page_title: Orchestration
section_title: Mahler
hierarchical_section_title: Orchestration / Examples from the repertoire / Mahler
caption_attribution_description: English: Mahler, Symphony No. 4, first movement, Figure 5
context_page_description: Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.
  In classical music, composers have historically orchestrated their own music. Only gradually over the course of music history did orchestration come to be regarded as a separate compositional art and profession in itself. In modern classical music, composers almost invariably orchestrate their own work.
  However, in musical theatre, film music and other commercial media, it is customary to use orchestrators and arrangers to one degree or another, since time constraints and/or the level of training of composers may preclude them orchestrating the music themselves.
  The precise role of the orchestrator in film music is highly variable, and depends greatly on the needs and skill set of the particular composer.
context_section_description: William Austin (1966) says “Mahler expanded the orchestra, going ahead to a historic climax in the direction already marked by Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner… The purpose of this famous expansion was not a sheer increase in volume, but a greater variety of sound with more nearly continuous gradations… Mahler only occasionally required all his vast orchestra to play together, and his music was as often soft as loud.  Its colours were continually shifting, blending or contrasting with each other.” Adorno (1971) similarly describes Mahler’s symphonic writing as characterised by “massive tutti effects” contrasted with “chamber-music procedures”. The following passage from the first movement of his Symphony No. 4 illustrates this:
   Only in the first bar of the above is there a full ensemble.  The remaining bars feature highly differentiated small groups of instruments.  Mahler’s experienced conductor’s ear led him to write detailed performance markings in his scores, including carefully calibrated dynamics.  For example, in bar 2 above, the low harp note is marked forte, the clarinets, mezzo-forte and the horns piano.  Austin (1966) says that “Mahler cared about the finest nuances of loudness and tempo and worked tirelessly to fix these details in his scores.”
  Mahler’s imagination for sonority is exemplified in the closing bars of the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony, where there occurs what Walter Piston (1969, p. 140) describes as “an instance of inspired orchestration… To be noted are the sudden change of mode in the harmonic progression, the unusual spacing of the chord in measure 5, and the placing of the perfect fourth in the two flutes. The effect is quite unexpected and magical.”
caption: Mahler, Symphony No. 4, first movement, Figure 5.
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