoven would write out sketches of small sections, then later go to full score, relying on his copyist to figure out what he wanted - the manuscript of the 9th is online, open it up and you try to figure it out. There are some people (Prokofieff eg) who wrote at the piano - and it shows. Things that are easy on piano can be cruel and nearly impossible on orchestral instruments.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

*Mozart:*
Don Giovanni: Mozart composed the overture the night before the opera's premiere. Mozart typically needed a piano to compose (he wrote so in one letter, IIRC) But just like Bach, he was also able to compose some easier (among his works) while traveling, sitting at the table, etc.
*Tchaikovsky:*
Overture 1812: composed in a week, at his piano and in a rather theoretical fashion (he definitely had some plans for the orchestration at this point) and then he spent a month figuring out and writing the details of orchestration (although the latter timeframe needs a clarification, that he was working on the orchestration of a four-movement Serenade for Strings at the same time, and didn't have much motivation to complete the overture assignment)
Swan Lake:composed over a period of several months, and then orchestrated for several months. Some themes and ideas were ready years prior. 
*John Williams: *
8-12 weeks for a 2-hour film score, 10 weeks for Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back, for example. Now, at the age of 87, he works slightly less intensely and so composed The Rise of Skywalker in 4 months. Like most historical classical composers, Williams has a piano, some paper and a pencil, and first sketches all sorts of themes and melodies. This takes a lot of time. Williams, Beethoven and Copland all stated that the hardest thing to capture is the inevitability in music, a very naturally sounding sequence. With main themes ready, Williams writes a concert suite to be played during end credits, and only finally composes scene after a scene of a film. His standard tempo here is 3 minutes a day. At this point he has a document from the film director, which details the exact seconds events on screen happen. He has to figure out rhytms and tempos. Then he composes at the piano, with all orchestrational ideas coming from his vast knowledge. He sketches these ideas, and then his orchestrators translate them into something copyists will understand, filling any gaps where Williams didn't have the time to exactly fit the harmony or counterpoint of some instruments/groups of instruments, for example. This is not typical for film composers. With very tight schedules, most just outsource the orchestration to specialists. But then, being the best in his field and highly sought after, he is able to negotiate schedules that are more humane. Some composers get 4 weeks or less to compose 2 hours, and have to work with co-composers etc.
I've heard that when he was younger, Williams once composed a 40-minute film score all on his own in 6 days. Nothing very memorable, but around 250 pages of music nonetheless.
*In general:*
To compare with what I wrote about Don Giovanni, let me mention that James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith both are told to have composed several minutes of action music (with a lot of exactly timed reference points in the film) overnight. These were not exactly overtures to Don Giovanni, but the point is, a better composer still has to typically sleep as much, and it is the superiority of their knowledge, experience and imagination that decides, how can they use the time that is given to them and how quickly do they come up with solutions to given musical problems.

Some of the greatest composers had the rule of composing every day (J.S. Bach, Haendel, Telemann, Strauss, Stravinsky, Williams), no matter what genre---just to keep ever sharp and ever musical. It is important for composers to keep their skills sharp. Tchaikovsky said about Borodin, that the latter, a chemistry professor, suffered a degeneration of his skills due to insufficient involvement (as a listener, reader, musician, and composer) in the art. Then there were Schubert and Max Reger, who took it to the extreme and worked themselves into early graves.

P.S. I second that some composers wrote 3-staff reductions of orchestral ideas first. Wagner did it, IIRC.
P.P.S. And as for revisions, they happen often when the composer rehearses a work with an orchestra, and some things prove impractical or not as good as they seemed in theory. Howard Shore, while he was working on The Lord of the Rings, wrote corrections with a red pen during rehearsals basically every day.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

anahit said:


> do you compose by hand on large sheets? if yes, do you play it "somehow" on piano to get a good timing and hear harmonic progressions? how about presto tempo and form - pages must pass quickly, no? do you use combined staves (such as a2, a3, a4) or each instrument separately in your scoring? i would love to know more!!
> 
> my considerations would be:
> - time to compose a piece (some known examples, particularly extremes  )
> ...


Yes, I compose on custom 38 stave ms and do use the piano to write with if I am using more chromatic language, but my direction of travel over time is often a mental process. I'm particularly fond of writing faster music but do have to be mindful that what may seem like a lot of bars, pages, might not be much in terms of duration and ensure that whatever is written actually translates in musical time to a satisfying statement.
For unison parts (a2 etc.) I still use separate staves on my ms (a squiggle and a direction such as col 1st player suffices), but may change once I input the score into Sibelius. It depends entirely on the differing complexity of the parts.

Time to compose varies from ultra fast to painstakingly slow for me - every composer will be different I'm sure. Professionally speaking, there is nothing quite like a deadline to focus the mind, especially one made tighter by revisions. I've used an orchestrator just once in my career when time constraints made it impossible for me to meet a deadline whilst incorporating a last minute change. Even then, I gave him a 6 stave reduction with everything pretty much decided upon, reducing him to basically a copyist.
I'm sure some pertinent googleing will find you more answers...


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## anahit (Dec 10, 2018)

mbhaub said:


> Things that are easy on piano can be cruel and nearly impossible on orchestral instruments.


...such as this:


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