Spitzer, John and Neal Zaslaw. 2004. The Birth of the 
Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815. New York 
and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Reviewed by JohnA. Rice 

Musicological books by more than one author are (with the obvious excep­
tion of anthologies) relatively rare. So it is natural to be curious both about 
the individual contributions that John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw made to 
this monumental book and about the nature of their collaboration. In their 
preface, they explain that "Neal Zaslaw wrote the first drafts of Chapters 3 
and 6 ['Lully's Orchestra' and 'The Orchestra in France']; the remaining 
chapters were drafted by John Spitzer. The two of us edited, rewrote, and 
reedited the entire book together" (v). Their combined labors have resulted 
in the most comprehensive, accurate, and insightful account ever written of 
the orchestra's early history. I need to make this absolutely clear at the out­
set because my review points to what I feel are some flaws in the book. 
These observations must be considered in the context of the authors' over­
all achievement in so expertly and indefatigably covering such a vast and 
complex field. 

The book falls into two large parts. The first part (chapters 1-9) con­
sists largely of a series of chronologically-arranged surveys tracing the de­
velopment of the orchestra in France, Italy, Germany (by which the authors 
mean the German-speaking part of Europe), and Britain and its North 
American colonies (all treated in a chapter inaccurately called "The Orches­
tra in England"). The second part of the book (chapters 10-14) explores 
various topics throughout the period indicated by the book's title, from 
performance practices, rehearsals, seating, acoustics, and orchestration, to 
the conductor, the economic status of orchestral musicians, and (in conclu­
sion) "The Meaning of the Orchestra." 

Most of the book is based on secondary literature; it presents a thor­
ough, well-organized, and authoritative synthesis of decades of scholarly 
research. Chapters 4 and 14 are among the exceptions. Chapter 4, "Corelli's 
Orchestra;' is based in large part on new archival research and includes sev­
eral documents that have not, apparently, been published before, while Chap­
ter 14, "The Meaning of the Orchestra;' is largely woven from research in 
computerized databases. Whether presenting new material or synthesizing 
the work of other scholars, Spitzer and Zaslaw always write with admirable 
clarity and without a trace of academic jargon. 

The final chapter of the first part, entitled "The Classical Orchestra," 

Current Musicology, No. 77 (Spring 2004) 
© 2004 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York 137 



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discusses orchestras active between 1750 and 1815. In keeping with the in­
ternationalization of music in the second half of the eighteenth century 
(facilitated by the frequent travel of composers and orchestral musicians), 
this chapter breaks away from the geographical specialization of earlier chap­
ters and covers all of Europe. Though the chapter's scope is appropriate, its 
title gives pause. The term "Classical" has been subject to incisive criticism 
in recent years by scholars such as James Webster (1991) and pointedly 
avoided by others, such as Daniel Heartz (1995). So it is surprising that the 
authors use it, and the even more old-fashioned term "Viennese Classical 
style," without justification or explanation. 

Spitzer and Zaslaw devote substantial attention to two musicians in 
particular who played crucial roles in the development of the orchestra in 
the second half of the seventeenth century: Lully and Corelli. Their chap­
ters, the only ones devoted to individual musicians and the orchestras they 
led, add significantly to our knowledge and understanding of the period. 
Among the many important issues they cover here is the problem of whether 
or not Corelli's orchestra sometimes played without keyboard instruments 
in the continuo group. The authors argue that although "organs and harp­
sichords were indeed present at many of Corelli's performances;' the key­
board instruments "were associated conceptually and practically with the 
vocal rather than the instrumental aspects of performance" (125). 

The detail with which Spitzer and Zaslaw discuss Lully and Corelli may 
raise expectations for the treatment of later orchestras that the book does 
not fully meet. I was disappointed at the relatively little said about Johann 
Stamitz and the celebrated Mannheim orchestra, about the London orches­
tras for which Haydn wrote his late symphonies, and about the orchestras 
in Vienna for which Mozart wrote most of his late operas and concertos 
and Beethoven his first eight symphonies.! 

