Timbre and texture in twentieth-century orchestration techniques

This paper undertakes an analytical survey of various orchestration techniques commonly found in contemporary orchestral scores from 1945 to the present. These include (1) activation of pitch structures among instrumental groups, (2) varieties of timbral transformation, and 3) sustaining sonorities among instrumental bodies.Applications by selected modern composers are examined with extended discussion of orchestration in works by Lutoslawski, Baird, Berio, and Penderecki. The analytic objective is to account for the construction of an orchestration, in each excerpt, by examining structural levels resulting from a particular technique or combination of techniques. Contributing features such as extended instrumental techniques, sound masses and multiple divisions among the orchestra, are detailed.