i am a 65 yr. self taught composer only ever having piano lessons when I was in my teens. Studying scores was key to my getting a better understanding of how to start being a composer. I was considered a prodigy as a child but severe mental health disorders took hold of me and it crippled me throughout my life. Lucky for me I lived within walking distance from the Eastman School of Music which was a positive influence on my life. I actually had a brief time when the composer, David Diamond, offered me great encouragement which I never forgot. (I met him in a local gay bar in Rochester, NY. I really had no idea who he was let alone what he was; one of America's greatest composers.) So today, up to now, I have composed almost 100 works and have had some of my music performed publicly. This is a great channel and I've learned a great deal from it.
Maestro Phil! I'm another 60 something composer, laboring in obscurity. You're so fortunate to be close to Eastman. I always wanted to make a pilgrimage there:they possess the hand-written original score to Debussy's "La Mer". I don't know if they'd even permit me,but to look that over would send me over the moon.
Solid list. I think another one to be there is Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, which is one of the most anticipated scores to make it in the public domain.
And Prokofiev himself published a piano version of several parts of the score of Romeo and Juliet, which gives an additional value for studying this true masterpiece.
I would also recommend to look at the 2 Piano Version of "The Planets". Holst's work regime when composing was to first compose for 2 Pianos. Then have two pupils play the work for him and while listening to it he would orchestrate. When looking at both versions of the piece, one can really see in the score how that worked.
All ten are great choices! I would add Mahler's first two symphonies and all of Shostakovich's symphonies for the lessons they give on orchestration and how to contrast a wide variety of feelings while maintaining a consistent tone.
I'm not a composer or orchestrator - just a humble musician. But I find that reading scores while listening to recordings is wonderful for keeping the brain in top shape.
1. Mozart symphony no.40 g minor: starter, ww family-string family 2. Beethoven sympony no.3 Eb Major: bigger, solo ww 3. Berlioz Symphonie fantastique: story, leit motif 4. Brahms Symphony no.4 E minor: romantic feeling Beethoven 5. Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade: wide texture, timbre, variation 6. Tchaikovsky Nutrucker Suite: melody, clear orchestration 7. Debussy Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune: color 8. Ravel Ma Mere l'oye: piano to orch. 9. Stravinsky The rite of spring: grotesque, texture 10. Holst The planet : Massive
You must start earlier with Handel, Rameau and Gluck, Vivaldi, Cherubini, from whom these masters learned. You cannot hope to start off where a great master left off. Look at where they started, their more-academic work. Debussy's earliest work. Copying his late work will just sound like imitation. Start where he began and find your own path. Learn core classical values. Form, balance, structure, rate of change, cadences, melody, theme, color, rhythm, tempo, character. Learn all the dance genres and their tempos, melodies, forms. Each one is different!
Great List. I would add some other composers to it, especially if someone wants to do film music. So I would totally add Respighi (not just the Roman Trilogy 😉), Korngold (his orchestral Stuff, which gives you an inside into the classic hollywood sound), William Walton as well as Bruckner who has some real epic orchestration in his symphonies.
I am quite partial to late 19th and 20 century composers that employed folk tunes and themes, like, Delius, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Janacek and Dvorak.
I've listened to so much music from so many genres and have many favourites. But Williams' Thomas Tallis is probably the most heart-achingly evocative piece of music I have ever heard. Weirdly (and this is perhaps not interesting to anyone other than me) it reminds me of a time I went to Oxfordshire. I was in a student production of Lark Rise to Candleford, playing Edmund and completely in love with the girl playing Laura. A group of us from the cast had a day trip, walking around the countryside, some of the best that England has to offer. A magical day in a magical place - wide open, lush, natural. That feeling is what the music brings up for me.
Sheherazade is one of my all-time favorite too. It's also my reference to test my DAW template :) One addition ? Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé. Well, actually, all Ravel. Congratulations for this great list !
Possibly the list could contain completely different titles - but how you illustrate certain essential individual aspects on the basis of the respective piece is instructive and valuable - thank you very much!
