At 6:35 AM -0400 9/16/11, David H. Bailey wrote: >On 9/16/2011 12:27 AM, [email protected] wrote: >> ...although the books by Piston and Rimsky-Korsakov'll do in a pinch! >> > >Actually these days I find that for notational information as well as >range information and playing techniques, Andrew Stiller's Handbook of >Instrumentation to be much better than any books on orchestration, which >seem to discuss which instruments work well together and which don't >rather than discussing the technical details such as whether an >instrument is notated with an octave displacement or not. Stiller's >book is my go-to reference when I need specific information about an >instrument.
Rimsky's book definitely is of that type, and really amazing in trying to understand the late 19th century orchestrator's mind. It's what I'd call more of a "Stage Two" orchestration book, that goes well beyond just the ranges and transpositions (the mechanics of it) and into the actual use (the artistry of it). I'm not that familiar with Piston. But of course any first-semester orchestration course has to spend hours on the ranges and transpositions, while in my Vocal-Choral Arranging class I have the students actually ARRANGING short exercises from day one. And I certainly agree about Andrew's book, although I made the mistake of buying it on disk and would MUCH rather have it sitting ready to pick up in my bookcase. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
