Great orchestrators

[semloh]

Yes, totally agree with this - but then, it is to be expected - Bridge was a pupil of Stanford!!   

And, on the basis of his completed works, you're surely right about Griffes, Lionel.

[X. Trapnel]

Griffes belonged to a lost generation of American composers that was largely buried by the ascendancy of Copland and other Boulanger students. On the basis of his piano sonata I speculate that he might have embraced modernism to the extent of burning off the impressionist mist toward a kind of hard, urban, art deco aestheticism (I can hardly imagine him following Copland and Harris into the wide open prairie) that would nevertheless romantic rather than neo-classical. Paul Creston's first two symphonies might be close to what I mean. His orchestration owes much to Debussy and extends an essentially romantic style into the modern world.

[Lionel Harrsion]

Thanks, X. Trapnel -- a very thought-provoking observation.  I must mull that over...

[chill319]

Many fine orchestrators were made better orchestrators by their exposure to RS, whose immense aural imagination could spin actual orchestral thoughts.

Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Pelleas, and subsequent works as late, I would argue, as Erwartung owe a clear debt to Strauss.

Alfven's Symphony 4 owes a debt to Strauss IMO.

Carpenter was a wonderful orchestrator, but Converse was perhaps an even better one, and another player whose game was improved by exposure to Strauss.

[minacciosa]

I wish there were enough recorded material to have a Carpenter/Converse orchestration face-off. I'd bet on Carpenter.

[X. Trapnel]

On the Dutton disk I was very impressed by Converse's orchestration but a little disappointed with the musical substance (I hope this will change with subsequent hearings). I think Loeffler was the best of the American impressionist/romantics with a very distinctive orchestral pallette.

[semloh]

These are thought-provoking exchanges. Thanks, to everyone concerned.
Now, I must find time to re-visit the music. 

[chill319]

It was wrong-headed of me (and pointless) to compare Converse to Carpenter in this particular thread, X. Trapnel.  I think we all agree that virtuosic orchestration reached a new plateau in the two decades preceding the Great War. The global influence of Wagner's orchestrations notwithstanding, I hear a distinctive French thread in the sophisticated orchestrations of, say, Lalo, d'Indy, Magnard, and a distinctive Eastern European thread in the complex orchestrations of Dvorak's late tone poems, Novak, Suk, and Mahler. Which is to say that many contributed to the rapid evolution of the orchestral vocabulary. Nevertheless, I agree with Giles that Strauss is unmatched. It's not merely the effectiveness of Strauss's "busy" textures, the rightness of his writing for many instrumental families, but the way the tunes themselves, as in the magnificent opening of Ein Heldenleben, are robustly imagined within a matrix of orchestral sound, not simply as musical lines to be colored by instruments. The orchestrations of Korngold and Bloch (3 Poemes Juifs) among many many others are unthinkable without the example of Strauss.

Across the Atlantic, Loeffler participated (brilliantly, in my opinion) in the development of the French branch. As for the modern German branch of orchestration, between 1897 and 1915 its most innovative and effective American exponent was Converse. (Chadwick was no wallflower either, with Straussian influences especially evident in Tam O'Shanter. But Chadwick, I think, wanted to find a way to graft modern German virtuosity onto Brahmsian nobility, which requires a different handling of overtones. Nielsen found greatness by treating the same intractable issue as a Gordian knot.) Converse's orchestration masterwork is Flivver 10 million, which contains some remarkable sounds I am not aware of in any previous orchestral piece. As for the works on the Dutton CD, American Sketches is the big one. I would listen to it after hearing Chadwick's Symphonic Sketches. Both are ambitious and intensely American. They straddle a period in which war and social revolution brought into question the aesthetic implicit in Strauss's musical cadences and expensive (to play) orchestrations -- an aesthetic that both Chadwick and Converse believed in.

[semloh]

Strauss and Mahler are certainly the obvious influences on (?sources of) Korngold's sensuous romanticism, and were among his greatest champions in the pre-Hollywood days. But, don't forget that the other great Strauss - Johann - was also an influence on Korngold. His last published piece - Straussiana - is a tribute to Johann, and ends, I think, with a waltz. He seems to have harboured a lifelong nostalgia for the lost golden age of the Austro-Hungarian Empire! I am sure he would have wallowed in that nostalgia as it is resuscitated each New Year's Day in Vienna, no less than the glitterati who attend today. 

[Josh]

Going back a bit, to the very early Romantic (or perhaps slightly before), has anyone heard the orchestration of Clementi's symphonies?  I think some of the "thick" sounds that he used - like in the ending of the first movement of his so-called "Great National" Symphony - might have been completely original at that time.  Whether original or not, Clementi is one of my all-time favourite orchestrators, perhaps just behind Raff even.  Elaborate, complex, and expert, able to get a rich, often heavy sound without getting harsh.

Grab the Chandos 'Contemporaries of Mozart' disc with Clementi's earliest known surviving "big" symphony, go to the end of the slow introduction, and listen to 40 seconds or so.  If you're looking for intricate orchestral soundscapes to explore, Clementi is well worth checking out!  I'd rate him as an all-time great orchestrator.

[minacciosa]

It is interesting to compare Strauss' orchestrations with Korngold's, because beyond the obvious early influence the former had upon the latter, it is very easy to tell the two apart. Key (to my ear) is the matter of sonority. Throughout his life Strauss maintained a harder coloristic manner that I describe as distinctly German. Korngold's has something more urbane to it, a greater elision between instruments that yields entirely new colors. (Think of the difference between Debussy and Ravel.) Korngold softens the contours within these shifts in a way much more akin to Zemlinksy, who I submit was the greatest orchestrator of all. Das Wunder der Heliane, Die Tote Stadt (which has an amazing air of decay about it) and the Symphony are great examples of this, as well as examples of how different was Korngold's  scoring from Friedhofer's and the few others that scored Korngold's film scores.

While Strauss was a giant, he is not alone on that exalted plane, and I believe he is surpassed by some of his company there.

[chill319]

Like Josh, I'm quite fond of Clementi the orchestrator -- in my case known only from the old D'Avalos/Philharmonia recordings on ASV. My understanding is that Pietro Spada had a stronger presence in the edition being performed there than can be rightly considered Urtext. Not being a Clementi scholar, I wonder if other members have information about the reliability of Spada's edition.

[X. Trapnel]

I think of Strauss's orchestral colors for all their richness as clear and bold, rather than shadowy, elusive, irridescent, but then his world view is classical/realistic, materialist in a positive sense and sociable. His spiritual home was the eighteenth century in so many ways, much closer top the spirit of Mozart than Stravinsky's arty neo-classicism could ever get.

[minacciosa]

Very perceptive comment.

[semloh]

OK - but where does Johann Strauss fit into these observations about Korngold's orchestration?