- Orchestra Seating Chart Template
- Dallas Symphony Orchestra Seating Chart
- Instrument Seating In An Orchestra
String Orchestra Seating Plan Lesson. The set-up of a string orchestra can be a bit bewildering to beginners. One of the first things I do in September is use this handout with my beginning students to illustrate how a string orchestra is seated. Through this lesson, they quickly become experts at setting up for the classroom or for rehearsals. Orchestra definition is - the circular space used by the chorus in front of the proscenium in an ancient Greek theater. How to use orchestra in a sentence.
An orchestra is a group of musicians playing instruments together. They make music. A large orchestra is sometimes called a 'symphony orchestra' and a small orchestra is called a 'chamber orchestra'. A symphony orchestra may have about 100 players, while a chamber orchestra may have 30 or 40 players. The number of players will depend on what music they are playing and the size of the place where they are playing. The word 'orchestra' originally meant the semi-circular space in front of a stage in a Greek theatre which is where the singers and instruments used to play. Gradually the word came to mean the musicians themselves.
The conductor[change | change source]
The orchestra is directed by a conductor. He/she helps the players to play together, to get the right balance so that everything can be heard clearly, and to encourage the orchestra to play with the same kind of feeling. Some small chamber orchestras may play without a conductor. This was usual until the 19th century when the orchestras got very big and needed a conductor who made decisions and stood in front so that all the players could see him.
The conductor[change | change source]
The orchestra is directed by a conductor. He/she helps the players to play together, to get the right balance so that everything can be heard clearly, and to encourage the orchestra to play with the same kind of feeling. Some small chamber orchestras may play without a conductor. This was usual until the 19th century when the orchestras got very big and needed a conductor who made decisions and stood in front so that all the players could see him.
The instruments[change | change source]
Orchestra Seating Chart Template
The instruments of the orchestra are divided into districts: the strings, woodwind, brass and percussion. Each section (group of instruments) will have a player who is the 'Boss'. The principals will make decisions about seating arrangements, and about technical ways of playing the music: for example the principal of the string sections will make sure all the players move their bows up and down in the same direction. The violins are divided into first and second violins. The first violins usually have the tune while the seconds, most of the time, are part of the accompaniment. The principal of the first violin is the leader (or concertmaster) of the orchestra. In a professional orchestra they will be the most highly paid member of the orchestra.
The string family[change | change source]
The strings are the biggest section, although there are only five kinds of instruments: violin, viola, cello, double bass, and harp. This is because they are playing most of the time and usually form the basis of the music. If they are not playing the tune they will probably be accompanying. The first and second violins play different notes: the firsts usually have the tune. The strings sit at the front of the stage in a fan-shape in front of the conductor. The first violins are on the conductor's left, then come the second violins, then the violas and then the cellos. The double basses are behind the cellos. Some conductors prefer to have the second violins on their right and the cellos between the first violins and violas (see image of the Dohnanyi Orchestra).
The woodwind family[change | change source]
The woodwind sit in one or two rows (depending on the size of the orchestra) behind the strings. There are five main woodwind instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon. Each of these instruments also come in different versions:
The flute has a small version called the piccolo which plays an octave higher. It is the highest instrument in the orchestra. Occasionally there is an alto flute which is longer and plays a fifth (half an octave) lower than the flute. Most woodwind instruments need a reed, but the flute does not have a reed.
The bassoon has a larger version: the contrabassoon or double bassoon which sounds an octave lower. It is one of the lowest instruments in the orchestra.
The clarinet has a larger version as well; the bass clarinet. It reaches the same depth as a bassoon. Usually only one is found in a modern orchestra. There is also an alto clarinet but because it plays the same part an alto saxophone plays, it is typically regarded as an unnecessary instrument.
A formal orchestra will always consist of two of the four main instruments. The variations of the instruments are used where the piece asks for it. Usually, the newer pieces written after 1850 will have more instruments.
Sometimes a player will double on these extra instruments, for example: one of the flute players may also play the piccolo in the same piece. It depends on the piece of music. Obviously a player cannot play the flute and piccolo at the same time. If the two instruments do play at the same time an extra player will be needed for the piccolo.
The brass family[change | change source]
The brass section has four sections: trumpet, trombone, French horn, and tuba. Some of these come in several sizes. The article on transposing instruments explains more about it. The trumpet may have several slightly different sizes. The lowest kind is a bass trumpet. The trombone may be an alto, tenor, bass or contrabass trombone. The French horn, like the other brass instruments, has changed over the years. Modern horns have at least three valves and are usually in F. They often sit in a different place to the other brass. The tuba comes in different sizes and the player or conductor must decide which to use for the piece they are playing. There are large ones called contrabass tubas. A small tuba is commonly also seen and is called a euphonium or a baritone horn.
