Books on Orchestration

I looking into getting a theory book on Orchestration.

I've searched around and the book Instrumentation and Orchestration by Alfred Blatter seems to be where it's at. All the other books seem to get a couple of bad reviews here and there.

True?

You can find a number of excellent books on instrumentation. I like the Piston book, despite its limited scope, simply because it's so direct and plain.

As for actual "orchestration", it's a rather difficult thing to learn from a book. There are books that cover the topic, but without feedback from a teacher, it's difficult to really progress.

The first thing is to find an Instrumentation book. Most books that call themselves "orchestration..." are in reality books on instrumentation.

I'm not too familiar Blatter's book, but I wouldn't call it the book on orchestration, at least not in terms of popularity with musicians and theorists.
There are certainly other well-respected books on the subject out there - Piston's Orchestration, Berlioz' Treatise on Orchestration (later updated and amended by Richard Strauss) and Rimsky-Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration spring to mind, at least of the texts I'm familiar with. I'd probably recommend the Rimsky-Korsakov, which focuses on instrument combinations, balancing orchestral choirs and so on, while the other two deal more with the properties of individual instruments (also, the RK is available free of charge as an online course, including audio samples, on these very forums). That said, check all of them out if you get the chance.
I've also heard good things about Samuel Adler's The Study of Orchestration, but I can't really comment because I haven't read it myself.

There are quite a few books on orchestration..

There is a book by Berlioz ("Treatise on Orchestration", I think), revised later by Busoni (if I remember correctly). I have absolutely no idea whether it is good or not, as I haven't read anything from it, but I read in the Adler book of orchestration that Berlioz says the Cello is not as agile or capable of virtuosity as the violin and viola, which is not generally true, so it might be a bit outdated.

There is also the book called "Principles of Orchestration" (it can be found online here, with audio examples, I think) by Rimsky-Korsakov. Although it is generally considered to be a good book, he only uses examples from his own works, which makes the book a bit arrogant and not too representative of the musical literature.

If you're looking for more recent stuff, there's a book called "Study of Orchestration" by Samuel Adler (b. 1928), which is currently in its 3rd edition and comes with (optionally) 6 CDs with all the examples of the book recorded by real musicians. There is also a workbook available, with orchestration exercises. The Adler book is generally considered a really good book, it has more than 500 examples from all over the place (from Bach to Mozart to Brahms to Bartok to Schoenberg to Crumb to anything really), and it mentions a lot of physical practicalities (like how the instruments are played and what limitations this imposes on the abilities of the instrument), various techniques, extended techniques and effects, orchestrating for a family of instruments or for combinations of families (As well as a bit on parts), and also has a small "extra resources" list at the end of each instrument or important chapter, with many works that exhibit a good use of the instrument/technique/orchestration/whatever. It also has a huuuuge bibliography list, which might prove worthy if you're interested in searching for a particular subject (say, extended techniques on the flute, or multiphonics on the saxophone).

However, the Adler book is lacking a lot in that there are many instruments it doesn't mention, like the electric guitar, harmonium, accordion, voices etc.

So, here comes the Blatter book, which as far as I know is very very good. It is as good as the Adler, with extended techniques and orchestration techniques (and examples), and includes the aforementioned instruments as well as others. I haven't read all of it, but I've read some parts of it when I needed, and it proved to be very helpful.

I also know that Walter Piston has a book on orchestration and Gardner Read (who has written many good books on notation) has written a book called "Thesaurus of Orchestral Devices", but I haven't read either of the books, or read anything from them, so I can't really say anything about them. There is also an online guide to orchestration by Alan Belkin.

There is also a small list of famous instrumentation books here: Orchestration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but I assume you've already been there, if you've searched for orchestration on the net

So, there you go, my opinion on orchestration books.

The Blatter book is an excellent instrumentation text, but dubious for orchestration. The Adler book is decent as an orchestration text, but rather timid, uninformative, and "safe" on the subject of instrumentation. I personally can't stand the Piston book (FLINT SMASH!).

I don't recommend the older books (Rimsky-Korsakov, et al.) simply for the fact that a lot has changed since then, and they are extremely old fashioned.

The Piston book is a handy reference book for general details. But it's NOT the best place to get esotheric information on unusual performance techniques. Gotta admit that. Maybe I like the Piston just for the fingering charts and some of the minor performance details it gives.

I like the Rimsky-Korsakov book because he goes into detail about different instrument combinations. The Adler book is my main resource because it's less biased, haha, but the RK book has its uses.

To me there's nothing better than just grabbing a lot of various orchestra scores (Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Mozart, Hindemith, Bartok, etc) and seeing how it all works. It's very good if you can get a good recording, a score, and see how the different orchestra usages and setups actually sound in practice and you can take and compare ideas and stuff like this.

Originally Posted by SSC

To me there's nothing better than just grabbing a lot of various orchestra scores (Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Mozart, Hindemith, Bartok, etc) and seeing how it all works. It's very good if you can get a good recording, a score, and see how the different orchestra usages and setups actually sound in practice and you can take and compare ideas and stuff like this.

I tried this with some John Williams scores I found online, and it was quite helpful, although difficult to take in all at once. I found myself asking, "What am I actually trying to get from this again?"

I also thought about trying an exercise where I listen to a piece and then try to re-score it for myself, therefore I'd have to break everything down and listen hard. What better way to learn to compose than to decompose?


So far I'm thinking it's either gonna be Adler or Blatter.

The Blatter book is an excellent instrumentation text, but dubious for orchestration. The Adler book is decent as an orchestration text, but rather timid, uninformative, and "safe" on the subject of instrumentation.

Thanks Flint, that makes my decision much easier.

Could you expand on what you mean by Blatter's book being "dubious for orchestration"? And what makes Adler's book better for orchestration?

Thanks.

Adler has a far greater number of scores to study, and they are broken down in "how to score for *insert section*" or "how to score for *insert combination*", which is very illustrative of the points he tries to get across.

Blatter has very few scores but a lot of free-form type exercises... which really require a supervised college-type environment to get any benefit from.