The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815

Special import

Estimated despatch time 2 - 4 weeks

1 Introduction
2 Pre-orchestral Ensembles
3 Lully's Orchestra
4 Corelli's Orchestra
5 The Orchestra in Italy
6 The Orchestra in France
7 The Orchestra in Germany
8 The Orchestra in England
9 The Classical Orchestra
10 Placement, Seating, and Acoustics
11 Orchestral Performance Practices
12 Life and Times of the Orchestra Musician
13 The Birth of Orchestration
14 The Meaning of the Orchestra

About
Reviews
Explore

About

This book traces the emergence of the orchestra from 16th-century string bands to the 'classical' orchestra of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries. Ensembles of bowed stringed instruments, several players per part plus continuo and wind instruments, were organized in France in the mid-17th century and then in Rome at the end of the century. The prestige of these ensembles and of the music and performing styles of their leaders, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Arcangelo Corelli, caused them to be imitated elsewhere, until by the late 18th century, the orchestra had become a pan-European phenomenon. Spitzer and Zaslaw review previous accounts of these developments, then proceed to a thoroughgoing documentation and discussion of orchestral organization, instrumentation, and social roles in France, Italy, Germany, England, and the American colonies. They also examine the emergence of orchestra musicians, idiomatic music for orchestras, orchestral performance practices, and the awareness of the orchestra as a central institution in European life.

Reviews

This is a most substantial book, with a long detailed text, massive bibliography and references, generous illustrations, copious tables, graphs and backup statistics, interesting music examples in the penultimate chapter, full index, and appendices centering on the second half of the 18th century. It will remain a major work on its subject

Book

Contents

Download queue