Great list Ryan. To your point about composing being different to orchestration, I agree, to the extend that I'm not working on orchestration at the moment and just on piano based composition. However I do feel with modern DAWs, the manipulation you can do, especially with found sounds, and electronic instruments, has blurred the line quite a bit to the point it is hard to know what is sound design and what is compostion. A lot of this work I feel is harder to reproduce or sound interesting on a piano.
True, sound design does muck it up! I only do the "sketch first, orchestrate later" when I'm going for a more "pure" orchestral sound. But library tracks or anything that involves synth starts right in Logic!
Excellent list! I have already started studied some of these pieces too, so it is great to know how much they can help me! (The Beethoven, the Brahms, the Korsakov, the Tchaikovsky, the Debussy, and the Holst). I will continue branching out to make sure I can still get as much out of these pieces as inspiration for my writing! I would also like to suggest Richard Strauss' Eine Alpensinfonie, which as a programmatic tone poem, uses incredible techniques from the orchestra to replicate physical encounters in an adventure, while also being a great example of leitmotif. It is like a movie on its own!
Debussy: “His written parts feel improvised.” Interesting observation. I remember reading years ago that on many occasions, Debussy did in fact improvise for his friends. Apparently for long length of time. We can only imagine. Great video! 👏
Hi Ryan, I am a violinist and I wanted to start composing. I find your videos really useful, but could you make a video teaching us HOW to study a score? Thanks! Love your videos
I am also a violinist, and I started composing 4 years ago. I would recommend just going to IMSLP and downloading a score and looking at it. I started out before that in arranging full orchestral works for string orchestra (because otherwise I was never going to get to play them). You quickly see it's like the plans to building a house. Foundations, structure, finishing. You see what lines are doubled in different instruments, you see how many ideas are going on at the same time.
I'm relatively new to composing (been writing music all my life, but only started seriously composing about a year ago) so I understand where you're coming from. I wanted to build off the other person's comment. When studying scores, listening intently to the score you're studying is a great help. Think about the effect that each sound creates for the overall piece, and that'll help you find techniques that create certain feelings and expressions for your own pieces. Tbh I rarely study scores, even though I should lol. I usually spend a lot of time listening to different pieces multiple times to get an understanding of different styles and techniques, as well as for inspiration, and running to the score when I don't understand what I had heard lol. Hope this helps too! Good luck!
Great list. I grew up listening to and study Jean Sibelius' symphonies, which I think are also a great source of inspiration for colorful instrument group combinations and anything having to do with pedal tones. His symphonies have influenced a number of film composers, and there's something about how he bridges and expands on sections (and strips them down) with his use of orchestration that can really teach you a lot. Since he was mostly happy to develop small motifs into something larger, his scores can be good lessons on making small, incremental changes to an idea and its setting that are fresh and interesting. Like Holst, he definitely seemed to be looking towards the future in his music, but simply came at it from a more tonal (although very original) direction.
Great list, you make great points about each of these pieces and the benefits that studying them provides. For those who come from Afternoon of a Fawn and feel like Mother Goose suite is a bit of a step down in complexity, try Daphnis et Chloe (suite no. 2 if you don't have the patience for the entire ballet). As Ravel's magnum opus, it really showcases what he was capable of artistically. Besides being an astonishingly beautiful piece, it has to be among the most creative orchestrations of all time. And if you love picking out leitmotifs and their iterations but don't connect so much with opera, the Strauss tone poems are some of the most invigorating compositions to explore.
I think Ravel's best orchestration (especially if you want to compare the original piano score with the orchestration) is One Barque Sur L'ocean. It is incredibly complex and colorful, and is especially good for learning about texturing and instrument interplay.
I was looking at the score of Schubert's 2nd Symphony and I was surprised how straightforward it is -- basically two opposing forces (winds and strings) playing against each other. While melody is what we usually hear first, I'm convinced that what is a driver in much of his music is the harmony. In the final movement of the Wanderer Fantasy, he probably figured out the harmonic progression first and then wrote the melody to follow the harmonies. He studied with Salieri so I'd love to know what he learned from the underrated composer.
