The Oxford Handbook of Orchestration Studies takes a new approach to the subject of orchestration, or the aspect of crafting a musical work that involves choosing and combining instruments and other sound sources to create combinations of tone colors (timbres). While most existing books on orchestration are textbooks or how-to manuals, this volume brings together a wide range of musical and scholarly perspectives on orchestration.
This volume assembles authors from many established disciplines-musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, organology, music psychology, composition, conducting, performing, cognitive science, acoustics, computer science, film, audio engineering, and more-to argue for the centrality of orchestration in musical practice and examine this often-neglected topic.
Musical scholarship has frequently relegated orchestration to a merely decorative role-the adornment of composed notes and rhythms with instrumental timbres- but this volume seeks to reclaim orchestration's importance as an inherent and essential part of creative music making in a variety of genres and styles. Though the term "orchestration" is most typically associated with arranging previously composed musical ideas for the symphonic orchestra, this volume's definition (adapted from music psychologist Stephen McAdams) is much broader: orchestration is the choice, combination, and/or juxtaposition of timbres in a musical context. Under this encompassing definition, orchestration is no longer separate from composition and improvisatory creation but an integral part of the process: whenever we "com-pose" (put together) timbres with attention to their constituent and emergent qualities, we are simultaneously orchestrating.
In this sense, orchestration is present in virtually all musical settings and traditions, from chamber music to gamelan ensembles, jazz big bands, or the mixing of synthesized sounds in the electronic music studio. By adopting the phrase "orchestration studies," this volume seeks to open a wide-ranging interdisciplinary engagement with the topic. Scientific and theoretical approaches are introduced in an accessible way to musicians and scholars, with an eye towards practical applications.
Julie Delisle is a composer, flutist, and musicologist specialized in contemporary music, performance practice, and computer music. They graduated from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (QC, Canada), and from the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (Germany) in flute performance. Julie Delisle earned their PhD from Université de Montréal with a thesis dedicated to the analysis of flute timbre, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory (McGill University). Their current research focuses on the sheng, a Chinese mouth organ, the integration of interactive audio techniques into musical creation, and the study of sound propagation and spatialization.
Robert Hasegawa, music theorist and composer, joined the faculty of McGill University's Schulich School of Music in 2012. His recent research explores timbre and orchestration in contemporary music, drawing on perspectives from psychoacoustics and music cognition. As associate director of the ACTOR Partnership (Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration), he helped lead an international team of researchers developing new, interdisciplinary approaches to the topic. His earlier research considers the intersection of timbre and harmony, microtonality, spectralism, and creative constraints in music creation. His publications include studies of music by Pascale Criton, Toru Takemitsu, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Gérard Grisey.
Jason Noble is Professor of Instrumental and Electroacoustic Composition at the Université de Moncton. His research focuses on perception and meaning in contemporary music, with publications addressing semantic associations in electroacoustic and sound mass music, musical experiences of temporality and timelessness, perceptual relations between instrumental music and the human voice, and challenges and advantages of orchestrating for homogeneous ensembles. His compositions have been performed across the Americas and Europe, with a catalogue including choral, operatic, orchestral, chamber, narrated, and electroacoustic works. He is motivated by a strong belief that contemporary music can be progressive and accessible at the same time.
Moe Touizrar holds a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto and a parallel research affiliation with the University of Helsinki funded by the Kone Foundation. He previously held a 1-year research position at the University of Jyväskylä. Before this, he taught at McGill University, where he received his PhD. Moe's research lies at the intersection of music theory, music perception, phenomenology, and aesthetics and seeks to understand orchestral music's depictive capacity. He was an active member of the multinational Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration project (ACTOR), where he co-led the Arts, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Methodologies workgroup.
