Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #225676 in Books
• Published on: 1982-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Customer Reviews

The best book on the subject
Rimsky-Korsakov said that the best way to learn orchestration is to listen to an orchestra, score in hand. Artistically this is true, but no education can come this way in learning about the instruments that perform them -- their capabilities, difficulty in playing certain passages, and practical ways of composing for them. Forsythe's book deals with the history, design, capabilities, and techniques of performing for each of the instruments, providing an encyclopedic volume that has yet to be parallelled, even after nearly a century. Anyone wishing to learn orchestration will find this indespensible.

Dated, but full of knowledge.
The book is old, however, the information is great. Lots of references to common instruments, as well as more obscure instruments. (You never know when you will be writing for a serpent!) Definatley a great buy for the money.

A tour of the instruments...but how to combine them?
This book is organized as a tour of the many instruments that comprise an orchestra, together with description about how each instrument sounds, and how it might be used. Its primary focus is the instruments, not their arrangement.

My interest was more the latter. I am an amateur, novice composer of short works, working to arrange and orchestrate my own music. I want to understand better when oboes are best used over strings, how strings sections "against" each other are sculpted, when interplay between brass instruments is most appealing, etc.

I respect this man, but his book is not for me.