The book's final chapter presents a close analysis, influenced by the work 
of the linguist George Lakoff and others, of various metaphors by which 
eighteenth-century writers revealed their understanding of the orchestra. 
There is much food for thought here. The comparison of the orchestra to 
clockwork (519), for example, brings to mind the chronological proximity 
of the first orchestras to the invention of the balance spring around 1665.2 

The authors' awareness of how metaphor expresses meaning encour­
ages readers to take notice of the book's most pervasive metaphor, that of 
birth. The use of this metaphor in the title is by no means accidental or 
casual; it appears several times in the book. Yet the authors do not seem to 
have treated their metaphor with complete consistency, or with clear aware­
ness of its implications. Near the end of the book, they call the birth of the 
orchestra "not an event but a process-a long process that began in the 



John A. Rice 

early seventeenth century and completed itself, more or less, in the early 
decades of the nineteenth century" (530). But earlier they write: "When it 
was born in the late seventeenth century the orchestra was a novelty" (507). 
The use of scare quotes in another passage suggests some discomfort with 
the metaphor: "The orchestra was 'born' in England between about 1685 
and 1715" (272). 

Birth carries with it connotations of organic development, beginning 
with the weakness and imperfection of infancy, continuing with the imma­
turity of childhood, and ultimately resulting in the maturity and strength 
of adulthood. (To half of humanity, the idea of birth is inseparable from the 
idea of extraordinary physical pain.) Taking the metaphor of birth seri­
ously, we cannot escape the implication that orchestras of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries were babies or children compared to the adult or­
chestras of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although Spitzer and 
Zaslaw never acknowledge such implications, they seem to have allowed 
them to shape parts of their narrative. They write in their conclusion: "The 
development of the practice and theory of orchestration drew orchestral 
music closer to works of art" (530). That suggests that the earliest orchestral 
music, perhaps because the orchestra itself was in its infancy, does not qualify 
as art. 

The authors define the early nineteenth-century orchestra in their pref­
ace as "the institution that, with changes, still exists in concert halls and 
opera houses in many parts of the world" (v); in other words, the late-Ro­
mantic symphony orchestra that caters largely to urban-dwelling, upper­
middle-class music lovers over the age of fifty. This, some readers might 
conclude, is the mature organism resulting from the birth and subsequent 
development of the orchestra. Yet music lovers of the early twenty-first cen­
tury are able to enjoy a wide variety of orchestras, some of which do not 
descend directly from the early nineteenth-century prototype. 

We enjoy Il Giardino Armonico, for example, because the Baroque or­
chestra that inspired it was no newborn child. We can speak of its birth only 
in the sense that we can speak of the birth of Venus: it rose fully formed 
from the seventeenth-century musical sea, as mature and as perfect as 
Botticelli's goddess. The compositions that Lully and Corelli wrote for their 
orchestras are just as much works of art as the music that Tchaikovskywrote 
for a very different kind of ensemble two hundred years later. I don't think 
that Spitzer and Zaslaw would disagree with me. I only wish they had made 
this point more explicitly. 

Early on, the authors clearly acknowledge that no single set of defini­
tional criteria apply to every orchestra. In chapter 1 they list the following as 
features that, in various combinations, allow us to define an instrumental 

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ensemble as an orchestra: a violin-based ensemble with part doubling, stan­
dardized instrumentation and repertory, 16-foot bass, keyboard continuo, 
unity and discipline, and particular kinds of administrative structures. The 
authors stress that an ensemble does not need to have all these features in 
order to be an orchestra, encouraging a flexible approach to the often vex­
ing problem of what is and is not an orchestra. Yet lurking, not fully ac­
knowledged, somewhere in their minds is the sound and appearance of what 
they call "a real orchestra" (243). Thus the ensemble taking part in the per­
formance of Moliere's Le malade imaginaire in 1674 "looks, and perhaps it 
sounded, a lot like an orchestra" (86). They write of the Dresden Kapelle: 
"By 1709 something very much like an orchestra had emerged" (225). And 
of Johann Sebastian Bach: "Only in Leipzig can he be said to have had any­
thing like an orchestra at his disposal" (245). Statements like these make me 
uneasy. What is the difference between an orchestra and something "like an 
orchestra"? 

In the case of Bach, Spitzer and Zaslaw are reluctant to consider the 
ensembles for which he wrote before he came to Leipzig as orchestras be­
cause the strings apparently consisted of one player on a part. Here the au­
thors seem to retreat from their complex and subtle demonstration in chapter 
1 of how various combinations of characteristics can define an orchestra, 
and instead reduce their analysis to a single criterion: the size of the string 
band. Reporting that Bach's four OuvertUre are transmitted without dupli­
cate string parts, they conclude that these works were probably played by 
one musician on a part.3 They write: "Overtures 3 and 4 sound particularly 
grand and 'orchestral' [scare quotes again], but Bach achieves this by multi­
plying parts rather than multiplying players and by writing orchestral ef­
fects into the music, so that his one-on-a-part ensemble sounds more or­
chestral than it actually is" (249). 