The percussion family[change | change source]
The percussion section has the largest variety of instruments. The timpani (or 'kettle drums') can be tuned to particular notes. They are the most common percussion instrument. Composers such as Haydn and Mozart nearly always used them, even with their small orchestras. This is the most commonly used percussion instruments and is used in almost all pieces.
The rest of the percussion section can include tuned percussion instruments like the xylophone. Non-tuned percussion can be other kinds of drum like bass drum, snare drum, and a variety of others: simple to name the most common ones. The principal percussion player will have to decide which player will play which instrument(s). The percussionists have to work well together as a team so all parts can be covered.
The history of the orchestra[change | change source]
It is difficult to say when the orchestra was invented because instruments have played together for many centuries. If we say that an orchestra is a group of string instruments with several players playing the same part, and that there may be wind instruments (i.e. woodwind and brass) or percussion playing as well, then the 17th century is the time that orchestras started. In Paris in 1626KingLouis XIII had an orchestra of 24 violins (called '24 Violons du Roi'). Later in the century the English king Charles II wanted to be like the French king and so he, too, had a string orchestra. Gradually the other instruments were added. At this time there was usually someone playing the harpsichord (the continuo part). It was often the composer himself, who would have conducted from the keyboard at important moments like the beginning and end of the piece.
Clarinets came into the orchestra at the end of the 18th century, and trombones at the beginning of the 19th century. Orchestras were still quite small, though. The saxophone was invented in the middle of the 19th century, but although they started to use it in orchestras, it soon became an instrument that was used in wind bands and later jazz bands. The opera composer Richard Wagner made the orchestra much bigger because he kept asking for extra instruments. He asked for a bass clarinet in his opera Lohengrin, and for his cycle of four operas called The Ring of the Nibelung he asked for an exact number of players: 16 first violins, 16 second violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, 8 double basses, 3 flutes and piccolo, 3 oboes and cor anglais, 3 clarinets and bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 3 trumpets and bass trumpet, 3 tenor trombones and a double bass trombone, 8 horns with 4 of them playing a specially designed tuba, a bass tuba, percussion, and 6 harps.
Not all pieces written after that need quite such a large orchestra, but concert halls had become bigger and composers had got used to a bigger variety of sounds. Later composers sometimes added all sorts of unusual instruments: wind machine, sandpaper block, bottles, typewriter, anvils, iron chains, cuckoo, Swannee whistle etc. None of these are normal orchestral instruments. Sometimes a piano is used in the percussion section, e.g. Igor Stravinsky used one in Petrouchka. Sometimes voices are also used.
The orchestra today[change | change source]
Today orchestras can usually be heard in concert halls. They also play in opera houses for opera and ballet, or in a large stadium for huge open-air concerts. Orchestras may record in studios for making CDs or recording music for movies. Many of them can be heard easily and cheaply every summer in London at the BBC Proms.
Some of the greatest orchestras today include: the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo). Opera houses usually have their own orchestra, e.g. the orchestras of the Metropolitan Opera House, La Scala, or the Royal Opera House.
In many countries there are opportunities for school-age children who play instruments well to play in youth orchestras in their areas. In Britain some of the very best are selected to play in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Other world-famous youth orchestras include the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, the European Union Youth Orchestra and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
Dallas Symphony Orchestra Seating Chart
References[change | change source]
- The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980; ed. Stanley Sadie; ISBN1-56159-174-2
- Orchestration by Walter Piston, London 1965.
One of the questions I'm asked most often is why the string sections of the Jacksonville Symphony sometimes change where they sit between pieces in a concert. Loyal symphony goers will remember that when I arrived in Jacksonville, we adopted two new positions for the string instruments. Your previous music director, Fabio Mechetti, preferred the common arrangement of first violins, second violins, violas, cellos and basses fanning from the left to right of the stage. Now we have two seatings: the first only slightly different from Fabio's, with the violas on the outside (where the cellos previously sat) which I like for 20th century repertoire. I'm told this was how the orchestra sat during Roger Nierenberg's time. The second seating is completely different: the first and second violins sit facing each other on my left and right, with the cellos and basses beside the first violins, and the violas beside the seconds. You'd be surprised at how strong musicians' and audience members' opinions are on this matter, so let's delve into a little musical history to explain how we've arrived where we are today.
There have been 'orchestras' since ancient times, but the earliest we can go to understand our present is the classical period of Mozart and Beethoven, and especially Haydn. Ensembles before that (even in Bach's day) were too sporadic to help in our quest. During his long tenure as composer in residence at the Esterhazy court in Austria, Joseph Haydn employed an orchestra of around 40. Much classical music involves antiphony, which we could describe as a conversational style of writing in which the first and second violins trade phrases with each other — an 18th century stereo effect. Haydn organizes his orchestra with the first and second violins opposite each other so that these phrases could be heard coming from opposite sides of the stage. Throughout the 18th and 19th century, the position of almost every instrument on stage changed, except that of the first and second violins, which were nearly always on the left and right. When one looks at the score of a Beethoven symphony, it's clear this is what he had in mind. The two violin parts trade off each other constantly.
