This page intentionally left blankBerliozs Orchestration TreatiseA Translation and CommentaryBerliozs orchestrationtreatise is a classic textbook whichhas beenusedasa guide to orchestration and as a source book for the understanding bothof Berliozs music and of orchestral practice in the nineteenth century.This is the rst new English translation of Berliozs complete text since1856, and it is accompanied throughout by Hugh Macdonalds extensiveand authoritative commentary on the instruments of Berliozs time andon his own orchestral practice, as revealed in his scores. It also includesextracts from Berliozs writings on instruments in his Memoirs and in hismany articles for the Parisian press.The Treatise has been highly valued both for its technical informationabout instruments and for its poetic and visionary approach to the artof instrumentation. It includes a chapter on the orchestra itself, seen asa giant independent instrument, and on the art of conducting, one ofthe rst documents of its kind. Berlioz was not only one of the greatorchestrators of the nineteenth century, he was also the author with theclearest understanding of the art.hugh macdonald is Avis Blewett Professor of Music at WashingtonUniversity, St Louis. He has been General Editor of the New BerliozEdition since its inception in 1967. He has edited The Selected Letters ofBerlioz (1995) and Volumes IV, V, VI, VII and VIII of the Berlioz Correspon-dance g en erale (1992 ). He is also author of Skryabin (1978) and Berlioz(1982).CAMBRIDGE MUSICAL TEXTS AND MONOGRAPHSGeneral editors: John Butt and Laurence DreyfusThis series has as its centres of interest the history of performance andthe history of instruments. It includes annotated translations ofauthentic historical texts on music and monographs on various aspectsof historical performance and instrument history.Recent titlesj ohn butt Bach Interpretation: Articulation Marks in the Sources of J.S. Bachni cholas thi stlethwai te The Making of the Victorian Organchri stopher page (trans. and ed.) Summa musice: A Thirteenth-Century Manual for Singersaradal powell (trans. and ed.) The Virtuoso Flute Player by JohannGeorge Tromlitzbeth bullard (trans. and ed.) Musica getutscht: A Treatise on MusicalInstruments by Sebastian Virdungdavi d rowland A History of Pianoforte Pedallingj ohn butt Music Education and the Art of Performance in the GermanBaroquerebecca harri s warri ck and carol marsh Musical Theatre atthe Court of Louis XIVLe Mariage de la Grosse Cathosj uli anne c. bai rd (trans. and ed.) Introduction to the Art of Singing byJohann Friedrich Agricolavaleri e walden One Hundred Years of VioloncelloA History of Technique and Performance Practice, 17401840bernard brauchli The Clavichordsuzanne j . bei cken (trans. and ed.) Treatise on Vocal Performance andOrnamentation by Johann Adam Hillerhugh macdonald (trans. and ed.) Berliozs Orchestration TreatiseA Translation and CommentaryFrontispiece Berlioz, Grand trait e d instrumentation et d orchestration modernes, Paris [1844], title page.Berliozs Orchestration TreatiseA Translation and CommentaryHUGH MACDONALDiuniisuio n\ rui iiiss s\xoicari oi rui uxiviisir\ oi caxniiociThe Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdomcaxniioci uxiviisir\ iiissThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, AustraliaRuiz de Alarcn 13, 28014 Madrid, SpainDock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africahttp://www.cambridge.orgFirst published in printed format ISBN 0-521-23953-2 hardbackISBN 0-511-03709-0 eBookCambridge University Press 20042002(Adobe Reader)ContentsList of illustrations page xPreface xiiiA note on the edition xxxiiiA note on the translation xxxviAcknowledgments xxxviiList of abbreviations xxxviiiThe TreatiseIntroduction 31 Bowed strings 7The violin 7The viola 34The viola damore 42The cello 45The double bass 542 Plucked strings 64The harp 64The guitar 80The mandolin 883 Strings with keyboard 90The piano 904 Wind: Introduction 985 Wind with reeds 102The oboe 102The cor anglais 108viiviii ContentsThe bassoon 112The tenoroon 116The contrabassoon 116The clarinets 117The alto clarinet 131The bass clarinet 132The basset horn 133Improvements in the clarinet family 1346 Wind without reeds 137The ute 137The piccolo 146Other utes 1497 Wind with keyboard 153The organ 1538 Brass with mouthpiece 164The horn 164The piston or cylinder horn 180The trumpet 185The cornet 193The trombone 208The alto valve trombone 228The bugle or clarion 229The keyed bugle 231The piston or cylinder bugle 232The bass ophicleide 232The alto ophicleide 237The contrabass ophicleide 237The bombardon in F 238The bass tuba 2399 Woodwind with mouthpiece 242The serpent 242The Russian bassoon 24410 Voices 24611 Pitched percussion 265The timpani 265Bells 274Jeu de timbres 276The glockenspiel 276The keyboard harmonica 278The antique cymbals 278Contents ix12 Unpitched percussion 280The bass drum 280Cymbals 283The tamtam 286The tambourine 286The side drum 288The tenor drum 289The triangle 290The Turkish crescent 292Other instruments 29313 New instruments 296The saxophone 296Saxhorns 301Saxotrombas 304Saxtubas 305The concertina 305Alexandres melodium 311Alexandre pianos and melodiums (with sustaining device) 314The octobass 31614 The orchestra 31915 The conductor and his art 336Appendix Berliozs writing on instruments 366Bibliography 371General index 377Index of Berliozs works 385IllustrationsFrontispiece Berlioz, Grand trait e dinstrumentation etdorchestration modernes, Paris [1844], title page.Macnutt Berlioz Collection1 Letter to Humbert Ferrand of 12 June 1843,seeking subscriptions to the publicationof the Treatise. Hugh Macdonald Collection page xx2 La revue et gazette musicale, 20 January 1856, the rstserialisation of Le chef dorchestre xxiv3 Bugles and bombardons. Georges Kastner,Manuel de musique militaire (Paris, 1848) 2304 The ophicleide. Georges Kastner, Manuel demusique militaire (Paris, 1848) 2335 Three types of serpent. Georges Kastner, Manuelde musique militaire (Paris, 1848) 2436 Two types of Russian bassoon. Georges Kastner,Manuel de musique militaire (Paris, 1848) 2447 Bass drum. Georges Kastner, Manuel de musiquemilitaire (Paris, 1848) 2838 The chapeau chinois. Georges Kastner, Manuel demusique militaire (Paris, 1848) 2939 The family of saxhorns. Georges Kastner, Manuelde musique militaire (Paris, 1848) 30210 The octobass. Adam Carse, The Orchestra fromBeethoven to Berlioz (Cambridge, 1848),p. 396 317xList of illustrations xi11 The Conservatoire hall in 1843.J.-G. Prodhomme and E. de Crauzat, Les MenusPlaisirs du Roi (Paris, 1929), p. 137 32412 Layout of the Soci et e des Concerts orchestra.A. Elwart, Histoire de la Soci et e des Concerts(Paris, 1860), pl. II 32513 A Berlioz concert in 1844, showing asub-conductor. LIllustration, 25 January 1845 354PrefaceBerliozs Grand trait e dinstrumentation et dorchestration modernes, rst pub-lished in 1844 with a second edition in 1855, is a classic textbook which hasbeen widely read for over a century and a half by students, composers, his-torians and all who are drawn to Berlioz the musician or Berlioz the man.Like Rameaus Trait e de lharmonie it is a remarkable example of a greatcomposer venturing into the world of technical and theoretical expositionand producing a masterpiece which affected the musical thinking of gen-erations. In the nineteenth century BerliozsTreatise (as we shall hereaftercall it) was read as a book of instruction; in the twentieth century it becamea source book for anyone curious to learn more about the history of instru-ments andorchestral practice anda revealing exposure of Berliozs musicalthinking. His purpose in writing it was to guide composers towards a moreexpert and expressive use of instruments and to advise themof pitfalls thatthe unwary may encounter. This is explained in the books introductionand again alluded to in the section on Other percussion instruments:Our purpose in the present work is simply to study instruments which areused in modern music and to seek the laws which govern the setting upof harmonious combinations and effective contrasts between them whilemaking special note of their expressive capabilities and of the characterappropriate to each.The study of an instruments character and expressive potential wasreally more important to Berlioz than its range and technical limits, carefulthough he was to set out the latter inas clear a manner as possible. Practicalinformation was already to be found in other treatises and in the separateM ethodes available for every instrument, so there was a special urgencyin conveying his personal understanding of colour and timbre, couchedin the notion of continuity and tradition from Gluck through Spontini,Beethoven and Weber to the present day. Harmonious combinations andeffective contrasts are treated in the chapter on the orchestra, so that thenovice composer may learn the essentials of orchestration from a study ofxiiixiv Prefacethis book, an aspect of his art which was seriously overlooked, as Berliozkept repeating, at the Paris Conservatoire. In its enlarged second editionthe Treatise included an essay on the art of conducting, which Berliozsown experience had taught himto regard, like the complexities of concertorganisation and management, as part of the composers craft.Unlike so much of Berliozs music, the Treatise was successful both inFrance and abroad. It has been translated into ve languages and has beenalmost continuously in print to this day. Both his contemporaries and hissuccessors recognised its great virtues. Bizet admired it and recommendedit to his pupils,1and Saint-Sa ens said of it:For all its oddities, its a marvellous book. The whole of my generationwas brought up on it, and well brought up, I would say, too. It had thatinestimable gift of inaming the imagination and making you love the artit taught. What it didnt teach it gave you the desire to nd out, and onelearns best what one learns oneself.2Rimsky-Korsakov tells how Balakirevs circle of composers followed theTreatises instructions slavishly, even when its teaching, on natural brass in-struments for example, was out of date.3Mahler, Elgar, Delius, Busoni,dIndy, Debussy, Puccini and Strauss are all known to have used it. Zolastudiedthe clarinet fromit. Ravel, no great admirer of Berliozs music, kepta copy of the Treatise near at hand.4Most subsequent orchestration text-books by Gevaert, Widor, Rimsky-Korsakov and Kchlin, for example are in some measure indebted to it, and Strausss version, incorporatingmany examples fromWagners scores, has been widely read and translated.A new edition of the Treatise must today serve a quite different purposesince one no longer refers to it for information about, say, the range of thetrumpet or howto write for the harp. It has been superseded by many morecomprehensive textbooks. Its value rests rather on its incomparable recordof the instrumental practice of Berliozs time and on the light it sheds onhis music. For him it was the other way round: he used extracts from hisscores to support the study of orchestration, while we use his remarks onorchestrationto enhance our study of his scores. My purpose inthe presentedition is therefore fourfold: 1) to provide a new translation for English-speaking readers who have long had to depend on Mary Cowden Clarkesvery Victorian version of 1856 or Theodore Fronts 1948 translation ofStrausss version, 2) to relate what Berlioz says in the Treatise to what he hasto say elsewhere about instruments and orchestration, 3) to comment on1Its an admirable work, the vade mecum of any composer who writes for the orchestra. Its utterlycomplete, with abundant examples. Its indispensable! Bizet reported by Hugues Imbert in Portraitset etudes (Paris, 1894), p. 178.2Camille Saint-Sa ens, Portraits et souvenirs (Paris, 1909), pp. 56.3N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life (London, 1924), p. 66.4Ravels copy of the Treatise is still displayed on the piano at his house at Montfort-Lamaury.Preface xvthe state of instruments and instrumental practice