This explanation-this dichotomy between what is orchestral and what 
sounds orchestral-appears to be at odds with much of the excellent con­
tent of chapter 13, "The Birth of Orchestration." There Spitzer and Zaslaw 
make the crucial point that part of what makes an ensemble into an orches­
tra is how a composer writes for it. They illustrate the orchestral unison 
(one of several "effects of unity and grandeur" characteristic of eighteenth­
century orchestral writing) by quoting the beginning of Bach's Keyboard 
Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052 (448). They are absolutely right to call the 
ensemble for which Bach wrote this concerto an orchestra, whether it was 
originally played one on a part or by a larger ensemble. 

The problem of whether an ensemble with one-on-a-part strings can 
be called an orchestra comes up several times in the book. It is never com­
pletely resolved, and probably never will be. The authors state that "large 



John A. Rice 

ensembles and part doubling do not seem to have been defining features of 
the Lullist movement in Germany. Style was more important than size to 
the German Lullists" (220). In other words, German musicians, including 
Bach, created orchestras simply by writing in a particular style and demand­
ing a level of ensemble discipline (uniform bowing and so forth) character­
istic of Lully's orchestra. 

Of an engraving entitled "Concerto a Cembalo obligato con Stromenti" 
and dated 1777, the authors write: 

Compared with the theater orchestras above, this little ensemble of eight 
instruments [two violins, two flutes, two horns, cello, and harpsichord or 
piano 1 hardly looks like much of an orchestra. The caption insists, how­
ever, that they are playing a 'keyboard concerto with instrumental accom­
paniment; and indeed one-on-a-part performances of concertos were 
common in Germany throughout the eighteenth century. (356) 

Behind this rather cloudy reasoning are two questionable and contradic­
tory assumptions: 1) that to look "like much of an orchestra," an ensemble 
needs significantly more than eight players; and 2) that any ensemble in­
volved in the performance of a concerto is ipso facto an orchestra. 

Spitzer and Zaslaw have assembled a vast amount of information about 
the size and instrumental content of eighteenth-century orchestras, much 
of which is presented in a series of tables and appendices that constitute one 
of their book's major assets. These tables, however, have to be used with 
caution. Some information is given in square brackets, and it is not imme­
diately obvious what these brackets signify. Do they enclose data that is not 
documented in the column headed "Source"? If so, what is the source for 
the data enclosed in the brackets? In a few cases information in one table is 
contradicted by information in another. For example, the Covent Garden 
orchestra of ISIS listed in Table S.2 (with eight violins and no double basses) 
is quite different from the Covent Garden orchestra of ISIS in Appendix D 
(with twelve violins and two double basses). 

The orchestras listed in the tables occasionally appear to be ensembles 
gathered for special occasions, and probably do not reflect the normal prac­
tice of a particular institution. For example, in Table 5.1 ("Representative 
Italian opera orchestras, 1707-99") an orchestra assembled in the Teatro 
Comunale of Bologna in 177S consisted of forty-two strings, two flutes, 
two oboes, one English horn, two bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, four 
trombones, and timpani. That massive ensemble was surely not representa­
tive of the opera orchestra at the Teatro Comunale, or of Italian opera in 
genera1.4 

Another reason to use the tables with caution is that in some cases they 

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present information about orchestras, and in other cases they report the 
personnel of Kapellen. Spitzer and Zaslaw explain that the term Kapelle was 
often used for a court's entire musical establishment, and that the relation 
between the size and composition of a Kapelle and the orchestra (or orches­
tras) drawing from that Kapelle for its (or their) members is problematic­
and an occasional source of inconsistency in this book. As the authors say 
in reference to data about the Mannheim Kapelle: "These numbers and these 
proportions represent instrumentalists available in the Kapelle, not the or­
chestra as it appeared at any actual performance" (259). Yet on the previous 
page they say that these same figures show "the development of the 
Mannheim orchestra" (258; emphasis added). The distinction between 
Kapelle and orchestra is further blurred in Appendix B, which, despite its 
title ("Sample orchestras, 1773-1778"), contains several Kapellen. As Spitzer 
and Zaslaw themselves state: "Tables that compare all kinds of ensembles 
playing all manner of music in all sorts of venues are impossible to inter­
pret" (28). 

