American Musical Theater Orchestrations in the Library of Congress

摘要

The work of the orchestmtor/arranger is an art and a craft that has been mastered by a fairly small group of people. The composer writes a tune, perhaps a simple melody with chords attached. Almost always it is just for piano. The orches-trator takes that basic tune and determines how it will be converted for a group of musicians-the strings will do this, the woodwinds will do that, a counter-melody for the French horn will go here and the number will reach a crescendo at the appropriate point. The closest analogy is that an artist makes a pencil drawing while someone else turns it into an oil painting, deciding where the colors will go. Or think of a different recording or version of the same song. Those differences are the work of the orchestrator.