of Berliozs time and4) to compare what he advises in his Treatise with what he does in his ownmusic. For the most part, of course, his music is an admirable illustrationof the technical and artistic principles set out in the Treatise, but there aretimes when he does not practise what he preaches. He greeted certainnew developments, for example the harp glissando and the saxophone,with enthusiasm, but then did nothing to promote them in his music. Nordid he use most of the violin double-stops and harmonics he so carefullyset out as available to the composer. But since his purpose was to offertechnical understanding to other composers he was under no obligationto distinguish between those features which he would wish to use himselfand those which were available to composers of different tastes.We can now see how the task of writing the Treatise rened his own or-chestral technique in mid-career. His early works, including the Symphoniefantastique and Harold en Italie, contained errors that he was able to cor-rect by withholding publication until he had sufcient experience of con-ducting them himself. His intense interest in orchestration in the late1830s made the Requiem and Rom eo et Juliette particularly rich examples ofadvanced orchestral technique which he drew upon as models for theinstruction of others, and in his later works he remained largely faithfulto the practice he expounded in the Treatise, occasionally calling for newinstruments such as the saxhorns used in the Te deum and Les Troyens. Itwas probably writing the chapter on the organ for the Treatise that gavehim the idea for the magnicent opposition of orchestra and organ wend in the Te deum, composed seven years later.berlioz and the orchestraFrom the Symphonie fantastique, universally admired for its audacious or-chestration, it is clear that Berliozs interest in this aspect of his art wasmanifest early in his career. In chapter 15 of his Memoirs he gives a vividaccount of attending the Op era in the 1820s with a circle of friends, fromwhich it is plain that his attention was as sharply focused on the person-nel and activities of the orchestra as upon the not always more dramaticgoings-on on stage. Hiller recalled that for a number of years he was con-stantly at the Op era, where he followed the performances score in handand made a note every time he observed some effect of solo or combinedinstrumentation.5His Irish friend George Osborne, who knew Berlioz inhis student days, later recalled in similar vein:5Ferdinand Hiller, K unstlerleben (Cologne, 1880), p. 103, trans. Michael Rose in Berlioz Remembered(London, 2001), p. 18.xvi PrefaceIt was his constant habit to go into orchestras and sit with the differentperformers watching them and turning over the pages for them. In this wayhe learned the capacity of each instrument. Besides which he got severalinstrumentalists tocome tohis house where they playedtogether little thingswhich he wrote for them to see what they could accomplish. He also askedboth Chopin and myself whether such and such passage could be played onthe piano.6When Berlioz had to report on the visit of a German opera companyto Paris in 1829 he deplored the state of the Th e atre Italien orchestra manby man:The eight rst and eight second violins are held together by four youngmen from the Conservatoire having a good working knowledge of the in-strument. Of the four violas one is good, one moderate andtwo are hopeless.Of the three (would you believe it!) cellos only one made any impression,M. Franchomme, a very talented young man with a brilliant career beforehim. The other two are old men who fortunately sleep more than theyplay.All one can say of the seven double basses is that they are neither goodnor bad. There is little better to be said of the brass, except that Gallay is themost gifted horn player in Paris, but for reasons of seniority he plays thirdhorn and never gets a solo. The utes and clarinets are good, which makesthe oboes and bassoons even more unbearable. The bassoons cannot playfast and the rst oboe is quite without a sense of rhythm. [ . . . ] The timpanistis reliable enough, but he pays more attention to catching the ladies eyesthan to counting his bars. It is, in a word, one of the worst orchestras.7Berliozs ability todissect the workings of anorchestra andtounderstandits strengths and weaknesses was a key to his success as a conductor and itwas also invaluable both to his composing and to his work as a critic. It boretwo remarkable but very different literary fruits. The rst was the Treatise,in which his awareness of the human dimension of the orchestra is neverfar from view, and the second was Les soir ees de lorchestre, a compilationof essays and reviews put together in 1852 and cast as the serious andfrivolous exchanges of the players in a theatre orchestra who are oftenso numbed by the futility of their duties that they exchange gossip, storiesand ights of fancy. Although Berlioz had almost no orchestral experienceas a player himself, his illustrious career as a conductor was strengthenedby his profound understanding of what goes on in an orchestra and howits members individually function. It is as though his physiology classes atthe School of Medicine had taught him to think of the orchestra as an6George Osborne, Berlioz, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 5 (18789), pp. 6071, cited inA. W. Ganz, Berlioz in London (London, 1950), p. 87.7Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 27 June 1829; Cm, 1, p. 25.Preface xviiorganism made up of limbs, organs, joints, nerves and muscles all servinga larger collective purpose.Whereas most music critics in France would concentrate on the liter-ary and vocal qualities of an opera, Berlioz often chose to draw attentionto instrumental effects in unashamedly technical language. His article onMeyerbeers Robert le diable in the Gazette musicale of 12 July 1835, for exam-ple, is specically entitled On the instrumentation of Robert le diable, andit points out that the huge success of the opera was due in no little part toits resourceful and inventive orchestration, making demands far beyondthe capacity of most of the provincial theatre orchestras who were calledupon to play it.the writing and publication of the TREATISEBerliozs consuming passion for instruments and their use was obviouslya central feature of his art from the beginning. The Robert le diable articlemight be taken as an early indication that he might also become a teacherof the art of orchestration, not just a superlative exponent. Comfortablein his command of contemporary French instrumental practice and itsrapidly advancing technology, Berlioz received a jolt in 1837 when JohannStrauss p`ere brought his Viennese musicians to Paris, one of the earliestorchestras to go on tour as a group. There is no mistaking the shock ofBerliozs realisation that the German lands did things differently in thisrespect. He was principally impressed by Strausss sense of rhythm (hencethe title of his notice in the Journal des d ebats: Strauss, his orchestra, andhis waltzes. Of the future of rhythm8), but his curiosity about the differentinstrumental styles of foreign orchestras was aroused, leading eventually tothe German tour of 18423 when he could study these things for himself.In the same year as Strausss visit, 1837, Georges Kastner, a young com-poser and polymath newly arrived from Strasbourg, published his Trait eg en eral dinstrumentation. When Berlioz read the book and met the authorwe do not know, but by 1839 they had become friends. Kastner seems tohave been close to Berlioz during the composition of Rom eo et Juliette in thatyear,9and when Kastner followed up his Trait e with a second volume, Coursdinstrumentation, in 1839, Berlioz gave both books a warm welcome in thepages of the Journal des d ebats.10While he applauded Kastners achieve-ment, he felt he had not gone far enough in dening what the art ofinstrumentation could truly do:8Jd, 10 November 1837; Cm, 3, pp. 32935; Cond e, pp. 1228.9Cg, 2, p. 576. Kastner was later presented with the autograph manuscript of Rom eo et Juliette as a gift.10Jd, 2 October 1839.xviii PrefaceInstrumentation, according to him, is the art of applying appropriate typesof instruments to a given line of music. Certainly it is, but it is much elsebesides. It is the art of using instruments to colour the harmony and therhythm; furthermore it is the art of generating emotion by ones choice oftimbres, independent of any considerations of melody, rhythm or harmony.Citing numerous examples of apposite instrumentation by Gluck,Beethoven, Meyerbeer and others, Berlioz is clearly seized by his own con-suming interest in the subject, and we may safely guess that the writing ofthis review implanted the idea of compiling his own treatise which wouldexpound the art as he saw it despite the existence of Kastners very com-prehensive handbook.He did not pursue it, however, for two years. In that time he composedthe Symphonie fun`ebre et triomphale, Les nuits d et e and his arrangements ofDer Freisch utz for the Op era. Having promised Schlesinger a series of arti-cles entitled De linstrumentation for the Revue et gazette musicale, Berliozevidently had to write them in a hurry for a succession of deadlines.11On 21 November 1841 the rst of sixteen articles appeared, with the lastarticle of the series published on 17 July 1842. These articles make upthe bulk of the later Treatise, but they differ greatly from it in their lackof musical examples, dictated by the format of the journal, and their lackof technical discussion. The articles contain the discursive, non-technicalmatter of the book, with an emphasis on the poetic and expressive charac-ter of individual instruments. Berlioz throws in his characteristic asides onhis favourite topics, and he chides modern composers for their persistentmisuse of instruments. His admiration for Gluck, Beethoven, Weber andcertain living masters, very selectively cited, is clear. He also made repeatedcriticism of the Conservatoire for failing to give instruction in certain im-portant instruments (such as percussion) and for failing to conserve suchne historical instruments as the viola damore. Not, presumably, out ofdeference to the then late director of the Conservatoire, Cherubini, butmore with an eye to a less ephemeral readership, Berlioz removed thesedarts and barbs in the Treatise itself. The sixteen articles also lack any ref-erence to his own compositions, except in the anonymous form a recentsymphony, a certain Requiem and so forth.Whether he had all along planned to assemble the articles into a largervolume on the lines of Kastners two books is unclear, although the seriali-sationof books was a commonpublishing practice of the time. Encouragedperhaps by the publication of the articles in Italian in the Gazzetta musicaledi Milano, he proceeded immediately to fashion them into the full-blownTreatise. He wrote in August 1842:11Cg, 2, p. 705.Preface xixI am just nishing a Grand trait e dinstrumentation which will be reasonablyprotable, I hope. It will ll a gap in instruction books and I have beenurged by many people to undertake it. My articles in the Gazette musicaleonly scratched the surface, they were just the bloom on the rose. Now I haveto go over it all and do the foundation work, taking care of all the littletechnical details.12He found a publisher, Georges Schonenberger, who had not publishedanything by Berlioz before, but who was known rather for his scores of op-eras by Rossini and Donizetti. Schonenberger offered Berlioz 2500 francsfor the book, or 5000 francs if he could get two hundred subscribers inadvance, and the last months of 1842 were devoted to putting the nishingtouches to the book and attempting to secure simultaneous publicationabroad, as well as preparing for his rst extended foreign tour. Schonen-bergers advance of 2500 francs was essential to pay for the expenses of thetour.13Just before leaving for Germany Berlioz met the great naturalist Alexan-der von Humboldt, who smoothed the