The nature of keyboard instruments used in eighteenth- and early nine­
teenth-century orchestras is also a source of some inconsistency. Table 7.4 
("Instrumentalists in the Mannheim Kapelle, 1723-78") makes no refer­
ence to stringed keyboard instruments; the only keyboard instruments 
mentioned are a pair of organs. Yet in Appendix B the Mannheim Kapelle in 
1773 is said to have included two harpsichords. This inconsistency is re­
flected in the text as well: "Some symphonies composed at Mannheim in 
the 1760s have figures under the bass line in the manuscript parts, suggest­
ing that a harpsichord might have been a regular member of the orchestra 
for symphonies at that time" (3l3). From all this data, we might conclude 
that the Mannheim Kapelle employed two keyboard players who sometimes 
played organ and sometimes stringed keyboard instruments, and that one 
of these players might have participated in the performance of sympho­
nies. 5 

The book's use of the term "harpsichord" is itself somewhat problem­
atic. Spitzer and Zaslaw often translate the word cembalo as "harpsichord," 
despite strong evidence that in eighteenth-century Italy cembalo was used 
indiscriminately in reference to any keyboard instrument with strings. In­
stead, I wish they had followed their admirable policy of not translating the 
word basso when used to designate the bass line of orchestral music. Cembalo 
is just as ambiguous and complicated in its meanings as basso. 

The authors' rendering of cembalo as "harpsichord" reflects their ten­
dency, perceivable in several parts of the book, to minimize the importance 
of the piano vis-a-vis the harpsichord during most of the eighteenth cen­
tury. Although they admit that "by the 1770s pianos (what today are called 



John A. Rice 

'fortepianos') had begun to replace harpsichords, first in German orches­
tras, then elsewhere" (24), they do not sufficiently emphasize the impor­
tance of the role that the piano played in music making even before 1770, 
disposing of uncertainty in this area with an undocumented declaration 
that, "The keyboard instrument most widely used in the classical orchestra 
was the harpsichord" (312). According to Table 8.2, in 1818 the Covent 
Garden orchestra still included a harpsichord (although the instrument's 
name is enclosed in square brackets). 

The book's many illustrations constitute an important part of its value. 
I cannot think of any other book in which pictures of so many seventeenth­
and eighteenth-century orchestras have been assembled. Several of them 
are completely new to me. At the risk of seeming ungrateful for this wealth 
of visual material, I wish some of the pictures had been reproduced more 
clearly, and with more details of the orchestras visible. Several images (for 
example, Figs. 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, and 8.2) are disappointingly fuzzy. Others depict 
large halls or open spaces in which the orchestra appears as a small group 
(for example, Figs. 4.1, 5.3, 7.3,10.6, and Plate XI). Although such pictures 
usefully show the orchestra's spatial context, I would have welcomed more 
close-ups that might have allowed readers to see the individual players and 
their instruments more clearly. The book does contain some details oflarger 
illustrations, but even in the case of some of these details (for example, the 
illustration of a performance of Cesti's II porno d'oro in 1668, Fig. 2.3), my 
middle-aged eyes would have welcomed even sharper, more revealing im­
ages of instrumental ensembles. 

Another aspect of this book's richness is its mutually reinforcing net­
work of musical analyses, discussions of performance practice, and illustra­
tions of how orchestral leaders imposed discipline on their ensembles dur­
ing rehearsals and performances. Among the orchestral effects that Spitzer 
and Zaslaw describe as "effects of unity and grandeur" is the tirade, defined 
by Georg Muffat at the end of the seventeenth century as "several quick 
notes in a row, executed with great bow speed" (451). The authors explain 
that "the tirade is an upward or, less often, a downward scale, played quickly, 
with alternating bowstrokes." "Alternating bowstrokes" seems to mean that 
a tirade requires each note to be bowed separately. While Examples 13.13 
(from Lully'sAtys) and 13.14 (from a concerto by Vivaldi) seem to support 
this interpretation, in Example 13.15 (from an overture by Jommelli) what 
the authors refer to as a tirade is slurred, suggesting that it should be played 
with a single bow stroke. (This apparent inconsistency sent me back to chap­
ter 11, "Orchestral Performance Practices;' but oddly the section subtitled 
"Bowing and Articulation" deals almost entirely with the second half of the 
eighteenth century.) 

