Following Beethoven, the next great development in the handling of orchestral resources is due to Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), and it is curious here how nearly one musical epoch overlaps another. Scarlatti was composing sonatas, and thus voicing the beginning of the classical era, while Bach was bringing the contrapuntal period to a close. It was only five years after the completion of the Ninth Symphony that Berlioz's "Francs Juges" overture was played. A year later his "Symphonie Fantastique, Episode de la Vie d'un Artiste," was brought out. Yet the Berlioz orchestra sounds so utterly different from the Beethoven orchestra that it almost might be a collection of different instruments. Even more than Beethoven, Berlioz understood the individuality, the potential characteristics of each instrument.
Berlioz composed on a colossal scale, so colossal that his music has been called architectural. The "Dies Irae" in his "Requiem" calls for four brass bands, in four different corners of the hall, and for fourteen kettledrums tuned to different notes, in addition to the regular orchestra, chorus and soloists. This has been dubbed "three-story music"--the orchestra on the ground floor, the chorus on the _belle étage_, while the four extra brass bands are stationed _aux troisième_. Unfortunately for Berlioz, his ambition, in so far as it related to the art of orchestration and the skill he showed in accomplishing what he wanted to with his body of instrumentalists, was far in excess of his inspiration. His knowledge of the orchestra was sufficient to have afforded him every facility for the expression of great thoughts if he had them to express. But his power of thematic invention, his gift for melody, was not equal to his genius for instrumentation. Nevertheless, through this genius for instrumentation--for his technique was so extraordinary that it amounted to genius--and through his very striving after bizarre, unusual and gigantic effects, he contributed largely toward the development of the technical resources of instrumental music.
Wagner, Greatest of Orchestral Composers.
Berlioz wrote a book on instrumentation, which has lately been re-edited by Richard Strauss. In it Strauss, modestly ignoring himself, says that Wagner's scores mark the only advance in orchestration worth mentioning since Berlioz. It is true, the technical possibilities of the orchestra were greatly improved, so far as the woodwind was concerned, by the introduction of keyed instruments constructed on the system invented by Theobald Böhm; while the French instrument maker, Adolphe Sax, also made important improvements by perfecting the bass clarinet and the bass tuba. But whatever aid Wagner derived from these improvements merely was incidental to the principle which is illustrated by every one of his scores--that technique merely is a means to an end. Wagner is the greatest orchestral virtuoso who ever breathed. Never, however, does he employ technique for technique's sake, but always only to enable his orchestra to convey the exact meaning he has in his mind or express the emotion he has in his heart, and he spares no pains to hit upon the best method of conveying these ideas and expressing these emotions. That is one reason why, although no one with any knowledge of music could mistake a passage by Wagner for any one else's music, each of his works has its own peculiar orchestral style. For each of his works reproduces through the orchestra the "atmosphere" of its subject. The scores of "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "The Ring of the Nibelung," "Tristan," "Meistersinger" and "Parsifal" never could be mistaken for any one but Wagner's music. Yet how different they are from each other! He makes each instrument speak its own language. When, for example, the English horn speaks through Wagner, it speaks English, not broken English, and so it is with all the other instruments of the orchestra--he makes them speak without a foreign accent.