path for his coming concerts inBerlin. It was evidently Humboldt who suggested offering the dedicationof the Treatise to Friedrich-Wilhelm, King of Prussia. The King did indeedreceive Berlioz with enthusiasm, both on this visit and again in 1847, andhe rewarded the dedication with a gold snuff-box and a gold medal. Al-though Berliozs principal purpose in going to Germany was to take hismusic to a wider audience, he was also anxious to learnwhat he couldaboutthe state of instrumental playing and teaching. He had also secured fromthe Minister of the Interior a commission to report on German musicalinstitutions, and his report gave due attention to the state of instrumentalplaying in different cities.14He wrote a series of articles about the trip forthe Journal des d ebats, presented inthe formof letters to his friends and laterassembled in the Memoirs under the title Travels in Germany I, and thesegive a great deal of space to the new valve system for brass instruments,Parish Alvarss technique on the harp, the various talents of the Stuttgartorchestra, the sticks used by timpanists, the quality of the cymbals, thescarcity of cors anglais and so on. This section of the Memoirs is an essentialadjunct to the Treatise, being written at a time when his thoughts were fullof mutes, embouchures, trills and the latest orchestral gadgets.12Ibid., pp. 7267.13Cg, 3, p. 112. Cg 3 provides most of the information about the publication of the Treatise. InDecember 1842 (Cg, 3, p. 36) Berlioz said he would lose 2500 francs if 200 subscribers were not found,while in February 1844 (Cg, 3, p. 163) the gure is 1500 francs, perhaps reduced because publicationwas nearly a year late. On 2 January 1843 the Neue Zeitschrift f ur Musik reported that Berlioz had soldthe Treatise for 10,000 francs.14Peter Bloom, La mission de Berlioz en Allemagne: un document in edit, Revue de musicologie, 66(1980), pp. 7085.1LettertoHumbertFerrandof12June1843,seekingsubscriptionstothepublicationoftheTreatise.Preface xxiHe found, consequently, that on his return to Paris in May 1843 a gooddeal neededto be changedinthe proofs of the Treatise, especially inthe sec-tions on the harp, the horn, the trumpet and the cornet. Berlioz reportedworking through six sets of proofs, one of which, now in the Biblioth` equede Grenoble, gives ample evidence of his late revisions to the text.15Thesewere no doubt one cause of the delay in publication, together with thenecessity to coordinate the German edition (translated by J. C. Gr unbaumand published by Schlesinger, Berlin) and the Italianedition(translated byAlberto Mazzucato and published by Ricordi, Milan). The English edition(translated by George Osborne and published by Addison and Beale, Lon-don) never materialised, nor did the Russian edition for which Berlioz hadhoped.16A set of proof pages of the French edition with many autographcorrections was given to Spontini, probably in November 1843, and on the24th of that month Berlioz gave a copy to Stephen Heller, still bearingsome last-minute corrections.17On 23 December a clean bound copy wasgiven to Meyerbeer, who was charged with transporting two further copiesto Berlin, one for the Berlin Academy and one for the King of Prussia.18This rst French edition is often referred to as the 1843 edition, but al-thoughit was certainly printedinthat year Schonenberger didnot put it onsale until 1 March 1844, two weeks before the date by which two hundredsubscribers were to have been found. Whether that number was reachedis not known. It was published with the opus number 10.19The Treatise was laid out in large format and execrably printed. An es-sential part of Berliozs plan was to include a great number of excerptsin full score by Gluck, Beethoven, Weber and others, and he also printeda number of passages from his own scores, most of them unpublished atthe time. While the pages of engraved music are elegant enough, Berliozsprose is set out on lines over eight inches long with innumerable misprintsand typographical blemishes of many kinds. Many of these survive in laterissues from the same plates. Paragraphing and layout were crudely exe-cuted, and the German edition, which printed both French and Germantexts inparallel columns, had a distinct advantage inphysical make-up overthe French edition, even though it included some unauthorised extractsfrom Haydn and Mendelssohn of which Berlioz did not approve.2015Biblioth` eque de Grenoble, Vh 1036 R es., is a set of proofs lacking the chapter on voices and heavilycorrected by Berlioz. Vh 1960 R es. in the same library is a copy of the 1844 edition with annotationsin many hands (including Berliozs) evidently prepared for an English translator, perhaps GeorgeOsborne or Mary Cowden Clarke.16Cg, 2, p. 730.17Cg, 3, p. 143. The Spontini copy was formerly in the Cortot collection and has recently beenoffered for sale; it bears many more autograph corrections than the Heller copy (British Library,Hirsch Collection) and must be earlier by a few weeks.18Ibid., p. 146. Meyerbeers copy is in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.19For a list of editions of the Treatise, see the Bibliography.20Cg, 5, pp. 1834.xxii PrefaceThe Treatise received very little notice in the press, although the Journaldes d ebats published Spontinis ofcial report on the book for the Acad emiedes Beaux-Arts. Its success was to be in the long rather than the short term.But it established Berliozs reputation as an authority on instruments, re-inforced by the thorough attention he gave to instruments shown at theIndustrial Exhibitions of 1844 and 1849 and by his espousal of the workof two successful manufacturers, Edouard Alexandre and Adolphe Sax.The latter was at the peak of his brilliant inventive career, and throughoutthe 1840s was revolutionising the design and manufacture of wind instru-ments. Berlioz gave his constant support, with enthusiastic articles on thesaxophone, the saxhorn, Saxs proposals for reorganising French militarybands, and his contribution to the sensational offstage music at the Op erafrom1847 on. Berlioz was happily not drawn into the series of lawsuits thatplagued Saxs career. Less controversial but equally successful was the rmof Alexandre et ls, whose keyboard instruments, particularly the orgue-m elodium, gured repeatedly in Berliozs writings. This association seemsto have been a direct result of the appearance of the Treatise in 1844, anda close friendship with Edouard Alexandre was sustained to the end ofBerliozs life.In 1848 there appeared ve articles under the title Voyage musicalen Boh` eme, later to be recast as Travels in Germany II in the Memoirs.WithinBerliozs account of his visit toPrague in1846he set out his thoughtson the proper curriculum of a conservatoire. Since orchestration was highon his list of priorities, he included an important text which should be readin conjunction with the Treatise and which might have served as a prefaceto its second edition:Another subject yet to be included in the syllabus of any existing conser-vatoire one which to my mind is becoming more necessary every day isinstrumentation. This branchof the composers art has made great strides inthe last few years and its achievements have attracted the attention of criticsand public. It has also served with certain composers as a means of fakinginspiration and concealing poverty of invention beneath a show of energy.Even with undeniably serious and gifted composers it has become a pre-text for wanton outrages against good sense and moderation, so you canimagine what excesses their example has led to in the hands of imitators.These very excesses are a measure of the practice, or malpractice, of instru-mentation, which is for the most part mere whistling in the dark with blindroutine to guide it, when it is not sheer accident. For it does not followthat because the modern composer habitually employs a far larger numberof instruments than his predecessors he is any more knowledgeable abouttheir character, their capacity and mechanism and the various afnities andrelationships that exist between them. Far from it: there are eminent com-posers so fundamentally ignorant of the science that they could not even tellyou the range of some of the instruments. I know from my own experiencePreface xxiiiof one to whom the compass of the ute was an undisclosed mystery. Ofbrass instruments and the trombone in particular they have only the mostshadowy notion; you can see this from the way most modern scores, just asin the old days, cling to the middle register of these instruments and avoidtaking them high or low, simply because the composer, not knowing theirexact compass, is afraid of overstepping it; as he has no inkling of what canbe done with the notes at either end of the scale, he leaves them strictlyalone. Instrumentation today is like a foreign language which has becomefashionable. Many affect to speak it without having learnt to do so; conse-quently they speak it without understanding it properly and with a liberaladmixture of barbarisms.21Berlioz was then an obvious choice as a French Government represen-tative on the jury appointed to judge musical instruments at the GreatExhibition in London in 1851, and he served in the same capacity at theParis Exposition Universelle in 1855. Earlier that year, 1855, when Berliozwas in London for some concerts, he was approached by Alfred Novellowith a proposal for an essay on the art of conducting. It was agreed that thiswould be an extra chapter to be appended to a revised and enlarged edi-tion of the Treatise translated into English. He wrote the essay immediatelyon his return to Paris and sent it to Novello in September 1855 along witha section on new instruments (chapter 13) and some revisions in the maintext. The book was translated by Novellos sister, Mary Cowden Clarke, andpublished by Novello & Co in May 1856. This was a very successful publica-tion, going into a second edition in 1858 and remaining in print well intothe twentieth century. The essay on conducting was serialised in Novelloshouse journal, the Musical Times, between May and August 1856.Berlioz also persuaded Schonenberger to issue a revised second editionin French, with the extra chapters on new instruments and on conducting(chapters 13 and 15), and this appeared at the end of 1855.22The chap-ter on new instruments, which owed much to his friendship with Sax,Alexandre and Kastner, appeared also in the Journal des d ebats on12 January 1856 as part of Berliozs report of the Exposition Universelle;indeed it was his work on that jury that gave him the opportunity tostudy the latest instrumental inventions. The chapter on conducting, Lechef dorchestre: th eorie de son art, was serialised in the Revue et gazettemusicale between 6 January and 2 March 1856, and it was also issuedby Schonenberger as a separate booklet. Lemoine et ls, who acquiredSchonenbergers catalogue in 1862, have reissued the second edition ofthe Treatise at intervals to this day.21Memoirs, Travels in Germany, II/6.22In a letter of 9 January 1856 Berlioz implied that the second edition of the Treatise had beenpublished for some time (Cg, 4, p. 239) and it has always been referred to as the 1855 edition.A footnote in the Rgm of 6 January 1856, however, says that it is due to appear shortly.xxiv Preface2 La revue et gazette musicale, 20 January 1856, the rst serialisation of Le chef d orchestre.Ricordi revised and reissued the Italian edition, and the German trans-lation was similarly revised and reissued by Schlesinger of Berlin; theconducting essay was also separately issued under the title Der Orchester-Dirigent. In 1864 Gustav Heinze of Leipzig published a new GermanPreface xxvtranslation by Alfred D orffel under the title Instrumentationslehre which in-cludes a preface in German signed by Berlioz but in fact written by RichardPohl.23Numerous editions were issued by Heinze and his successor Peters,and in 1904 Peters issued it with Strausss additional notes and examples.Strausss purpose was to study Wagners orchestration as the natural culmi-nation