The orchestra before 1800

Any history of the ‘orchestra’ will depend significantly on how the term is defined. One can start from two quite different premises: that an orchestra is a corporation of instrumental musicians; and that an orchestra is a corporate musical instrument. The distinction is, in effect, that of the orchestra as an institution and as a sounding body. The history of the institution is a matter for economic, social and other historians dealing with the musical profession and its broader place in Western (or Westernised) art traditions. The history of the ‘instrument’ is more inherently musical, concerning how composers have been motivated by, and have motivated, changes in the constitution of the orchestra in different genres, forms and styles through the ages. These histories are contiguous – one cannot have the instrument without the body of instrumentalists – and yet not necessarily congruent: corporations of instrumentalists existed long before the orchestra as such came into being. For example, it is a moot point whether one can use the term ‘orchestra’ for a group of ceremonial trumpeters at a medieval court, for a Renaissance string or wind band, or even for the 24 violons du Roi in the Versailles of Louis XIV of France. It is no less moot whether one can speak of orchestration, as distinct from the use of instruments, in the works of Monteverdi, Lully, Bach and Handel or even, perhaps, early Haydn.

Introduction

The conductor is many things to many people, now more than ever. Until well into the twentieth century, for instance, the profession, with few exceptions, was an exclusively male preserve. Today, women conductors, while still a minority, are increasingly familiar. Ethel Leginska (1886–1970) and Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) were the great pioneers. Their successors include Veronika Dudarova, Iona Brown, Marin Alsop, Jane Glover, Odaline de la Martinez, Sian Edwards, Andrea Quinn and JoAnn Falletta, although at the time of writing, the principal conductors of all the world's major symphony orchestras remain resolutely male, and there is little evidence that this is likely to change in the immediately foreseeable future. And while the conductor still represents the very apex of glamour in the musical world, the profession itself has never been more seriously questioned.

Introduction

In recent years there has been an increasing amount of comment about changes in national orchestral performing styles and sonorities during the second half of the twentieth century. It has been argued that in the last few decades traditionally individual sounds and stylistic characteristics of orchestras from specific different countries have been all but eroded and replaced by a more internationally uniform sonority and approach that has gradually but steadily arisen. That is a generalised claim, but nevertheless recordings definitely do illustrate how some very distinctive traits that formerly existed in certain orchestras have now largely disappeared. For instance, fifty years ago there were striking differences between many of the colours, timbres and also styles of phrasing that could be heard in French, Italian, German, Russian, English and American orchestras. And as recently as only a quarter of a century ago this was still very much the case with four of the world's leading orchestras from different parts: the Berlin Philharmonic, Leningrad (now St Petersburg) Philharmonic, London Symphony And New York Philharmonic. Their individually recognisable qualities, such as the Leningrad brass players' stridently strong vibrato and often, though not always, very marcato style (similar in most Russian orchestras) and the darker, richer and more generally blending sounds in Berlin existed to a greater or lesser extent, regardless of who was conducting.

Recent history

Conservatoire training for orchestral musicians has changed dramatically during the past fifteen years. This change has been reflected in a much more intensive and detailed curriculum, particularly at postgraduate level, designed to produce students who are fully prepared for the various demands of a rapidly changing profession.

When I attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London as a postgraduate student on the ‘orchestral training’ course, there was comparatively little on offer by way of officially organised training. The principal study lesson was the main focus, lasting an hour a week. As my teacher, Peter Lloyd, was principal flute with the LSO, I naturally learned a great deal about orchestral playing as well as attending LSO rehearsals at his invitation. As far as the syllabus was concerned, however, there was no official requirement to learn orchestral repertory and no formal assessment. Apart from my flute lessons, I played in the Symphony Orchestra three times during the year: Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, Sibelius Symphony No. 2 and the concerto competition finals as well as accompanying the opera. For the rest of my time, I was free to practise and to use this relative freedom to make music with my fellow students. At the end of the course I left, the proud recipient of a ‘Certificate of Advanced Studies’ in ‘orchestral training’, and I still look back at the year as having been pivotal in my development, in spite of – or perhaps because of – the lack of institutional rigour. Such courses were typical of all music colleges in the UK at the time. Students were left to pick up certain skills by osmosis, and their readiness for entering the profession was, to a very large degree, dependent on the work done with the principal study professor. In that respect, I was simply lucky.

