reading Rimsky-Korsakov
I came across a recommendation that one could learn everything one needed to know about orchestration from the book Principles of Orchestration by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (completed by his son-in-law Maximilian Steinberg). Although I suspect that's a bit of an exaggeration, my impression of the book so far is that it's about as much as I can handle without learning a lot more about composing.
Conveniently, the book is in the public domain, even in English translation. Less conveniently, the Project Gutenberg servers somehow decided that my phone, my home ISP, and the library needed to be temporarily blocked, because the servers detected bulk downloading of Gutenberg content. I got past that by downloading a free Kindle edition from Amazon, but that version is somewhat deficient; it renders tables poorly, and doesn't seem to show music examples at all. But I started on the text from that edition, and today Gutenberg released the block.
I came across a passage in the book's 1891 preface that amused me somewhat. It said that a composer in the earliest stage of learning will "puts his entire faith in percussion instruments". I'd certainly call myself a composer in the earliest stage, and I have indeed included a fair amount of percussion in my works:
- The first piece that I'm proud to show off is a trio for glockenspiel, violin, and tuba, and the glockenspiel is definitely an important part of the piece. But the violin and tuba are also important, so I didn't exactly put my "entire faith in percussion".
- The piece I've been working on lately includes a lot of marimba, vibraphone, and non-pitched percussion. But it includes bass guitars, bassoon, keyboards, and trumpet, so again it's not all percussion. But the percussion probably is more important in this piece than in the trio.
However, besides being a newbie composer, I've included a fair amount of pitched percussion because, way back when, "J" played percussion. So my use of percussion is partly inspired by her.
Here's the relevant quote in full: . . . As a general rule it is best to advance by degrees from the simplest scoring to the most complicated.
The student will probably pass through the following phases: 1. the phase during which he puts his entire faith in percussion instruments, believing that beauty of sound emanates entirely from this branch of the orchestra-this is the earliest stage; 2. the period when he acquires a passion for the harp, using it in every possible chord; 3. the stage during which he adores the wood-wind and horns, using stopped notes in conjunction with strings, muted or pizzicato; 4. the more advanced period, when he has come to recognise that the string group is the richest and most expressive of all. When the student works alone he must try to avoid the pitfalls of the first three phases. . . .
- Principles of Orchestration by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, edited by Maximilian Steinberg (1912), translation by Edward Agate (1922).
Note: I don't know why the entire quote is in italics in the mobile view. I don't want it that way; it looks normal in desktop view.