Like just about everything, the orchestra grew exponentially during the 19th century. Large cities began to have permanent orchestras in which musicians enjoyed regular employment. The size of a symphony orchestra grew to around 100 musicians, which is pretty much what it is in big cities today. The stage plans of ensembles such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Berlin and New York Philharmonics, the Halle in Manchester and the Philadelphia Orchestra all show antiphonal violins sitting opposite. Even Tchaikovsky, writing his Sixth Symphony in 1893, expected such a seating, as is clear from the violin writing in the finale. So what happened?
Well, during the 19th century a new figure emerged in classical music — the conductor. Cue an eye-roll from all orchestral musicians. Until the time of Berlioz and Mendelssohn, orchestras had been led by either the concertmaster or the composer, who sat at a piano or harpsichord. The idea of a conductor with a baton who rehearsed the orchestra without playing an instrument only arose in the first decades of the 19th century as a necessity because of the growing size of orchestras. It's relatively easy for an orchestra of 20 to play together without a conductor; it's practically impossible for a group of 60 to a 100. As conductors grew in importance, they began to experiment with how the orchestra sat. Two figures played a pivotal role in the organization of the modern orchestra: Henry Wood, an Englishman who founded the London Promenade concerts that continue to this day, and Leopold Stokowski, also English (although he affected a peculiar central European accent) who conducted many American orchestras, notably the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Stokowski was a great experimenter, and he tried seating the orchestra in every imaginable way, always trying to find the ideal blend of sounds. On one occasion he horrified Philadelphians by placing the winds and brass in front of the strings. The board was outraged, arguing that the winds 'weren't busy enough to put on a good show.' But in the 1920s he made one change that stuck: he arranged the strings from high to low, left to right, arguing that placing all the violins together helped the musicians to hear one another better. The 'Stokowski Shift,' as it became known, was adopted by orchestras all over America. In England, Henry Wood favored the same arrangement, leading to its adoption across the UK. Germany and Austria remained unimpressed.
So when we refer to violins together and cellos on the right as a 'traditional' layout, we're actually wrong. This layout is barely 100 years old, and would be anathema to any composer writing before the turn of the century. Even Mahler and Elgar, both composers who also conducted their own music with great orchestras, continued to write for antiphonal violins well into the 20th century. While it's undeniable that having the violins together makes ensemble easier, the sacrifice of losing the conversation between the first and second violins is enormous.
As the Stokowski Shift became more common, we see composers adjusting the way they wrote for the orchestra. In his Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich divides the violins into three parts. This is only possible if the first and seconds are sitting together. As the century progressed, the classical style of conversational writing between the first and second violins tended to shift to a preference for both sections playing melodies together, with the seconds often supporting the firsts an octave lower. It makes little sense to play Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky or Copland with the first and second violins split.
My own feeling is that we should seat the orchestra as the composer imagined. Now, there are many anachronistic flaws in this argument since there is so much we don't know about exactly how each orchestra sat in a particular time and place. But for me, two things matter. First, when the violins are all grouped together in classical repertoire I really miss the sound of them talking to each other. I want to hear the conversation, and I want to hear melody in both ears, not all crammed into my left. You can only do this in an excellent concert hall. In many venues, even good ones, the violins can't hear each other well enough across the stage to achieve good ensemble when they're split, and one has to compromise. During my time at the Minnesota Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, both orchestras abandoned split violins. But in Jacoby Hall the violins can hear well, and with a little patience we can achieve good ensemble. Secondly, when we play 20th century repertoire, I want the strength of sound that comes from all the violins grouped together. If this means we have to move around a little during a concert, it's a price worth paying.
But, I hear you say, when the violins are together, why are the violas on the right? We miss seeing the cellos! This seating became common in Germany and Austria during the 20th century as a kind of compromise. It's still used by the Berlin Philharmonic, and on this side of the pond by the Cleveland Orchestra among others. In classical times, orchestras had the bass instruments in the center since they were the foundation on which everything was built. When the cellos and basses sit on the outside, I miss them – they aren't in the middle of the sound any more. Having them in the middle gives us the best of both worlds: good violin sound and strong bass.
So there we are. Orchestra seating. Not exactly a topic for your typical weekend read, but one that has provoked countless arguments and passions from conductors and orchestral musicians alike. Come to Jacoby Hall and listen to hear the difference!
Instrument Seating In An Orchestra
Reprinted with kind permission of The Florida-Times Union.
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