Orchestration Lecture Notes
Haydn · Class 1
Notes from the first class in the orchestration class series: a record of what we looked at and what we found in the score.
These notes may contain solutions to class assignments, so please wait until you have finished your own work.
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Austrian composer, in the service of the Esterházy court for close to thirty years — Vice-Kapellmeister from 1761, Kapellmeister from 1766 — with a resident orchestra at his disposal at Eisenstadt and, later, Eszterháza. 104 symphonies carry his name, alongside the string quartets, the masses, the operas and the two late oratorios.
We looked at: Symphony No. 6 in D major, “Le Matin” (1761)
One of the first works Haydn wrote for the Esterházy players, and the first of a set of three — Le Matin (The Morning), Le Midi (Midday), Le Soir (The Evening). Scored for flute, two oboes, bassoon, two horns and strings.
On the Haydn style
- The forte passages are tutti. Where the dynamic is forte, everyone is playing.
- At piano, the orchestra thins out. Haydn most often falls back to the strings.
- The strings are the body of the orchestra — the corpus that is present almost continuously, and against which everything else is added or withheld, with exceptions.
- The horns are the connective layer. They bind the sound of the orchestra together rather than carry the argument, and they often stay in the background in octaves.
- The horns are not only a loud instrument. They play in the soft passages as well.
- In wind chords and textures, the horns tend to hold the perfect consonances and stay with horn-fifth figures, while the oboes and flutes add the imperfect consonances and the faster movement.
Dynamics
The music moves between piano and forte, and there is not a great deal in between. The contrast is the device.
Instrumental crescendo
A crescendo made by adding instruments one after another, rather than by asking the players already sounding to play louder. The crescendo is written into the scoring instead of into the dynamic mark — and it is the orchestration, not the volume, that does the work.
This is not a Haydn device in particular. Instrumental crescendo belongs to orchestration generally, and the same principle is at work in any period: a line grows because more instruments are carrying it, and it recedes because they drop away again.
The strings
The open strings, for reference.
The double bass here is the modern one, written; it sounds an octave below. Several models were in use in Haydn’s time, but think of it the same way.
The bass line
Cello and double bass share a single staff, and the double bass always sounds an octave below what is written. Nothing in the notation separates the two — where Haydn wants them apart, it is said in words in the part, and not otherwise. In many symphonies the bassoon is reading the same line as well.
Where the written line drops below what the bass can reach, it takes those notes an octave higher and doubles the cello at the unison until the line comes back up.
The wind instruments in Haydn’s time
| Instrument | Bottom | Top (approx.) | Carrying power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flute | d′ | about two and a half octaves higher | Wooden, not metal. Weak, and weakest at the bottom; it does not cut through a full texture. |
| Oboe | c′ | about two octaves higher | Louder and more penetrating than the flute across its range. |
| Horn | the pitches of the series belonging to the horn chosen for the key | Capable of real weight at forte, and equally at home inside a piano texture. | |
| Bassoon | frequently not an independent part — often on the bass line with cello and double bass, though it can carry a line of its own | Blends rather than cuts through; it reinforces more than it colours. | |
The horn: alto and basso
The horn of the period is a natural horn. It plays the pitches of a single harmonic series, and the series is selected by fitting a crook — a length of tubing that sets the fundamental. The part is written in C, and the crook decides what sounds.
A horn in D therefore comes in two registers. A D alto horn sounds a major second above the written note; a D basso horn sounds a minor seventh below it. The written part can be identical; the sounding octave is not. Which one a symphony calls for is part of the scoring — though for many of Haydn’s symphonies we do not know, and can only guess. He left no practical remarks in the scores; these things were settled in the room, not on the page.
Natural horn tones and horn fifths
The 11th partial falls between G♮ and G♯, and the 7th sits noticeably low. Neither is a tempered pitch.
I made a trainer for this on my website. You can access my horn transposition trainer through this link.
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