Orchestration and Score Reading
Reading a full score — page architecture, C clefs, transposing instruments with written/sounding listening, verticality of a tutti, piano reduction and orchestral balance. Second course of the DNSPM track.
Composer and conductor, Hector Berlioz published in 1844 the “Grand Treatise on Instrumentation and Modern Orchestration”, the first book to describe each instrument methodically —…
À retenir : A full score is read with a method: the order of the families, the clefs, the transpositions resolved — then the ear judges the balance. The blackest page often hides a textbook harmony.
Reading an orchestral score
Opening a full score for the first time is intimidating: twenty staves, five clefs, names in Italian. But the page is rigorously ordered, and this order has been the same since the 19th century, from top to bottom: woodwinds (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons), brass (horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba), timpani and percussion, then the occasional in-betweens (harp, celesta, piano, solo voices and choir), and finally the strings (violins I, violins II, violas, cellos, double basses). Within each family, high is at the top, low at the bottom. Instruments are almost always named in Italian — and a German score holds a famous trap: “in B” means in Si♭ (the German natural Si is written “H”).
| Italian | French | German |
|---|---|---|
| Flauto (Fl.) / Ottavino | Flûte / Piccolo | Flöte / Kleine Flöte |
| Oboe (Ob.) / Corno inglese | Hautbois / Cor anglais | Oboe / Englischhorn |
| Clarinetto (Cl.) | Clarinette | Klarinette (“in B” = in Si♭!) |
| Fagotto (Fg.) / Controfagotto | Basson / Contrebasson | Fagott / Kontrafagott |
| Corno (Cor.) | Cor | Horn |
| Tromba (Tr.) | Trompette | Trompete |
| Trombone (Trb.) — Ottoni = the brass | Trombone | Posaune |
| Timpani (Timp.) | Timbales | Pauken |
| Arpa | Harpe | Harfe |
| Violino (Vl.) / Viola (Vla.) | Violon / Alto | Violine (Geige) / Bratsche |
| Violoncello (Vc.) / Contrabbasso (Cb.) | Violoncelle / Contrebasse | Violoncello / Kontrabass |
How to scan a page
Never line by line from top to bottom. Three passes: 1) the bass (cellos/double basses, bassoons, tuba — it is the harmonic foundation, cf. section 4); 2) the melody (often violins I, flute or oboe — look for the most active line or the one marked solo); 3) the filling (who holds the middle notes, who doubles whom — the roles and doublings are those of course 19). The rehearsal marks (letters A, B, C… or boxed bar numbers) are how you navigate in rehearsal: always quote them (“4 after B”) — it is the common language of the desk and the conductor.