of Berliozs work in this sphere, with a few examples also from hisown scores. Berlioz himself would have found this wholly unintelligible,since his own sound world was far from Wagners and since his expositionof the art of orchestrationwas backward-looking (to Gluck and Beethoven)rather than modern, despite the Treatises title. Strausss edition has beenreprinted a number of times. It was translated into French by Ernest Clos-son in 1909, into Russian in 1912, and into English in 1948 by TheodoreFront, published in New York by Edwin F. Kalmus and later reprinted byDover Publications.other treatisesKastners and Berliozs treatises were the most comprehensive textbookson orchestration that had then been published, but they were not therst.24In two articles in the Gazette musicale in 1834 (2 and 23 March)Joseph Mainzer declared that he could nd no textbook in Germany orFrance that would give instruction in the ranges of individual instrumentsor their characters and idiosyncrasies. Pointing out that instrumentationwas an important aspect of music with a signicant history, he felt the timewas ripe for such a textbook and announced that he himself was aboutto write one in order to spare composers the laborious task of gleaningsuch information from the numerous tutors and methods published forindividual instruments, the product of the Conservatoires early policy ofwidening the scope of public musical instruction. In fact there had beenseveral such books, including a useful handbook published in 1813 byAlexandre Choron, the Trait e g en eral des voix et des instruments dorchestre,based on Louis-Joseph Francurs Diapason g en eral de tous les instruments` a vent of 1772. This was in turn based in part on Valentin Rsers Essaidinstruction of 1764. Rser was mainly concerned with explaining how touse the two recent additions to the orchestra, the clarinet and the horn,while Francurs eight chapters discuss in turn the ute, the oboe, theclarinet, the horn, the bassoon, the trumpet, the serpent and the humanvoice. This last section is an interesting anticipation of Berliozs chapter23Cg, 6, p. 511.24For orchestration treatises before Berlioz, see Adam Carse, Text-books on orchestration beforeBerlioz, Music and Letters, 22 (1941), pp. 2631; and Hans Bartenstein, Die fr uhen Instrumentations-lehren bis zu Berlioz, Archiv f ur Musikwissenschaft, 28 (1971), pp. 97118.xxvi Prefaceon voices, while the strings are assumed to be too familiar to need any at-tention. A similar book came from Othon-Joseph Vandenbroek, a Flemishhorn player active for many years in the Paris Op era orchestra. His Trait eg en eral de tous les instrumens ` a vent ` a lusage des compositeurs (Paris, 1793) gaveparticular attention to the horn but also covered other wind instrumentsand timpani too.Chorons 1813 treatise is likewise principally concerned with wind in-struments. He set out the range of each, with useful indications of whichnotes of the range are weak or difcult or out of tune, which keys suitwhich instrument, which trills are possible and what kind of phrase hasto be avoided at quick tempos. Strings are very briey summarised, withsections also on keyboard instruments and voices.It is not certain that Berlioz knew Chorons treatise, but it is probable,for it anticipates many of his principal concerns, even though it was out ofdate by the time he came to write on the same subject himself. We shouldexpect him, though, to have been familiar with the Cours de compositionmusicale (probably published in 181618) by Antoine Reicha, his counter-point teacher at the Conservatoire. In his Memoirs Berlioz said that neitherof his teachers, Reicha nor Le Sueur, taught him anything about orches-tration and of Reicha he even said that he knew the individual scope andpossibilities of most of the wind instruments, but I do not think he hadmore than rudimentary ideas about grouping them in varying numbersand combinations.25In fact part of Reichas textbook is devoted to or-chestration and is far more concerned with orchestral combinations thanwith the properties of single instruments. His conception of the orchestraas a large instrument upon which the composer plays is so close to Berliozsown that we have to conclude that Berlioz had never read it, otherwise hewould surely have had something more positive to say.26In about 1832 a little handbook appeared, almost unnoticed. This wasDes voix et des instrumens ` a cordes ` a vent et ` a percussion, ouvrage ` a lusage despersonnes qui veulent ecrire la partition et arranger des morceaux en harmonie byJoseph Catrufo. When Kastners Trait e g en eral dinstrumentation appearedin 1837, it did not mention Francur, Choron or Catrufo, nor did F etis inhis Manuel des compositeurs, directeurs de musique, chefs dorchestre & de musiquemilitaire, which appeared in the same year. Both Kastners and F etiss bookswere designed to equip their readers with a brief but full body of informa-tion on the nature and range of instruments. Kastner directed his workespecially towards young composers and was the more comprehensive ofthe two; F etis had conductors principally in mind. Both writers were volu-minously productive on all theoretical and historical aspects of music andthese two works exemplify their methods well.25Memoirs, chapter 13.26David Charlton, Orchestration and Orchestral Practice in Paris, 17891810 (Ph.D. diss.,Cambridge, 1973), pp. 356.Preface xxviiKastner declared he had been urged to undertake the work by Bertonand Reicha, and he conrmed his aim of giving with precision and brevitythe fundamental information about every instrument, including manyoddities for which Kastner obviously felt strong sympathy. Thus, besidesthe voices and all the standard strings, wind and percussion of his day histreatise lists the viola di sparla, the d ecacorde, the gussel ou gusli andthe a eolodicon, not to mention many other inventors brainchildren thatnever even looked like winning admirers or users. Nonetheless his work isprecise and painstakingly informative. He makes scarcely any reference toparticular examples of instruments use, but lists all available M ethodesfor individual instruments, works from which he had compiled his maininformation.F etiss book is brief but purposeful. No classic or contemporary worksare referred to and there is a certain disregard for the niceties of instru-mental practice of which Kastner was so fond. His advice to conductorsabout how to audition, tune, rehearse, arrange and organise an orchestrawas timely and characteristic. Berlioz would have allowed himself a smileon reading the chapter Du respect du directeur de musique ou du chefdorchestre pour les uvres des compositeurs, having roundly lambastedF etis in Le retour ` a la vie (later named L elio) in 1832 for distorting the worksof great composers. Of Berliozs familiarity with F etiss book we have norecord. It was reviewed in the Revue et gazette musicale not by Berlioz but bythe violinist Panofka.Kastner followed up his Trait e with a companion volume, Coursdinstrumentation, in 1839. Its purpose was to show the application of theknowledge set out inthe Trait e, that is to say to give instructioninthe choiceof instruments for particular effects and occasions. He gives a summary his-tory of the art of instrumentation and statistics on the composition of thebest orchestras (Paris, Stuttgart, Darmstadt), and assesses the character ofindividual instruments with well-known examples of their use by recentcomposers. The layout of scores and the use of mutes, pizzicato and spe-cial effects are also discussed. Half the book gives examples in full score ofwhat Kastner regarded as the best models for a young composer: extractsfrom operas by Gluck, Mozart, Meyerbeer and Berton, from choral musicby Cherubini and Berlioz (the Requiem), and from Beethoven symphoniesand other works. This is the book which, we may suppose, inspired Berlioztowrite his owntreatise. Kastner later issuedsupplements tobothhis books,both supplements appearing in 1844 at the same time as Berliozs Treatise.Curiously parallel to Berliozs Treatise is a remarkable and little knownpublication by a German musician, Ferdinand Ganer (17981851),Hofmusikdirektor of the Baden Kapelle in Karlsruhe. He was a worthythough unremarkable musician at a time when other German cities mightclaim their musical leadership in the hands of such men as Mendelssohn,Schumann, Hiller or Liszt. Ganers preoccupations were similar toxxviii PrefaceBerliozs, and his publications were, like his date of birth, just a few yearsahead. In 1838 there were published in Karlsruhe the two volumes ofhis Partiturkenntnis, ein Leitfaden zum Selbstunterrichte f ur angehende Tonsetzeroder solche, welche Arrangiren, Partiturlesen lernen oder sich zu Dirigenten vonOrchesternoder Milit armusik bildenwollen, inwhichthe families of instrumentsand their individual members are set out and discussed in turn, furnishedwith details of range, tonal variation, exibility and character, and accom-panied by musical examples drawn from the works of Mozart, Boieldieu,Winter, Meyerbeer, Rossini and others. He was much concerned with in-strumental colour and character and with matching sound to its expressivepurpose, and although his book inevitably lacks Berliozs wit and strongsense of personal mission, it is certainly as comprehensive and humaneas his.There is no evidence that Berlioz ever met Ganer or came across hiswork. Having no German he could not read it (it did not appear in Frenchuntil 1851). Anuncanny parallel is provided by Ganers follow-up publica-tion, a book, indeed probably the rst book, on the technique of conduct-ing. Dirigent und Ripienist was published in Karlsruhe in 1844, an extremelycomprehensive handbook on all the practicalities of the conductors trade:how to select programmes, prepare pieces for performance, organise re-hearsals, deal with hostile and incompetent performers, set the orches-tra out on the platform and get them tuned up. He then deals withtempo, expression and ensemble, and describes the correct baton move-ments, though without the diagrams that are such a picturesque featureof Berliozs conducting essay. Ganer then appends a series of sixteen dia-grams showing platform arrangements adopted by orchestras in differentGerman institutions, a precious guide to the practices of that age.After Berlioz there continued to appear new textbooks on orches-tration. In French the rst important example was the Trait e g en eraldinstrumentation by Fran cois-Auguste Gevaert (Ghent, 1863), translatedinto Russian by Tchaikovsky in 1865 and revised as the Nouveau trait edinstrumentation in 1885. Ernest Guirauds modest volume, Trait e pratiquedinstrumentation, appeared in 1892, the year of his death. Charles-MarieWidors more substantial and inuential textbook, Technique de lorchestremoderne, appeared in 1904 with many subsequent editions. In his prefaceWidor paidhis respects to Berliozs treatise andclaimedto be merely bring-ing that work up to date: The present work is simply a sequel to a workwhich deserves the most religious respect and to which we do not aspire.Strausss Instrumentationslehre (1904) was, as we have seen, an adaptationof Berliozs work for modern German composers, while Rimsky-Korsakovsposthumous treatise Osnov orkestrovki (St Petersburg, 1913) used his ownworks exclusively as models for imitation. Among the many orchestrationtextbooks published in the twentieth century those by Cecil Forsyth (1914)Preface xxixand Walter Piston (1955) have been most widely read in the English-speaking world, while French readers have relied mostly on Widors trea-tise, Bussers enlargement of Guirauds Trait e pratique dinstrumentation(Paris, 1933) and Kchlins four-volume Trait e de lorchestration (writtenin 193943 but not published until 19549).themes and ideasThe Treatise is a judicious mixture of technical detail, sometimes set out atlength, and personal views about instruments and composers. The techni-cal information has been assembled with great care, the fruit of consultingmany M ethodes and textbooks and