Although not coming from a single composer, there's also Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' that can provide another interesting piano to orchestra comparison. And, if you don't mind going backwards, there are Liszt's piano reductions of Beethoven's symphonies, which are handy study tools as they boil the orchestra down to its essentials.
Excellent choice of scores to study orchestration! I would've added Strauss' Eine Alpensymphonie and Don Quixote in any case, and maybe Im Abendrot from Vier Letzte Lieder to show how effective and masterful string divisi can be in a grand scale.
Did not expect Brahms to sound so modern. Definitely need to explore him more! Sounded amazing. And Debussy is moods and atmospheres eh? Right up my alley. Definitely need to study him more, as well. Great video.
The fact that you have neither Bruckner, R Strauss, Mahler or Shostakovich-all very famous specifically for their exploration and exploitation of the orchestra-in this list, shows the maturity and profundity of your thought in the tutelage of the pure art of orchestration. I love it! This isn’t a wishlist, obviously; this is instructional, and the fact that you turn to Brahms, among the others, as an example of orchestral didacticism, shows that you choose to really hone the art. I might even point to his second serenade as a brilliant example of how to create color and texture, even without a single violin in sight! Another secondary sample of extraordinary orchestration to your list: Berlioz’ Damnation de Faust. I believe that that score is the mother of all contemporary horror-film scores, especially in the scene where Mephistopheles urges Faust toward hell. Your videos are amazing, and truly challenging me to try my hand at composition again (being dormant for well over a decade now,) and perhaps write something short (two minutes, tops) to flex that muscle, and see if it hasn’t yet atrophied to oblivion.
I think the people who find a list like this helpful are beginners who will more likely get value from Tchaikovsky’s separation of sections than Strauss’s massive brass section. Exclusion of a piece or composer does not imply any opinion. Anyone who already loves Mahler doesn’t need recommendations for where to start!
Excellent explanation and suggestions. Anyway, I miss one of the orchestration references of the XIXth century: Bizet's Carmen. And one of my favourite orchestrators of the XXth century: Ottorino Respighi. Pines of Rome is a masterpiece.
Easily my favorite piece of music ever! I was blessed to be able to play Le Jardin Feerique (the piano-four-hands version of course) with my best friend for a concert and it was a really wonderful experience.
That would make sense. I looked into it a little more and found this line in an article: "In his autobiography Stravinsky writes that the derisive laughter that greeted the first bars of the ‘Introduction’ to The Rite of Spring at the premiere disgusted him, and that he left the auditorium to watch the rest of the performance from the stage wings." So maybe the riot part was inspired by the choreography, although it seems like the music wasn't exactly warmly welcomed either!
Thank you for this list, Mr. Leach. I have now purchased them all and will study them carefully. I know about IMSLP but there is no feeling greater than having the score in your lap and can feel the pages (and read them of course) with your fingers. To me this is a good investment. :)
Good recommendations, to which I'd add Mahler's Seventh and Ninth Symphonies, Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra" and Franz Schmidt's Third and Fourth Symphonies.
@@RyanLeach Thinking about it, I'd also add the full score of Ravel's "Bolero", which Franz Schmidt described (in highly complimentary terms) as "an orchestration manual".
5:20 Oh thank goodness this is here. I've been listening to this piece for the past few weeks non-stop (with free time and going to sleep) with occassional sheet-music-studying, and with all the previous points mentioned, I thought Scheherazade would fit perfectly here.
Nice list! A lot of these scores are also available for a pretty reasonable price in print from Dover - I find them nicer for score study than imslp pdfs. Honorable mention from my collection: Grieg's Peer Gynt suites - it is similar to the Nutcracker in the way it is orvcestrated in a "clear", easy to follow way.
That's a fine list. My Mom was a big fan of the piano version of Mother Goose. I've just about finished recording Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel Overture. That's a great study price, it's sort of Wagner Lite and only about 9 minutes. It has masterful writing for woodwinds, catchy melodies, and good special effects. Prior to that I recorded Barber's First Essay for Orchestra. It's a stunning beauty that I played in college orchestra 50 years ago. I really like this video, you've created a good study list, anyone would benefit from learning these pieces. Cheers.
