# Orchestral Colour



## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

Could someone please tell me what the term "orchestral colour" means? Specifically, I would like to know its meaning in the following context.



> She greatly admired his latest piano sonata, K309 (248b), observing astutely, 'One can see from its style that you composed it in Mannheim' (by which she presumably meant its sudden changes of mood and dynamic, and its sense throughout of orchestral colour and texture.)


How does a _sonata_ have _orchestral_ colour?

Please be gentle, I'm just a layman with absolutely no training in music theory. 

Thanks.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

It doesn't really, but various compositional techniques and playing techniques give the idea of an orchestral colour.

For example, certain thirds in a high register could sound like flute, horn call-like melodies can sound like horns and octave tremolos (forgotten correct terminology) represent string tremolos.

In terms of performance, various amounts of articulations, tempo changes, and methods of playing ornaments (Arpeggios etc.) can be played in a way not too dissimilar to an orchestral instrument.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

Thanks for the reply. I must say that it was still technical, but I still have a couple of questions.



Yagan Kiely said:


> For example, certain thirds in a high register could sound like flute, horn call-like melodies can sound like horns and octave tremolos (forgotten correct terminology) represent string tremolos.


Sound like? (I think sound clips/examples from popular works will aid me in understanding. )



> In terms of performance, various amounts of articulations, tempo changes, and methods of playing ornaments (Arpeggios etc.) can be played in a way not too dissimilar to an orchestral instrument.


What is an orchestral instrument? (Does this have something to do with the "temper" of the instrument?)


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## shsherm (Jan 24, 2008)

A modern composer named Michael Torke has composed several orchestral works named after various colors. I hear some of them from time to time on the radio.


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## Frasier (Mar 10, 2007)

It's just an analogous term for timbre. Changes of instrumentation or density (of instrumentation) give differing timbres and critics tend to borrow terms from fine arts and elsewhere to give their reports some kind of life. 

It can also relate to the harmonic structure. The word "chromatic" comes from chroma (colour).

Artists and photographers also borrow from music when they speak of tone, high key etc.


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## BuddhaBandit (Dec 31, 2007)

Opus, give a listen to Debussy's La Mer and "Reflets dans l'Eau", from _Images_. You can see in both how Debussy uses the higher registers of the piano in "Reflets" as he uses the flutes in La Mer. The same goes for other instruments: low piano arpeggios can be heard as strings, etc.


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## Yagan Kiely (Feb 6, 2008)

> What is an orchestral instrument?


Clarinet, Violin, Cello, French Horn etc.


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## Kurkikohtaus (Oct 22, 2006)

Just to elaborate on the question of what is an orchestral instrument:

The standard set of orchestral in a classical symphony are:

2 flutes
2 oboes
2 clarinets
2 bassoons

2 horns
2 trumpets
Tympani

1st Violins
2nd Violins
Violas
Cellos
Basses

This is also the order that they are written in the score, top to bottom.

A Romantic orchesta is expanded as follows:

2 flutes (sometimes + piccolo)
2 oboes (sometimes + english horn)
2 clarinets (sometimes + Eb clarinet or bass clarinet)
2 bassoons (sometimes + Contrabassoon)

4 horns
2 trumpets (sometimes 3, sometimes 2 trumpets + 2 cornets)
3 trombones
1 Tuba (sometimes)

Tympani
Various percussion (sometimes) (bass drum, cymbals, triangle...)
Harp (sometimes)

1st Violins
2nd Violins
Violas
Cellos
Basses

This is the _standard_ orchestration that evolved over the course of the 19th century, but it is by no means a rule, there are many variations and exceptions. By the end of the 19th Century, the works of Mahler and Richard Strauss called for gigantic orchestras that cannot be described through any logical orstandard formula.


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## Mark Harwood (Mar 5, 2007)

It can, as Frasier says, be just a figure of speech, an attempt to describe things; but some musicians, particularly, it seems, composers, actually perceive colours from sound. So do other people. See the thread on "Synaesthesia".


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

Thank you all for the replies. All this musical jargon only makes me want to learn more.  Mark, I'm quite sure the author* wasn't referring to synaesthesia.

*FYI, that quote is from the book _Mozart's Women_ by Jane Glover.(Pan Books/Pan Macmillan) That astute observation was made by none other Maria Anna (Nannerl) Mozart.


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

A little joke about musical colour;

Wagner truly believed that brass sounded black, strings sounded red, and woodwind sounded blue. He had this little theory in mind when he composed his very first overture. The audience must have known that black, red and blue made brown because they gave it a name representable of this colour!


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