of buttonholing friends whose expertiseBerlioz could trust. Surviving letters to the autist Coche, to the author-ity on the viola damore Johann Kral and to the violin-maker Vuillaumeattest to Berliozs search for authoritative information.27The complexityof brass instruments of the day almost certainly required Saxs advice, andhis magnicent exposition of the trombone and its uses seems to have hadinside help, perhaps from Dieppo, the leading trombonist of the age. Hewas fully aware of a precept stated clearly twice in the guitar section: thatonly a player of the instrument can write for it (and, by implication, aboutit) with competence.Yet he was capable of error, even when writing about his own instrument,the guitar, andwe shouldapproachthe sections onthe violinandthe piano,for example, withcautionsince he hadnopersonal expertise todrawupon.The violin entry is unusually full, fromthe technical point of view. It coverstuning, range, trills, double-stopping and chords, tremolo, subdivision,bowing, harmonics, mutes, sul ponticello, pizzicato, sul G, sul D and muchelse. Yet some of the suggestions about harmonics, for example, would bemisleading for a novice composer, and Berlioz was cautious enough not tofollow his own advice. His understanding of both piano and organ pedalswas seriously adrift, and he sometimes mixes up the right and left hands.He was obsessively concerned with the transpositions of wind instrumentsand explained the subject, sometimes at extraordinary length, evidentlybecause he found players and composers to be woefully ignorant of it.Since current practice was changing rapidly as he wrote, particularly inthe case of the cornet, his advice is sometimes breathless, as if the wholetopic was getting too complex for a mere treatise to deal with.Pursuing his goal to study instruments which are used in modern musiche deals comprehensively with all the strings, woodwind, brass and percus-sionthenavailable inFrance. Without being sidetracked, as Kastner was, by27Cg, 2, p. 706; Cg, 5, pp. 134, 137.xxx Prefacethe crazy inventions that proliferated at that time, Berlioz gives due spaceto the most important advances, in particular the double-action harp, theapplication of valves to brass instruments, the bass clarinet, the tuba andSaxs newfamilies of brass instruments, includingthe saxophone. He seemsnot to have been aware of the organ swell-box or of advances in machine-tuned timpani, both of which would probably have been to his liking. Heincluded the concertina even though he cannot possibly have seen it asan orchestral instrument, and he gives space to several obsolescent instru-ments such as the tenoroon and the bugle for which he never had any usehimself; in fact he despised the bugle as t only to lead conscripts out tothe parade ground, and even then he feels sorry for any soldier who issubjected to it.In his choice of excerpts Berlioz is much less forward-looking. The pas-sages that he cites from the Requiem and Rom eo et Juliette illustrate an ad-vanced orchestral style (curiously, he never even mentions Harold en Italieor Benvenuto Cellini, both of which could have provided abundant illustra-tions of his points), yet the predominance of passages from Gluck, whohad been dead for nearly sixty years when theTreatise was written, con-tradicts his claim to be propounding modern orchestration. This is whatSaint-Sa ens meant when he spoke of it as a paradoxical book. Sacchiniand Spontini, whose music was already almost forgotten, are cited withapproval. Beethoven and Weber were familiar but no longer modern.Strausss insertion of extracts from Wagner and from his own works gavethe Treatise an even more unbalanced air. But Gluck was the model fromwhich Berlioz learnt his orchestral sensibility and this, he would assert, wasnot subject to the vagaries of fashion or mechanical science. Berliozs idealwas to apply Glucks incomparable sense of dramatic aptness to moderninstruments, an ideal most clearly embodied in Les Troyens, with its veryGluckian dramatic tone and brilliant modern orchestration.There is another sense in which Berliozs craft is modern. At certainpoints in the book he advocates techniques for getting effects from in-struments which in practice deceive the listener. Somewhere between theeighteenth century, when orchestration was still the art of part-writing, giv-ing instruments self-contained and intelligible things to do, and the earlytwentieth century, when, as in Ravel for example, the art of disguising oneinstrument as another and cleverly dovetailing two lines to sound like onewas nely developed, composers began to manipulate instruments as partsin a great machine, not as voices in a choir. The milestone is perhaps theSymphonie fantastique and the curious passage at the end of the rst move-ment where Berlioz subdivides the violins for a passage in constant quavermovement played forte against the full tutti of the wind. He judged the pas-sagework to be too risky for the players to play all the notes, so he split itinto two parts to obtain a more secure performance. But because the rstPreface xxxiand second violins are seated at opposite sides of the orchestra it would bespatially very uneven to divide this passage between the rsts and seconds.So he divided both rsts and seconds; four lines of music thus give the ef-fect of a unison line (see Ex. 25, p. 28). This was certainly a new conceptof orchestration, manipulating the allocation of notes to create an effectunperceived by the players themselves. The distribution of the notes of amelody between two or three horns or trumpets crooked in different keyswas also a device serving the same end and one which he advocated withenthusiasm and practised widely in his scores.Although Berliozs music was regarded as audaciously advanced by manycritics of his time, he was never much interested in the concept of moder-nity for its own sake. His sense of the future was tinged with idealism andimpracticable fantasy. He would have liked to assemble, as he explains inthe chapter on the orchestra, a huge festival ensemble including thirtypianos, thirty harps and a whole section of violas damore. His utopianismhere (and in the story Euphonia in Les soir ees de lorchestre) presumedthat he would have the controlling authority over such vast forces. He wasdriven to despair by the inefciency and ill-will of many with whom he hadto work (as we read in the last chapters of the Memoirs) and an author-itarian strain creeps into his views on conducting. It is hard to imaginean orchestra today taking kindly to his suggestion that players who fail tocount their bars should be ned and that a whole section of players shouldpay for those who habitually offend. On the other hand many conductorswill be sympathetic to his view that lazy players who cannot be bothered todo tremolos at the proper speed should be red.Behind his idealism and his earnest endeavour to infuse in the reader aproper respect for the high craft of orchestration lies the humour that isnever absent fromhis writings. The Treatise is not a funny book on the scaleof Les soir ees de lorchestre, Les grotesques de la musique or even the Memoirs, butthere are frequent glimpses of Berliozs habitual humour that raise a smileand lighten the pedagogy. As always, it is tinged with irony, even pain. Hisevocationof tenth-rate choral conductors (inthe chapter onconducting) isabsurdly funny, yet for Berlioz it recalled many bitter experiences which hewould gladly have done without. Much more appealing are those passageswhere he nds an excuse for leaping tangentially on to one of his favouritehobby-horses and riding it with fury as far as it will go. Such a passage is thepassionate sermon, prompted by his discussion of pedalling in the chapteronthe piano, ontreatingthe works of other composers withproper respect.Such a passage is the extraordinary essay on chromatic harmony to befound in, of all places, the section on the concertina; indeed one suspectsthat Berlioz wrote about the concertina solely in order to be able to airthese views. Less surprising is the homily on the proper style of churchmusic to be found in the chapter on the organ.xxxii PrefaceBerlioz moves us most when he gets carried away by his passion forthe subject. The whole Treatise betrays a feverish enthusiasm for the art oforchestration as though no one had ever discovered it before. We sensehis deep involvement in it similar to the absorption he described whencomposing works like Rom eo et Juliette and Les Troyens. He gave it an opusnumber as if it were to be considered one of his musical works and it is noless personal, despite its wealth of technical detail, than they. There arefew passages in all his writing to compare with his evocation of the nobilityof the trombone, for example, or the miraculous page where the merethought of how Weber used the clarinet in the overture to Der Freisch utzdraws out an exclamation of admiration so deeply felt that under the stressof emotionthe penseems to fall fromhis hand. This spirit alone will ensurethat the Treatise will be read as long as Berliozs music is played and as longas the music of his age still retains its power to enthrall us.A note on the editionBerliozs text is printed in larger type than the commentary, which breaksinto the text at intervals. The text is that of the second (1855) edition, withalternative texts from the 18412 articles in the Revue et gazette musicale(the Rgm text), from the 1843 proofs, and from the rst (1844) editionshown in the commentary. A full critical edition of the Treatise will shortlybe published by B arenreiter-Verlag, edited by Peter Bloom, as Volume 24of the New Berlioz Edition, to which the reader is referred for further textualcommentary. The present work has proted greatly from that endeavourand from an abundant exchange of information and ideas with its editor.An Appendix lists Berliozs principal writings on instruments and or-chestration, and the Bibliography gives details of the Treatises publication.The chapters of the Treatise were numbered 16 as follows:1 On the families of instruments, from Every sounding body . . . .2 The violin3 The viola4 The viola damore5 The cello6 The double bassThereafter there are no more chapter numbers, although there are head-ings for the main divisions and for separate instruments. The present edi-tion has divided the Treatise into an introduction and fteen chapters, withsubsidiary section headings.Under the umbrella of translation I have exercised considerable edi-torial licence in selecting and adapting the many musical excerpts whichBerlioz included in the Treatise. The commentary makes abundant refer-ence to Berliozs own works, so I have presumed that the reader has accessto his music, preferably in the New Berlioz Edition. In many cases I havenot included the longer passages from his own works which he printed,nor, for similar reasons, some substantial passages from Beethovens andMozarts works. The modern reader has much easier access to scores ofxxxiiixxxiv A note on the editionMozarts operas and Beethovens symphonies (not to mention recordings)thanBerliozs readers wouldhave had. Inthe case of Gluck, I have includedat least a part of most of the passages he refers to. Many excerpts have beenreducedto focus onthe orchestral point that Berlioz wishedto illustrate. Incompensation I have excerpted a number of works, by Sacchini, Spontiniand Weber, for example, which Berlioz mentioned but did not print. Insome cases where Berlioz seems to have been quoting music frommemoryI have revised his text to match the composers. Readers who seek the fulltexts of the Treatise are again referred to Blooms edition.The musical examples inthe text (some of whichamount to fragmentarycompositions) have been grouped in sets where there is some advantage indoing so. Inmany cases where Berlioz usedmusical notationto indicate therange of aninstrument or evenindividual notes these are here representedwith a modied version of Helmholtzs pitch notation, as used in The NewGrove and the New Berlioz Edition: middle C is c