11:00 That point is so important. This is why sitting at an empty orchestral template is so difficult. It becomes like a circle of coming up with a musical idea immedeately having to orchestrate it, loosing yourself in that process and then coming up with a new idea.
La Peri by Paul Dukas is a great (his magnum opus IMO). Also anything by Florent Schmitt (especially Reves and his Symphonie Concertante) is good, too.
I think you can learn more from studying minor masters, because they are more accessible, imitatible, and more definitive of style, such as Raff. Also Rimsky-Korsakov, being a great teacher, provides many great examples.
On the note of 4-hand piano and their orchestrated brethren, there’s Brahms’s Hungarian Dances (originally piano). Also a great study of creating interest and excitement in short pieces, as well as memorable themes. And the opposite (orchestral to piano duet) for the sake of study, he made reductions of his symphonies as well.
Great, to hear about the "leit motif". It sounds somehow funny to me because the German word "Leitmotiv" is not translated completely to English (leading motif). However, it reminds me to the "eigenvalues" in mathematics which are actually "own values" if you perform a word by word translation from "Eigenwerte".
Hi Ryan, hope you well. I liked a lot your videos, they are very instructive and such a great source of info . I would like know if there are any books that teach how to compose classical form pieces.
I would add Vaughan Williams' 'A London Symphony' to this. I learned more about orchestrating from analyzing that score than in my whole grad orchestration class.
Very nice subject! Just enjoyed the whole vid. I would suggest a Rachmaninov 2nd, 3rd concerto or variations on a theme of Paganini, they all are very pleasant and interesting pieces to study ;)
Great masterpiece, but for studying orchestration.... and in particular this top 10 listing, Rach may not enter tbe top 10. His second symphony is more suitable than his concerto (i did that score study in 3rd year). Perhaps, Prokofiev symphony 5 too (Of course, this top 10 is a very personal and very subjective)
Ryan, thank you and I want to learn orchestration. I’ve listened to all your videos on aloud, which I have not, because got it on sell and I hand free libraries that I just got because they were free, but listening to the libraries you are recommending, I’m 74 years young and excited about orchestration. Not looking too me famous, but want to write like you do and where musicians writing for film, games, documentaries, etc. Thank you so much for treating this. Sorry for the long working. Hope I hear from you. I know you are busy!
@@RyanLeach, to be honest. I would like to see how I can use Opus as my first library to write music with before advancing to other libraries and make things happen with Opus as I see you use in your videos. I don’t see much on RU-vid, except what others have compared with Opus.
Although the format and personalities are different, the awesomeness of Mr. Leach's explanations remind me of the Young People's Concerts of Leonard Bernstein.
I really miss recurring motifs or themes in movie scores. They were huge in the 80s and 90s. I miss good scores in general. The scoring in movies today is so lame. It's hard to imagine Star Wars, Back to The Future, Indiana Jones, or the James Bond series without their iconic scores. It also helps that the movies were better back then too.
Great list. I am surprised you chose Ma Mère l’Oye over Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2. I think that is just one the masterpieces of the entire orchestral repertoire. Talk about painting a picture with music.
Absolutely! What I like about Mother Goose is that original piano version, which makes a great "piano to score" study comparison. I know you can get a piano version of Daphnis but I don't know of it was published that way originally (maybe it was?)
I’m surprised nobody even in the comment section mentioned Wagner. His orchestration always sounds so comfy, full and satisfying to me. I don’t know how he does it or what’s the secret ingredient. His use of the wind section, for instance, is unparalleled and should be mandatory study material at conservatories. Maybe not very relevant to modern film scoring, but if I can help it, I would like to make it so...
i was personally little miffed that no scores of wagner, mahler, or the second viennese school were featured. definitely got the sense that the video was focused on a very specific kind of scoring that is more applicable to modern-day film scoring and than say, the chamber-esque and musically functional scoring of Lied von der Erde. but anyone who doesn't include Wozzeck in the same sentence as the Debussy or Holst inasfar as influential descriptive orchestration is concerned is leaving a massive hole in the historical and artistic conversation.
