Review: The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the Technologies of Timbre by Emily I. Dolan

Abstract

The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the Technologies of Timbre , by Emily I. Dolan. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xiii, 290 pp. The title of Emily I. Dolan's The Orchestral Revolution echoes two of her historical sources. Most clearly there is the 1827 article in the Revue musicale by Francois-Joseph Fetis, “Des revolutions de l'orchestre,” that takes Haydn's orchestration as a turning point in music history (p. 252). Yet the revolution metaphor also appears in Giuseppe Carpani's biography, Le Haydine (1812).1 “The genius and studies of Haydn's predecessors had been directed toward the voice,” writes Carpani. “They employed instruments only as an agreeable accessory: like the ornaments in architecture or the accessories and landscape in a history painting. Music was a monarchy: the aria reigned absolute; the accompaniments were only subjects.” Haydn, in this narrative, deposed the voice, liberated instruments, and thereby founded a “republic of different, yet connected sounds” (quoted on p. 157). Fetis seems to describe a compositional revolution, considering Haydn's influence on Beethoven, Rossini, and others. Carpani's references to politics and painting, though, point to broad cultural changes as well. This distinction may help clarify two parts of Dolan's thesis: the emergence of the modern orchestra in the eighteenth century involved new ways of combining instruments ( orchestral techniques ); but it also engendered new ways of listening to and thinking about music (that is, an orchestral aesthetic ). The book as a whole traces the integration of orchestral techniques and the orchestral aesthetic. Each of its six chapters, though, may emphasize one or the other. For example, a middle pair of chapters specifically foregrounds Haydn's orchestral techniques. This review will begin with these chapters—at the book's literal and musical center—before considering the philosophical and historical concerns of its opening and closing parts. Haydn's symphonies showcase both individual instruments and the power of the total ensemble. Chapter 3, “Haydn, Orchestration, and Re-orchestration,” shows how the composer's contemporaries praised this orchestral …