, with octaves above as c

,c

, etc and octaves below as c, C, C

etc (see Abbreviations, p. xxxix).Specic pitches are shown in italic; pitch classes in roman capital letters.References to Berliozs music in the commentary are given in the formNBE 9: 26 (i.e. New Berlioz Edition, volume 9, page 26) when the work hasappeared in the NBE series, or in the form B&H 4: 43 (i.e. Breitkopf undH artel collected edition of Berlioz, volume 4, page 43) when the work hasnot yet appeared in the NBE. The rst category includes:NBE 1a1c Benvenuto Cellini2a2c Les Troyens3 B eatrice et B en edict5 Huit sc`enes de Faust6 Prix de Rome works7 L elio8a8b La damnation de Faust9 Grande messe des morts10 Te deum11 Lenfance du Christ12a12b Choral works13 Songs with orchestra14 Choral works with keyboard16 Symphonie fantastique17 Harold en Italie18 Rom eo et Juliette19 Grande symphonie fun`ebre et triomphale20 Overtures23 Messe solennelleA note on the edition xxxvThe Breitkopf und H artel edition is referred to principally for:B&H 4 Overture Les francs-juges18 ArrangementsWorks which have not yet been published in either series are without ref-erence pages, but the reader will nd bibliographical information abouttheir sources in Holoman, Catalogue. These include the incomplete operasLes francs-juges and La nonne sanglante, and Berliozs orchestration ofMeyers Marche marocaine.A note on the translationFor Berlioz the terminstrumentation came more easily tohis penthanthenewer-sounding orchestration, just as orchestration is a more familiarEnglish word than instrumentation. Both appear in Berliozs title, al-though he did not expound the difference between them. Mindful ofRavels insistence that the two terms are entirely different, I have retainedinstrumentation for instrumentation and orchestration for orchestra-tion throughout.I have also retained pistons and cylinders, since Berlioz was consciousof the difference between themand had no ready generic termfor valves.Only in the discussion of the valve trombone have I used this English term,where the distinction between pistons and cylinders is not at issue.All passages quoted from Berliozs Memoirs are cited in David Cairnsstranslation, with permission (The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, Cardinal Edition,London 1990).A translator must labour under Berliozs repeated rebuke. To Lvov,1 August 1845: Translators are all traitors; the Italian proverb is assuredlytrue. To Wagner, 10 September 1855: The ower of expression alwaysfades beneaththe weight of translation, however delicately it may be done.In A travers chants: Translators: the most perdious people in the world.To Ferrand, 28 October 1864: Translators are such asses! He even warnedthe rst English translator of the Treatise, Mary Cowden Clarke: It is verydifcult to transfer this into another language with clarity.xxxviAcknowledgmentsAgreat many friends and colleagues have provided information and kindlyanswered my questions. I would particularly like to thank the following:Anna Amalie Abert, Paul Banks, Hans Bartenstein, Elizabeth Bartlet, Jean-Pierre Bartoli, Diana Bickley, Peter Bloom, Clive Brown, David Cairns,Stuart Campbell, Stewart Carter, David Charlton, Pierre Citron, DonnaDi Grazia, Katharine Ellis, Jo el-Marie Fauquet, Annegret Fauser, JohnEliot Gardiner, Kern Holoman, Wally Horwood, Ian Kemp, Michel Noiray,Kathryn Puffett, Alan Rosenkoetter, Albi Rosenthal, Ian Rumbold, KenShifrin, Mary Jean Speare, John Stewart, Robin Stowell, Sue Sutherley,Sue Taylor, Ruzena Wood and Hon-Lun Yang. I am particularly grateful toRichard Macnutt for help with the illustrations. To the Oxford UniversityOrchestra I am indebted for a ne copy of Le chef dorchestre inscribed byBerlioz.This book is published with assistance from the Dragan PlamenacPublication Endowment Fund of the American Musicological Society.xxxviiAbbreviationsB&H Hector Berlioz, Werke, ed. Charles Malherbeand Felix Weingartner (Leipzig, 19007)Cairns, Berlioz David Cairns, Berlioz, the Making of an Artist(London, 1989)Cg, 17 Hector Berlioz, Correspondance g en erale,ed. Pierre Citron (Paris, 19722001)Cm, 1 Hector Berlioz, Critique musicale, 1 (182334)(Paris, 1996)Cm, 2 Hector Berlioz, Critique musicale, 2 (18356)(Paris, 1998)Cm, 3 Hector Berlioz, Critique musicale, 3 (18378)(Paris, 2001)Cond e Hector Berlioz, Cauchemars et passions,ed. G erard Cond e (Paris, 1981)Gluck, Werke Christoph Willibald Gluck, S amtliche Werke(Kassel, 1951 )Gm Gazette musicaleHoloman, Berlioz D. Kern Holoman, Berlioz (Cambridge,Mass., 1989)Holoman, Catalogue D. Kern Holoman, Catalogue of the Works ofHector Berlioz, NBE vol. 25 (Kassel, 1987)Hopkinson Cecil Hopkinson, A Bibliography of the Musicaland Literary Works of Hector Berlioz 18031869,2nd edn, ed. Richard Macnutt (TunbridgeWells, 1980)Jd Journal des d ebatsMemoirs The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, trans. and ed.David Cairns (London, 1969; rev. edn 2002).Because of the great number of editions of thiswork I cite by chapter only. Readers of ErnestNewmans edition are advised that chapterxxxviiiAbbreviations xxxixnumbers above 51 differ from the Frencheditions and from Cairnss translation.NBE New Berlioz Edition, ed. Hugh Macdonald(Kassel, 1967 )Rgm Revue et gazette musicaleLes soir ees de lorchestre Hector Berlioz, uvres litt eraires, ed. L eonGuichard (Paris, 196871)Les grotesques de la musique Ibid.A travers chants Ibid.Pitch notation:C B' C' B c b c' b' c'' b'' c''' b''' c''''The TreatiseIntroductionNever in the history of music has so much been said about instrumen-tation as at the present time. The reason perhaps lies in the very recentdevelopment of this branch of the art and perhaps too in the profusionof criticism, discussion and widely differing opinions held and judgmentspassed, both sane and insane, written and spoken, about even the mosttrivial works of the obscurest composers.Much value seems now to be attached to this art of instrumentation,which was unknown at the beginning of the last century, and whose ad-vancement even sixty years ago faced resistance from numerous so-calledlovers of music. They now do all they can to raise obstacles to musicalprogress elsewhere. Things have always been like that and we should notbe surprised. At one time music was only permitted as a series of con-sonant harmonies interspersed with a few suspended dissonances. WhenMonteverdi tried to introduce the unprepared dominant seventh, scornand abuse was hurled at him. But once this seventh had been accepted asan addition to the repertory of suspended dissonances, it became a pointof honour among those who regarded themselves as musically aware to dis-dain any composition whose harmony was simple, mild, clear-sounding ornatural. They were only content with music stuffed with minor and majorseconds, sevenths, ninths, fths and fourths, applied without any rhymeor reason whatsoever, unless making harmony as unpleasant on the ear aspossible can be said to be a reason. These composers had developed a tastefor dissonant chords, just as certain animals do for salt or prickly plants orthorn-bushes. It was an over-reaction.Beneath all these ne sonorities melody disappeared. When it did ap-pear they all said the art had been cheapened and debased, that hallowedrules had been forgotten, etc, etc. All was lost, evidently. But then melodymade its way and the reaction in favour of melody was not long in coming.There were fanatical melodists who could not endure anything in morethan three parts. Some wanted the solo part to be accompanied most ofthe time just by the bass line, leaving the listener the pleasure of guessing the34 Berliozs Orchestration Treatiselling-out notes of the harmony. Others went even further and opposed anykind of accompaniment whatever, declaring harmony to be an uncivilisedinvention.Then it was modulations turn. In the days when modulation was nor-mally just to closely related keys, the rst person to shift to an unrelatedkey was decried. He should have expected that. Whatever effect this newmodulation had, his superiors criticised it sharply. It was no good ourpioneer saying: Listen to it carefully. Notice how its correctly prepared,well structured, cleverly joined to what precedes and follows it, see what asuperb sound it makes! that s not the point, came the reply. This modulation is for-bidden, so it must not be done.But since on the contrary that is the point, the whole point, modulationsto unrelated keys quickly made their appearance in serious music with re-sults as agreeable as they were unexpected. Almost at once a new pedantrywas born: people felt it was a disgrace to modulate to the dominant andslipped playfully in the most unassuming little rondos from C to F major.Time has restored all these things one by one to their proper place.Force of habit and the reactionary vanity of