A World without orchestras
– computers rampant?
Any consideration of
how things are, how they were, or what
they might in future become is always
likely to be inaccurate if for no other
reason than that one is too close to
observe the situation in a balanced
perspective. In the 1930s some cinemas
in the largest cities had screens so
huge that the seats in the very front
row of the stalls were the cheapest
in the house because the view from them
was so incredibly distorted. In a sense
this is what happens with all our experiences;
the here and now is so close that it
is hardly possible to view what is happening
in relation to what has happened in
the past, and perhaps even less to be
able to guess what might happen subsequently;
hence politicians, who are so boastful
and confident of what they will do,
are later so often proved to have been
wrong. They have not remembered what
happened in similar situations fifty
or a hundred years before.
We have a fairly good
idea how the history of music has evolved
and we are fascinated by the quaint
things, as they now seem to us, that
were accepted as being the normal way
that the art of music functioned. So
probably we need to remember that for
a long period before the evolution of
the large opera or symphony orchestra
there existed no such thing; yet music
was certainly a flourishing expression
of the human spirit. Who needed orchestras
in the days of early church music, or
the troubadours, or folk music? Almost
without being aware of it orchestras
for one purpose or another seemed to
evolve, so that for the past two hundred
and fifty years or more (at a round
figure) the world at large - the civilised
world - has been aware of the phenomenon
of the orchestra, so much so that even
people not remotely interested in the
art of music know - roughly – what an
"orchestra" is. The technical
term "to orchestrate" which
we know is a highly specialised branch
of the art of music: the process of
allotting the constituent parts of a
piece of music, its melody, harmony
and rhythms, to various instruments,
so that the whole sounds satisfying
and balanced, has been used in analogy
by others to described what is being
"arranged" – political ideas
and plans, business strategy, or whatever.
The very expression: "to orchestrate"
has passed into universal language independently
of the art of music.
In the past two or
three decades the notion of writing
music for huge bodies of human performers
– orchestras – has been challenged on
two important counts: the practical
one being the exponentially escalating
costs of employing professional performers.
In the very earliest days of the orchestra
performers were cheap to come by; most
court orchestras in the service of wealthy
aristocrats were mere lackeys: domestic
employees by day: coachmen, grooms,
gardeners, footmen, estate workers;
or very poorly paid employees of theatres.
Even in the early twentieth century
orchestral players came cheap. Nowadays
– and this has more than once been remarked
before in these commentaries – orchestral
musicians are - no matter how much it
might be denied - relatively well-paid
compared with lots of other occupations.
The other challenge
might be regarded as more insidious:
the changing taste of creative musicians
abetted by the new technology: that
of the computer.
It is, after all, a
very demanding and indeed at times irksome
business: creating new music. Not only
does it demand imagination and immense
insight on the part of a composer, but
an astonishing amount of sheer physical
labour in the act of writing – with
one’s own hand – every solitary note
in the whole score. Hence, Haydn was
in the habit of appending at the very
close of virtually every score he had
composed, the grateful observation "Gott
sei dank!" or in other words: "Thank
God, that’s finished!". Only a
composer of major works knows what labour
is involved. The pop composer or the
writer of popular music of earlier times
does not. For him the sum total of the
written notes might amount to TWO pages
of manuscript, and even the printed
copy promoted by Tin-Pan Alley and the
numerous publishers of all kinds of
popular music had merely to print a
two-page copy of "Tea for Two"
or "I’m dreaming of a white Christmas".
If it were orchestrated for small orchestra
or dance band it would even then only
amount to perhaps one small A-4 size
sheet of music for each player. Whereas
an orchestral score and all the necessary
parts: perhaps ten copies of each of
the string band parts (1st
violins, 2nd violins, violas,
cellos, and basses) plus a separate
part for another twenty or thirty wind
players could amount to hundreds of
hand-copied, or later on when publishing
became more efficient, printed copies
of each individual part in the whole
score. So the labour involved on the
part of copyists or the time-consuming
skills of engravers when music came
to be printed was astonishing.
The number of pages
of a Wagner opera runs into thousands
when considering not just the score
itself, but all the individual copies
for the singers and the players. The
number of pages of – say - a Brahms
symphony runs to 166 for the First Symphony,
and from this had to be extracted and
then printed all the separate string
and wind parts. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
contains 284 pages of full score from
which, of course, the engraver had patiently
to make all the necessary copies. Most
‘contemporary’ music - in the widest
sense of the word - of the twentieth
century was at one time hand-copied;
it had become too uneconomical to engrave
it. Even players in good amateur orchestras
will be familiar with the hired copies
of much 20th century music;
hand-copied parts, very often only the
score having been engraved. So it is
little wonder that present-day composers
have turned with gratitude to the computer,
Once a score is "in" the computer,
there is never the need any longer to
copy the parts by hand or to have them
engraved by craftsmen. The computer
does it all at the mere click of the
mouse. This is an almost unbelievable
situation. The down-side of all this
– and it must be stressed, it IS a downside,
no matter what the complacent younger
composer will argue to the contrary
– is that there is a terrible temptation
to compose the easy way by allowing
the computer to take over the act of
creation. Not only in putting the score
together, seeking easy ways to take
the drudgery out of thinking how to
orchestrate a passage, nor in getting
the machine to extract the separate
band parts in nothing more than a few
seconds, but in an even more insidious
way: supplanting the human performers
by computer-generated sounds which seek,
however lamely and heartlessly, to imitate
the sounds of human players in an orchestra
or indeed any other kind of human performance
group. This is something I hear almost
every week in my dealings with students
of composition. I would prefer NOT to
hear these absolutely ghastly computer-generated
sounds; I would be happier just to read
the score and let my imagine provide
the "real" human sounds which
are intended. If students think they
are doing me a good turn by sending
me discs with their computer-generated
sounds in imitation of the real thing,
they are quite mistaken.
However, there is no
denying that this technology has come
to stay – nothing I might say will stop
it. There have been anxious warnings
from many musicians in very recent times
about the decline of the orchestra –
smaller audiences, the cost of it all,
the changes of taste – and it will undoubtedly
come about before long that the art
of music will change fundamentally.
The younger generation and those not
yet born will accept this new situation
without a qualm, for it will be the
natural way of the future age. Maybe
the orchestra and many other forms of
music making will somehow continue as
a kind of precious relic of former times,
perhaps even lovingly appreciated and
cherished, but not perhaps in the "live
music" way it has been up until
now.
The computer has some
advantages that are unique; apart from
the most obvious ones. For all musicians
who are in any way involved with either
composing, copying, transcribing, publishing
or printing music the computer suggests
its own sound-world of new timbres.
Now this I have no quarrel with; it
is a new and utterly fascinating world
of sound, but it has not the slightest
connection with or indeed relevance
to, the orchestra, the human voice,
or any other kind of previous musical
language. If this situation is accepted
perhaps we can live with it and regard
it for what it is – something utterly
different from what has gone before.
Arthur Butterworth
