The man.

Many consider Russian composer Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1884-1908) as one of the all-time masters of orchestration. He is perhaps best known for composing “Flight of the Bumblebee”. During the course of his life, he wrote hundreds of pages of notes on orchestration. Following Rimsky’s death, the notes were consolidated into Principles of Orchestration by his nephew, Maximilian Steinberg.

In our era of electronic media and the internet, sometimes it’s nice to lay hands on an honest-to-goodness, real book. And tallying a full 489 pages, Principles is a rather hefty book. It is a two part volume; Part 1 contains the actual text, while Part 2 contains full printed scores from Rimsky’s works, which he refers to heavily.

The meat.

Rimsky spends time on each section of the orchestra–strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and choir. He makes detailed descriptions of the qualities of each instrument–range, tone, symbolic significance, and special uses. He also discusses vertical construction and horizontal movement of each section.

For me as a young composer, the orchestration process often includes a lot of trial and error. Constant experimentation is key to develop a sense of what universally works well in orchestral music. That being said, it is wonderful to pick up Principles and read unequivocal advice such as this:

As in the strings, so in the wood-wind it is advisable to double in octaves any melody situated in the extremely high or low compass;

Following the chapters on individual instruments and sections, Rimsky has several chapters dedicated to harmony and composition techniques. Once again, this is a mother lode of valuable information. He covers ranges, tuttis, melodic transferrance, emphasis, repetition, divergence and convergence…and I could continue, but you get the idea.

It’s just another tool.

I feel at this point that I should make a distinction. In my opinion, orchestration can’t be learned in the same way as Calculus or Geography. I don’t see Principles as a textbook. It’s more of a debriefing after an exploratory mission than a doctrinal thesis. Rimsky went and composed some very respected, innovative, (and now) time-tested works. And then he wrote about the things he discovered.

…a really good tool.

I repeat; this isn’t a textbook, and certainly will not teach you how to be a composer. I can’t imagine any book out there could do that. However this book will put the fruits of much labor and experimenting at your fingertips. It is absolutely chock-full of gems. It literally took me months to get through it and digest the wealth of information. Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s Principles of Orchestration–a must read for the aspiring composer!