folly and obstinacy are seenfor what they are, and people are now more generally disposed to acceptthat in harmony, melody and modulation what sounds good is good andwhat sounds bad is bad; not even the authority of a hundred old men, noteven if they were all 120 years old, would make us regard fair as foul orfoul as fair.For instrumentation, expression and rhythm it is a different matter.Their turn to be discovered, rejected, accepted, imprisoned, freed andexaggerated came much later, so they have not yet reached the stage otherbranches of the art reached before them. Instrumentation, let me say, isahead of the other two: it is at the exaggeration stage.It takes a long while to discover the Mediterraneans of music, longer stillto learn to navigate them.Berliozs Introduction invokes history and plunges into a r esum e of historicaltrends too coloured by beliefs and prejudices of his own day to be taken seri-ously as history. A similar historical preface had served to introduce his essay onrhythm provoked by the visit of Johann Strauss p`ere to Paris in November 1837.Monteverdis introduction of the dominant seventh, repeatedly cited by F etis asthe cornerstone of the invention of tonality itself, was also referred to there.1Thedate when the Bohemians rst permitted the use of the unprepared dominantseventh is offered as an example of pointless historical enquiry in the Memoirs.21Jd, 10 November 1837; Cm, 3, p. 332.2Memoirs, Travels in Germany, II/4.Introduction 5Inthe Rgmversionof this passage Berlioz named Rousseau as one who opposedany kind of accompaniment and who declared harmony to be an uncivilisedinvention.Every sounding object employed by the composer is a musical instru-ment. We may thus divide the resources at his disposal in the followingway.1 Stringsa bowed: violin, viola, viola damore, cello, double bassb plucked: harp, guitar, mandolinc with keyboard: piano2 Winda with reeds: oboe, cor anglais, bassoon, tenoroon, contrabassoon,clarinet, basset horn, bass clarinet, saxophoneb without reed: ute, piccoloc with keyboard: organ, melodium, concertinad brass with mouthpiece: horn, trumpet, cornet, bugle, trombone,ophicleide, bombardon, bass tubae woodwind with mouthpiece: Russian bassoon, serpentf voices: men, women, children, castrati3 Percussiona xed, audible pitch: timpani, antique cymbals, jeu de timbres, glock-enspiel, keyboard harmonica, bellsb indeterminate pitch, making noises of different types: side drum,bass drum, tambourine, cymbals, triangle, tamtam, Turkish crescentEvery sounding object employed by the composer is a musical instrument.I wonder if Berlioz would have clung to this maxim if closely questioned on it. Hewas normally less liberal in his approach to composition and orchestration anddid indeed contradict the principle in an essay on imitation in music publishedin 1837:Several composers have made fools of themselves imitating certain noisesby using the very noises themselves in all their anti-musical reality. AnItalian composer, for example, whose name escapes me, wrote a symphonyon the death of Werther and decided he could best imitate the suicidespistol shot by having an actual pistol discharged in the orchestra; this isthe height of absurdity. When M ehul and Weber wanted to render gunre,the one in the overture to Le jeune Henri, the other in the infernal huntingscene in Der Freisch utz, they found the solution in a simple timpani strokecarefully placed without transgressing the rules of their art.33Rgm, 1 January 1837; Cm, 3, p. 5; Cond e, p. 102.6 Berliozs Orchestration TreatiseBerlioz himself then called for a feu de peloton, a volley of musketry, in hisMarche pour la derni`ere sc`ene dHamlet, composed in 1844, to represent the salute tothe dead (NBE 12b: 115). The pistol shot Berlioz referred to was red by GaetanoPugnani when conducting a performance of his twenty-two-movement suite onGoethes Werther in Turin in the 1790s. Pugnani, for realistic effect, conducted inhis shirtsleeves. The story was told by Blangini in his Souvenirs, published in Parisin 1834 and doubtless read by Berlioz. He must also have been aware that Musardused to enliven his Op era balls with pistol shots.In the Rgm version of this passage the order of the string groups was different,namely: plucked, with keyboard, bowed. The lute was included with the otherplucked strings. In the list of wind instruments the Rgm omitted tenoroon, bassclarinet, saxophone, bugle, bombardon, bass tuba and all woodwind with mouth-piece; under 2b it included the ageolet. The melodium and concertina wereadded in 1855. In the list of percussion instruments the Rgm omitted the antiquecymbals, the jeu de timbres, the glockenspiel and the tambourine (although theywere discussed in a later article of the series). The keyboard harmonica was addedin 1855.The use of these various sonorities and their application either to colourthe melody, harmony or rhythm, or to create effects sui generis, with orwithout an expressive purpose and independent of any help from theother three great musical resources, this is the art of instrumentation.From the poetic point of view this art can no more be taught than thewriting of beautiful melodies or beautiful chord progressions or originalor powerful rhythmic patterns. What suits the various instruments best,what is or is not practicable, easy or difcult, mufed or resonant, this canbe taught. One can also say that this or that instrument is more suitablethan another for producing certain effects or certain feelings. When itcomes to combining them in groups, small ensembles or large orchestras,and the art of mixing them in order to modify the sound of one with thatof another and produce from the whole a particular timbre unobtainableon any instrument on its own or with another of its own kind, one can onlypoint to the example of great composers and draw attention to the waythey did it; their practice will doubtless be altered in a thousand differentways for better or for worse by composers who wish to imitate them.The purpose of the present work is rst, therefore, to show the rangeand certain essential details of the mechanism of each instrument, andthento examine the nature of the tone, particular character andexpressivepotential of each a branchof study hithertogreatly neglected andnallyto consider the best known ways of grouping them effectively. Beyond thatwe would be stepping into the domain of inspiration, where only geniusmay make discoveries and where only genius is allowed to tread.1Bowed stringsthe violinThe four strings of the violin are normally tuned in fths, with the fourthstring tuned to g, the third to d

, the second to a

and the rst to e .The top string, the e string, is also known as the chanterelle. When theleft-hand ngers are not modifying the pitch by shortening the portionof string set in motion by the bow, the strings are termed open strings.Notes to be played open are indicated by an o marked above them.Certain great players and composers have not felt under any obligationto tune the violin in this way. Paganini tuned all the strings a semitonehigher, to a, e

, b

and f , to give the instrument more brilliance. Soby transposing the solo part he would be playing in D when the orchestrawas in E, or in A when they were in B, thus keeping most of the stringsopen with their greater sonority without having to apply the ngers. Thiswould not have been possible with normal tuning. De B eriot often tunesthe g string up a tone in his concertos; Baillot, on the other hand, used totune the g string down a semitone for soft, low effects. Winter even usedf instead of g for the same purpose.Paganinis Violin Concerto in E, op. 6, was intended to be played on a violintuned up a semitone; the soloist is thus playing in D (Mozart used the samescordatura for the viola in his Sinfonia concertante, K. 364). This scordatura is alsofound in Paganinis variations on Di tanti palpiti from Rossinis Tancredi.In his Lart du violon(1834) Baillot mentions Paganinis scordatura and also deB eriots tuning, ad

a

e .1He explains his own tuning of the g string to f andhis trick of tuning it slowly down to d while still bowing.The only composition by Peter von Winter (17541825) Berlioz seems to haveknown is Marie von Montalban (Munich, 1800), whose overture he commended in1841.2It does not require any retuning of the g string. Not even in his concertos1Pierre-Marie-Fran cois de Sales Baillot, The Art of the Violin, ed. Louise Goldberg (Evanston, 1991),pp. 41718.2Jd, 11 August 1841.78 Berliozs Orchestration Treatisedoes Winter ever seemto have called for scordatura; Berliozs claimcould be purehearsay, otherwise the remark remains unexplained.In view of the great agility which our young violinists display today, therange that the violin in a good orchestra may be expected to cover is fromg toc