Introduction

The symphony orchestra is undoubtedly one of the great cultural achievements of European civilisation. It is also one of Europe's most significant cultural exports. What began as relatively small collections of musicians in the courts of central Europe in the seventeenth century has not only grown in size but also achieved a wide geographical spread. Indeed, the orchestra is now a truly world-wide phenomenon, and such globalisation can largely be explained as a result of two significant factors. First, European expatriation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whereby migrant communities from various European countries settled elsewhere, inevitably resulted in the transplantation of numerous aspects of European culture; Western art music and its most significant ensemble, the symphony orchestra, were invariably part of this process. Second, as Western culture generally and its music in particular became more widely disseminated, helped later by the growth of the recording industry and the global domination of a small number of Western record companies, Western art music achieved a degree of popularity – and sometimes cultural ascendancy – in areas where it was not part of the indigenous culture. Along with Western-style institutions of music education (conservatoires and exam boards, for example) the symphony orchestra became seen as an acceptable, even desirable, organisation, for rather complex and variable reasons relating to local cultural and political aspirations.

Development in context

Discussion of the development of musical instruments inevitably raises questions of cause and effect: did composers demand changes to instruments, were these encouraged by performers, or were the instrument makers responsible? A popularly held belief since the rise of organology as a discipline in the nineteenth century is that of a progressive and essentially evolutionary process. European citizens were surrounded by mechanical development, social engineering, and the maturation of scientific thought, while the theory of human evolution itself became formalised. Furthermore, in the processes of colonisation, European civilisation had encountered and subsumed ‘primitive’ cultures, while at the same time the artefacts and practices of these cultures started to be systematically catalogued and preserved. It was not difficult to draw general conclusions on the evolution of musical instruments by making direct comparisons between items collected from undeveloped cultures and those made and used within the Western sphere. Evolution of form and function seemed obvious. It is scarcely surprising that nineteenth-century organologists, embedded in their culture of progress and development, would theorise such a harmonious explanation.

An evolutionary theory of musical instrument development required a driving force. Given the lowly status of the artisan in the nineteenth-century social structure, it was unthinkable that developments which might influence higher intellectual pursuits could be driven from below. It was therefore necessary that the composer be charged with initiating invention.

Introduction

Think ‘symphony orchestra’ and a number of images come to mind: beautiful music; concert halls with chandeliers and gilded balconies; a hundred musicians, mainly men, elegantly dressed in tails. All of this may in fact exist, especially in the older capital cities of Europe, but even when the concert halls are dark, there is a lot more happening in the world of the symphony orchestra and the chamber orchestra, especially in the UK and the US. Administratively, there is a welter of fundraising, publicity, marketing and accounting activities, but there is another sphere that works symbiotically with the artistic and administrative areas of the orchestra. In the early twenty-first century, most professional orchestras have Education Departments specifically dedicated to the provision of a range of programmes for their subscribers and for the greater community.

Education programmes are not new: specially designated children's concerts have existed since the early twentieth century, when there was an enthusiastic audience of adults who regarded these concerts as an important supplement to children's general education and as an element in the continuation of family tradition. Nearly a hundred years later, most professional orchestras continue to consider children's concerts as the flagships of their education departments. Nowadays, however, these concerts constitute only a part of a wide array of programmes, serving all segments of the community.

Beginnings

When musicians were first assembled in numbers surpassing the usual small consort of wind and string players, it was not to play by themselves but always to accompany singers and dancers at the theatre. The Florentine intermedi of the sixteenth century and Monteverdi's Orfeo in Mantua (1607) required considerable instrumental forces, and in the case of Orfeo, these were listed in the score, with specific assignments indicated throughout the piece. Yet the musicians in Orfeo are more an ensemble of soloists than a real orchestra; there was probably no more than a single player to the part. Louis XIII's 24 violons du Roi were apparently the first group in which the strings played in sections, but they still performed theatrical music, as did their English followers, King Charles's Four and Twenty Fiddlers. Jean-Baptiste Lully left a few marches and other short pieces for orchestra that seem not to belong to any of his operas or comédies-ballets, but they do not differ appreciably from his theatrical music.

Paradoxically, while the repertory of these ‘pre- and proto-orchestras’ did not comprise much autonomous orchestral music, the words that would designate the orchestral genres of the future did not, originally, refer to orchestral music at all. In the first instance, the terms ‘symphony’ and ‘concerto’ designated vocal genres (as in Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae symphoniae of 1597 or Lodovico Viadana's Concerti ecclesiastici of 1602). Even in the early eighteenth century, when a ‘symphony’ was definitely an instrumental piece, it was not consistently distinguished from genres that today would fall under the category of chamber music: the names ‘symphony’, ‘sonata’, ‘trio’, ‘quartet’ etc. were often used interchangeably.