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Current Musicology 

Later in their chapter "The Birth of Orchestration;' the authors present 
a fascinating and provocative analysis of the exposition of the first move­
ment of Haydn's Symphony No.6 (Ie Matin), in which they identify tirades 
(again with slurs) among several effects of grandeur that Haydn deftly ma­
nipulates (494-501). This analysis proposes new ways of thinking and writ­
ing about eighteenth-century orchestral music: 

Concert symphonies were intended, as Schulze said, to "show off instru­
mental music in all its magnificence;' and in this sense symphonies, inso­
far as they were about anything, were about the orchestra. By using the 
full range of orchestral effects to highlight the melodies, harmonies, 
rhythms, textures, and structures of the music, eighteenth-century sym­
phony composers communicated the excellence of the orchestras for which 
they composed their symphonies and the excellence of orchestras in gen­
eral. (501) 

This makes good sense; but in choosing a patently programmatic symphony 
to make this point, Spitzer and Zaslaw are being a little coy, perhaps. Haydn's 
Symphony No.6 may be "about the orchestra;' but it is also about the morn­
ing. Of Haydn's slow introduction, they write in a footnote: "This opening 
adagio is sometimes said to depict the sun rising over the horizon:' This 
implies either that they do not subscribe to this interpretation, or that it is 
unimportant or impossible to verify whether or not the music depicts a 
sunrise. But this Adagio, at the beginning of a symphony that Haydn him­
self called Ie Matin, most definitely depicts a sunrise, and that sunrise is a 
crucial part of the picture painted by Haydn in this first movement. Spitzer 
and Zaslaw refer to the solo flute melody at the beginning of the Allegro as 
"a radical effect of variety and nuance." That is undoubtedly true; but to 
ignore the fact that the flute is playing a tuba pastoralis motive (much like 
the one Beethoven later used in the last movement of the Pastoral Sym­
phony) is to ignore an important element in Haydn's depiction of the morn­
ing. The combination of the sunrise and the cowherd's call makes clear that 
Haydn's first movement depicts not just any morning, but a morning out­
doors in the country. 

The Birth of the Orchestra is an important book that belongs in every 
serious music library. It contains much that will be of interest to students of 
performance practice, church music, opera, the concerto, the symphony, 
and the social history of music. Orchestral musicians as well will read it 
with excitement and pleasure, learning from it more about the early history 
of their venerable institution than they can from any other single source. 



John A. Rice 

Notes 

l. The authors appear to have made no use of an important series of recent articles on 
Beethoven's orchestral musicians by Theodore Albrecht (2000a; 2000b; 2002a; 2002b; 2003; 
2004). 

2. See Landes (1983:123) on this crucially important advance in timekeeping technology. 

3. Spitzer and Zaslaw do not consider here the possibility of two players using one part, 
although elsewhere they ask readers to assume "that string players played two on a part" 
(144). 

4. The date and the number of players in this orchestra in Bologna do not agree, in any case, 
with the text. Spitzer and Zaslaw state: "The largest of these commercial theater orchestras 
in Table 5.1 is an orchestra of 58 at the opening of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna in 1763" 
(148). But Table 5.1 contains no entry dated 1763, and the entry dated 1778 involves an 
orchestra of sixty-two. 

5. Some of these symphonies may have been performed in church, in which case the figures 
would more likely have been realized by an organ. 

References 

Albrecht, Theodore. 2000a. Beethoven's Timpanist, Ignaz Manker. Percussive Notes 38 (4): 
54-66. 

---. 2000b. Mozart's (and Beethoven's) Magic Flutist: Anton Dreyssig, ca. 1753/54-1820. 
Flute Talk 20: 6-9. 

---. 2002a. Franz Stadler, Stephan Fichtner, and Other Oboists at the Theater an der 
Wien during Beethoven's Heroic Period. The Double Reed 25 (2): 93-106. 

---. 2002b. Anton Grams: Beethoven's Preferred Double Bassist. International Society of 
Bassists Journal 26 (2): 19-23. 

---.2003. Benedict Fuchs, Franz Eisen, and Michael Herbst: The Hornists in Beethoven's 
Eroica Symphony at its First Performances in Vienna. The Horn Call: Journal of the Inter­
national Horn Society 34 (1): 39-49. 

---.2004. A Case of Mistaken Gender: The Hornist Camillo Bellonci (1781-?). The 
Horn Call: Journal of the International Horn Society 34 (2): 107-08. 

Heartz, Daniel. 1995. Haydn, Mozart, and the Viennese School, 1740-1780. New York: W. W. 
Norton. 

Landes, David S. 1983. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. 
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Webster, James. 1991. Haydn's Farewell Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press. 

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