, withall chromatic intervals. The great players adda fewmore notesat the topof the range, andeveninorchestral writing one may obtainmuchhigher pitches by means of harmonics, of which more will be said later.Berlioz respectedc as the violins topnote (except withharmonics, andexceptfor a high d

in Ex. 41b of this Treatise). He reached this on several occasions,for example at bar 472 of the rst movement of the Symphonie fantastique (NBE 16:40) and throughout the Septuor in Act IV of Les Troyens (NBE 2b: 56674).Trills are practicable throughout this vast range of three and a halfoctaves, although one should have due regard for the extreme difcultyof trills on the top a

, b

and c

. My view is that in orchestral writing itwould be prudent not to use them. One should also, if possible, avoid thesemitone trill on the fourth string, from open g to a, this being harsh andrather unpleasant in effect.Chords of two, three or four notes which can be struck or arpeggiated onthe violinare very numerous andquite different ineffect one fromanother.Two-note chords, producedby what is calleddouble-stopping, are suitablefor melodic passages, sustained phrases either loud or soft, also for allkinds of accompaniment and tremolo. Three- and four-note chords, onthe other hand, produce a poor effect when played piano. They only seemrich and strong in forte, otherwise the bow cannot attack the strings withenough impact to make them vibrate simultaneously. Do not forget that ofthese three or four notes two at the most can be sustained, the bow beingcompelled to quit the others as soon as it has struck them. At a moderate orslow tempo it is therefore useless to write Ex. 1a. Only the upper two notescan be sustained, so it would be better in this case to notate the passage asin Ex. 1b.Ex. 1oror(a)(b)All chords contained between low g and d

are obviously impossible,since there is only one string (the g string) with which to produce twoBowed strings 9notes. When you need harmony at this extreme end of the range it canonly be obtained in orchestral music by dividing the violins, shown bythe Italian term divisi or the French terms divis es or ` a deux writtenabove the notes. The violins then divide so that some play the upper part,the others the lower part, as in Ex. 2.Ex. 2divisiAbove d

, the third string, all intervals of a second, third, fourth, fth,sixth, seventh or octave are practicable, except that they get progressivelyharder the further up the top two strings you go:easy progressively harder fromseconds c

d

up to g

a

a

b

upwardsthirds b d

up to f

a

g

b

upwardsfourths ad

up to e

a

f

b

upwardsfths g d

up to e

b

f

c

upwardssixths g e

up to f

d

g

e

upwardssevenths g f up to e

d

f

e

upwardsoctaves g g

up to e

e

f

f

upwardsThe double-stopped unison is sometimes used, but although it can beexecuted on many other notes it is as well to conne its use to the followingthree d

, a

and e since only these are sufciently easy to sound welland produce a variety and strength of sound resulting from the fact thatone of the two strings in each case is open (see Ex. 3a). In other unisons,such as e , f , g

, b

, c

and d

, there is no open string; they are ratherdifcult to play and so are very rarely played in tune.A lower string may cross a higher open string going up the scale whilethe open string acts as a pedal (see Ex. 3b). The d

here remains openwhile the rising scale is played throughout on the fourth string.Intervals of a ninth or tenth are feasible but much less straight-forward than narrower intervals. It is better not to write them at all inorchestral parts unless the lower string is open, in which case there isno risk (see Ex. 3c). Double-stopped leaps requiring large shifts of theleft hand should be avoided, being exceedingly difcult, if not impossible(see Ex. 3d). In general one should not write such leaps unless the uppertwo notes belong to a four-note chord which could be struck as one. Ex.3e is feasible because the chords in Ex. 3f can be struck as single four-note chords. In the next example, Ex. 3g, on the other hand, the fournotes of each group (except the last) could only be played simultaneously10 Berliozs Orchestration Treatisewith some difculty, yet the leap from lower pair to upper pair is actuallystraightforward, the lower two notes being played open and the other twowith the rst and third ngers.Ex. 3(a)(b)(c)(d)(e)(f )(g)The best andmost resonant three-note andparticularly four-note chordsare always those containing the most open strings. In my view, in fact, itis better to make do with a three-note chord if no open string is availablefor a four-note chord. Ex. 4ac sets out the commonest chords. Theseare the most resonant and the least difcult. For all chords marked *it is better to leave out the bottom note and make do with three notes.All these chords are straightforward, provided they follow one another inthis way.Bowed strings 11Ex. 42 3(c)(1)212 (2)14(2)21(2)1332 (1)2(1)2(b)23 33 (a) These can be played as arpeggios, that is to say with each note heard inturn, and the result is often very satisfactory, especially pianissimo (Ex. 5a);yet there are certain arpeggio passages similar to these whose four notescould not be played simultaneously except with great difculty, but whichare playable as arpeggios by passing the rst or second nger across fromthe fourth string to the rst to produce both the bottom and the topnote (Ex. 5b).12 Berliozs Orchestration TreatiseEx. 5(a)2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1(b)If you leave out the top or bottom note of the chord in Ex. 4, you getthe same number of three-note chords. In addition there is the series ofchords obtained by various pitches on the e string above the two middlestrings played open, or by ngering both the e and the a

string above anopen d

(Ex. 6ab). If you need an isolated chord of d minor or D major,you must not use the form given at * in Ex. 6b, since it is too difcult whennot approached by step. Better write it as Ex. 6c, which is easy and moreresonant, with its two open strings.Ex. 6etc.etc. up to(a)(b)(c)It will be seenfromthese examples that all three-note chords are possibleon the violin provided you take care in cases where no open string isavailable to separate the notes by an interval of a fth or a sixth. The sixthcan be the upper or lower interval, or both, as in Ex. 7a. Some three-note chords can be set out in two ways. It is always better to choose theone which uses an open string. Ex. 7b is acceptable; Exx. 7c and 7d arebetter.Ex. 76th6th 6th6th(a) (b) (c) (d)The error shown in Ex. 1a was made by Berlioz in the last bar of the Resurrexitin the Messe solennelle (NBE 23: 186), all three notes of an E chord being markedwith a pause.Bowed strings 13A prominent use of the device shown in Ex. 3a with two strings playing e isfound in Le carnaval romain (NBE 20: 2334), and at bar 63 of the Chant des cheminsde fer (NBE 12b: 15) all the strings except double basses have a double-stringunison d

(or d). In his Memoirs Berlioz commended Meyerbeers introduction ofa two-string unison tremolo d

in Glucks Armide, but later added: I should nothave written that.3The principle illustrated in Ex. 3b is applied in the viola solo part in bar 72 ofthe rst movement of Harold en Italie (NBE 17: 15). Ninths and tenths were usedby Berlioz only with an open string, as shown in Ex. 3c.The three sets of quadruple stops, Exx. 4ac, are none too clearly set out. Inthe rst group Berlioz identies harder chords with an asterisk, whereas the thirdgroup is described as easy in moderate tempo. Chords with no open strings aremarked with asterisks, although the rst two of these are very hard, the next veare easy; then come two requiring the very difcult octave stretch between thirdand fourth ngers, then an easy diminished seventh, followed by a much harderstretch with no asterisk. In the third group the pre-penultimate chord (dominantseventh on a) is far harder than the rest and may have the note a misprinted for g.Berlioz said that he learnt nothing about instrumentation from his teachers,4so he must have learnt these chords from a violinist friend (Ernst perhaps?) orfrom one of the many violin tutors published in France in the early nineteenthcentury.5But the uneven estimate of their difculty is hard to explain.It is also odd that Berlioz offered these as straightforward and suggested theymight be freely used in orchestral music when he never wrote any quadruplestops himself with the single exception of an A major chord for the second violinsin La damnation de Faust (NBE 8a: 111). Triple stops are frequent and nearly allreasonably easy: the hardest are found in the Bacchanale of La mort dOrph ee, thePrix de Rome cantata of 1827 (NBE 6: 4053). Double stops are frequent also;Berlioz implies, by the lack of a divisi marking, that each player should play bothnotes, even though it might be wiser to divide and would be more sonorous. Aparticular case is his writing of double-stopped octaves in orchestral parts, whichwill almost certainly sound stronger if divided. This is found at bar 78 of the Sc`eneaux champs in the Symphonie fantastique (NBE 16: 78), bar 62 of the Marche pour laderni`ere sc`ene dHamlet (NBE 12b: 109), bar 108 of Part I of La damnation de Faust(NBE8a: 19) andat bar 367 of the Sc`ene damour inRom eo et Juliette (NBE18: 177). Inthe solo part of Harold en Italie (rst and third movements) such double-stoppedoctaves have of course a quite different effect.Berliozs use of broken arpeggios of the kind shown in Ex. 5 is found in stormmusic such as the Tempete fantasy in L elio (NBE 7: 89) and in the Chasse royale etorage in Act IV of Les Troyens (NBE 2b: 454). A very problematic example is theaccompaniment to Mephistopheless S er enade in Part III of La damnation de Faust(NBE 8a: 31324), where the second violin and viola parts combine pizzicatoand arpeggio with the instruction Arpeggiate by sliding the thumb over the fourstrings. This is the only example, too, of Berlioz giving string nge