Introduction

During the past thirty years or so, historical performance in theory and practice has truly established itself as a vibrant part of the orchestral scene. Period instruments are routinely encountered in the concert hall from San Francisco to Budapest and from Toronto to Rio de Janeiro; indeed, they have become virtually obligatory in substantial areas of the orchestral repertory. There is now a widespread interest in recreating the original sounds and styles of a composer's own time and in acquiring appropriate instruments and technique. Meanwhile, the entire focus of such endeavours has been subject to stimulating discussion and argument. It cannot be denied that artistic life today makes demands which are decidedly unhistorical; for example, the microphone introduces a set of parameters which would have been unthinkable in previous generations. Furthermore, air travel has wrought such changes that we do not have the option to turn back the clock. Nevertheless, examination of a variety of primary sources, complementing tradition and intuition, enables earlier styles of performance to be explored; for, as Roger Norrington has remarked, ‘a relationship with the past needs to be founded on truth as well as sympathy, concern as well as exploitation, information as well as guesswork’.

Historical awareness in performance has a long and fascinating pedigree, which has been traced in some detail by Harry Haskell and others. In the late nineteenth century there finally sprang a growing desire to investigate instruments and performing styles that were contemporary with and appropriate to earlier music. At this time of great technological development, there was lively discussion as to whether orchestral instruments had been improving or had merely changed. For example, Wagner was in no doubt that in Beethoven’s symphonies valved trumpets and horns should be used rather than their natural precursors; he rewrote their parts to remove any supposed limitations.

We know little about Pascal. We also know a great deal about Pascal. We know little in the sense that Pascal never wrote about himself or his life in any detail, while contemporaries who did write about him offered something close to hagiography. We know a great deal about him in the sense that his writings on science and human nature, society and salvation, tell us much about his view of the world and the developments of his day. We know or can confidently infer, to take a few random examples, how he perceived birth and death, royalty and papacy, Epictetus and Descartes, hare coursing and theatre-going, the execution of Charles I and the Peace of the Pyrenees. Indeed, to the extent that his perceptions were always fresh and insightful - and that taken together they offer an almost unfathomably original and subtle philosophical vision - it is easy to feel that we know him intimately.

CHILDHOOD

France of the 1620s and 1630s, the France in which Pascal was raised, was one of Europe’s major powers, the centre of a vibrant movement of Catholic renewal and of an increasingly educated and refined ruling class. But it was also a place of seething conflict and chronic political instability. The Wars of Religion, which very nearly led to the permanent break-up of France, had come to an end in 1594, when Henri IV took Paris, but civil war – identified by Pascal as ‘the worst of evils’ – remained a very real peril (L 94/S 128).

Suppose there is a plausible model of the atmosphere in which global warming will lead to the extinction of humankind unless the consumption of fossil fuel is reduced drastically. Even though the probability of this outcome is small or indeterminate, it is in some hard-to-explicate sense a 'real' one. The implications for action seem compelling: even if the use of fossil fuel has many indubitable benefits, it ought to be curtailed drastically. No finite gain can outweigh the 'real' possibility of the extinction of humankind. On reflection, however, this conclusion is too quick. For suppose there is also a plausible socioeconomic model in which reduced use of fossil fuel leads to global economic collapse, which leads to nuclear war and to a nuclear winter that causes the extinction of humankind. Now, what do we do?

Readers of this volume are likely to recognise the structure of Pascal’sWager and of the many-gods objection to Pascal’s argument. In this chapter I try to reconstitute some of the context of Pascal’s Wager and to assess the validity of the argument. I carefully say ‘some’ of the context, as the theological debates in which Pascal’s argument is embedded are highly complex and well beyond my expertise. Although I have been greatly assisted by Leszek Kolakowski’s acute and irreverent God Owes Us Nothing, I do not claim that standing on his shoulders enables me to see as far as he did.

In a letter of 1660 to Pierre Fermat, Pascal describes geometry in the following terms:

This paradoxical praise of geometry addressed to a man he considered a great mathematician is one of many texts where Pascal expresses doubts regarding human knowledge.

Anceps fortuna aequitate rationis reprimitur

Before the time of Pascal there was no theory of probability, merely an understanding (itself incomplete) of how to compute 'chances' in gaming with dice and cards by counting equally probable outcomes. In addition, problems encountered in the enumeration of dice throws and the counting of arrangements and selections of things had led to an incipient mathematical theory of combinations and permutations, but the rules that appeared in the works of such authors as Tartaglia (1500-57) and Cardano (1501-76) still had the form of recipes rather than as parts of a coherent whole. It fell to Pascal to bring together the separate threads and weave them into a structure that enabled him to progress far beyond his predecessors by introducing entirely new mathematical techniques for the solution of problems that had hitherto resisted solution, techniques which became the foundation of the modern theory of probability.

Pascal’s influence was not direct, for none of his writings on probability were published during his lifetime, but instead was transmitted via Huygens to James Bernoulli, where it appeared in the latter’s influential Ars conjectandi of 1713, and via the Essay d’analyse sur les jeux de hazard of Montmort, first published in 1708. These two books, together with De Moivre’s The Doctrine of Chances (1718), firmly established probability theory as a branch of mathematics. Later scholarship has confirmed the view that Pascal may justly be regarded as the father of the theory of probability.