Instrumentation (music)

In music, instrumentation is the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and the properties of those instruments individually. Instrumentation is sometimes used as a synonym for orchestration. This juxtaposition of the two terms was first made in 1843 by Hector Berlioz in his Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes, and various attempts have since been made to differentiate them. Instrumentation is a more general term referring to an orchestrator's, composer's or arranger's selection of instruments in varying combinations, or even a choice made by the performers for a particular performance, as opposed to the narrower sense of orchestration, which is the act of scoring for orchestra a work originally written for a solo instrument or smaller group of instruments. Writing for any instrument requires a composer or arranger to know the instrument's properties, such as: the instrument's particular timbre, or range of timbres; the range of pitches available on the instrument, as well as its dynamic range; the constraints of playing technique, such as length of breath, possible fingerings, or the average player's stamina; the relative difficulty of particular music on that instrument (for example, repeated notes are much easier to play on the violin than on the piano; while trills are relatively easy on the flute, but extremely difficult on the trombone); the availability of special effects or extended techniques, such as col legno playing, fluttertongue, or glissando; the notation conventions for the instrument. Whereas "orchestration" refers to the deployment and combination of instruments in large ensembles, "instrumentation" is a wider term that also embraces the ingenuity of composers and arrangers in the handling of small ensembles. J. S. Bach experimented with a variety of instrumental groups throughout his composing life. A striking example is the band that he selected to accompany the solo bass singer in the "Quoniam" movement from his Mass in B minor.