Symphony Orchestra (1956)

[Music] what the creator of music is the composer an artist who can express his thoughts and emotions through music he finds in the Symphony Orchestra a most versatile instrument for his creation music is an international language and composers write an international script which all musicians of the orchestra can read and all the conductors can interpret the conductor is in a way the musician who plays symphonic music by using the entire Orchestra as an instrument he plays this exciting instrument with gestures which are signals for the musicians with these signals the conductor Blends the tones of the orchestra to produce rhythms and harmonies that in his opinion best Express the composer's [Music] creation the symphony orchestra wasn't always as large as the one you've just heard in in fact it grew to its present size from a small group of five players the string quintet sometimes called the Grand quintet composed of two violins a violin cello a double Bas and a viola the string quintet is a complete musical f family which can play from the highest notes on the violin down through the viola and the cello to the double bass which plays the lowest notes of the string group all the way down to the bottom of the scale scale so you can see that with this wide range of notes the possibilities for these five instruments are almost Limitless and much music has been written or arranged for them like this familiar Little Night Music by Mozart one day the composers felt that more volume and intensity could be achieved if each of these players was not an individual but a whole section and so the first violinist became the head of the whole first violin [Music] section and the second violinist also became the head of his own [Music] section and so did the viola player he and the chist also became heads of their sections and even at the lowest end of the string scale a whole section emerged with four eight and sometimes even more base violins playing Harmony to the other strings and so from five stringed instruments a whole String orchestra emerged this String orchestra became the basis of all orchestral music through the 17th and the early 18th [Music] centuries of course there were other instruments known besides strings like flutes obos and trumpets but when these instruments played with the orchestra they first appeared only as soloists as in box so-called second Brandenburg Concerto in this concerto Bach featured not only one violinist as soloist but he added three wind soloists the OBO the flute and the trumpet [Music] the different tone colors of these wind soloists provided a beautiful contrast for the full String orchestra and this contrast and variety of sounds became the first step towards a modern Symphony Orchestra here's why it is not so easy to tell the difference between the timber of a violin a viola or even a cello but no one could fail to notice the difference in the sound of the clarinet and a [Music] bassoon or between them and a French horn when composers added woodwi and horns to the orchestra they made the most of this difference in Timber instead of range alone notice how Vagner uses these instruments in his SE freed Idol the strings sing the melody and the horns and the woodwinds support them with colorful harmonies [Applause] [Music] here he sneaks in the horn as soloist and there he plays with the different colors of Woodwinds and [Music] horns when composers began to look for even richer sounds for volume as well as Brilliance they founded in the third family of instruments of the orchestra in the brasses which were borrowed from the military bands we've already heard this one the trumpet in the Bach [Music] Concerto another type of brass instrument is the trombone playing different notes in the scale with the help of a slide the Trum bone plays deeper and richer tones with the tuba expanding the range of the brasses at the low end of the [Music] scale notice that these instruments have a heavy Noble quality the brass choir of today's Symphony Orchestra is usually made up of three trumpets three or four trombones a [Music] tuba and a quartet of fr horns which are closely related in tone to the [Music] woodwinds listen next to the opening of Mendelson's popular Wedding March played by Woodwinds and strings alone notice how the brass adds body and depth to the woodwinds and strings the orchestra is now almost complete only one element is missing and that is rhythm this is provided by the cussion section of the orchestra all instruments which can be clapped struck or tapped are called percussion instruments [Music] [Applause] now we have them all all the parts of the symphony orchestra very often they are seated in a special way as we see here the first violins the second violins the violas the cellos the base vials the percussion instruments the brasses including the horns which serve as a bridge to the woodwinds and now let's hear how the French master of orchestration ector Pelos utilized the different choirs of the symphony orchestra to achieve effects of power and exuberance in his Roman Carnival [Music] the conductor has studied the score and Now commands the attention of all players his is the challenging task to recreate music of enormous variety of sound color and dexterity by a skillful utilization of all parts of the modern Symphony Orchestra [Music]