An interesting note about Debussy, he seemed to drive the academics crazy. If you were a student at the Paris Conservatory (at the time) and you were caught with a score of Pelleas et Melisande, it was grounds for immediate expulsion. Seems like an overreaction in retrospect.
As cool as all the more "recent" stuff is, I would've swapped out one or two of your picks for music older than Mozart. Almost anything by Bach (but I'll commit to either the Brandenburg Concertos or Orchestral Suites), Handel's Water Music, Corelli's Concerto Grossos -- something like that would be useful to know as well.
Do I need to revisit Bach? I've always found his work to be boring - almost mathemtically predictable. As if an AI had been taught the rules of music and was delivering pieces which obeyed the rules, but nothing else. Not in any way trying to besmirch the composer - this is just what I tend to hear. What would you recommend I listen to in order to better appreciate him?
I'm not adding to your list, but have you listened to Tchaik's "Tempest Overture"? For me, it's probably the most modern movie-scoring piece of the Romantic Era.
Thanks! That's a broad question so the broad advice would be to write, write, write, and worry about quantity over anything else. Also from a business perspective, there are a lot of composers out there so be prepared to diversify your income streams and do non-music work if you have to. Can't write music if you can't pay rent!
Somewhat surprised not seeing Pictures at an Exhibition for Color, Revel waving the magic wand. Few did it better. Stokowski's versions good for contrast.
I would add Richard Strauss' tone poems and music by Franz Schreker (the big one being Die Gezeichneten) as well as Mahlers Adaggietto from the 5th. Mahler's ability to capture essence of the Earth in his third, sixth drop (an example C to A to C an octave down in the harp part) is the essence of relaxation and serenity.
A lot of Ravel's music can be viewed like this as many of his works began as piano. People say Rimsky-Korsakov was the master of instrumenation, but I say Ravel far exceeds the former.
The Dies irae melody heard during the opening credits of The Shining existed long before Berlioz used it in the Symphonie Fantastique. It dates from the era of Gregorian chant and has been used by many composers. Check out Franz Liszt's Totentanz. Rachmaninoff used the tune in over a dozen compositions, most notably the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Just sayin'.
Does anyone know how to find scores for the string arrangements on Pop records from the Rock Era? Arranging for contemporary Pop record has distinct challenges, because of the electric bass and guitars taking up so much real estate.
Its nice and not easy to make such a list. Lists, rankings, »the 10 most important …«, »the 10 most influential …« are totally in vogue nowadays. Nevertheless: This list contains 10 pieces of music, but all composed within 120 years. The most modern ones are already over 100 years old. All examples are from Europe, more or less. Ok, you can find all these scores on imslp. But if it comes to orchestration (and I guess thats the main topic of this list) I miss a lot of iconic approaches whereas Mozart Beethoven, Brahms, Tschaikowski etc feel redundant to me (like iPhone 5, 6, 7, …) Imho everybody should (also) study pieces like Atmospheres by Ligety, Sensemaya by Revueltas, the Folia Variations by Salieri a.s.o. When it comes to orchestration I also would guess that Mozart’s The Magic Flute or Haydn’s The Creation are better choices than Mozart KV 550, as well as Beethoven 7 is more interesting and breathtaking than his 3rd. Skip Brahms. I also would prefer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphonies over Gustav Holst’s Planets, although composers like Debussy, Skriabin etc invented more interesting and foreward-looking orchestrations than their slightly old fashioned british colleagues. Don’t forget Varese.
I guess the point he's trying to make is that one can have a somewhat progressive understanding of orchestration and it's craft in those scores in a very actionable way (for media composers, game composers and arrangers). The point isn't to make the ultimate and most comprehensive list of scores studies from the classics, although I do agree that would be nice to see stuff that is more recent (in a following video).
Might be a stupid question but how do you study a score properly. What is the process of it? Do you then try to write something similar? Just wondering because I am selling teaching myself so sometimes it is hard not to get overwhelmed
