Offstage brass and percussion
Encyclopedia
An offstage brass and percussion part is a sound effect used in Classical music, which is created by having one or more trumpet
players (also called an offstage trumpet call), horn
players, or percussionists from a symphony orchestra or opera orchestra play a note, melody, or rhythm from behind the stage. This creates a distant, muted effect which composers use to suggest "celestial voices", melancholy, or nostalgia, or to create a haunting effect.
, a group of offstage trumpets plays a distorted-sounding fanfare along with cornets to create an unusual dramatic effect. In Beethoven's overture for Leonore Overture and in Fidelio
he used an offstage trumpet call.
In Respighi
's The Pines of Rome, he uses an offstage trumpet for "Pines Near a Catacomb"; after the low strings play solemn chords, and the trombones play a simple, ancient-sounding Gregorian chant
-style melody, an offstage trumpet introduces the piece's second theme. Richard Strauss
used offstage trumpets during a battle scene in Ein Heldenleben
("A Hero's Life"). Aaron Copland
's Quiet City
used an offstage trumpet. Gustav Mahler
's Symphony No. 2 in C minor uses an offstage brass ensemble of trumpets, french horns, and percussion. While the offstage trumpet's distant sound can create an emotional effect, critic Maurice Brown warned in 1971 that it can become an overused cliché.
Performing offstage music that has to be in sync with a larger ensemble on the stage involves potential problems with rhythm and pitch, because a difference of even a part of a second or a fraction of a semitone of pitch will be noticeable to the audience. If the conductor wants a truly muted and distant sound, the offstage player needs to be behind the stage or in an adjoining hall, not merely standing in the wings of the stage. If the offstage player is in an adjoining hallway or room behind the stage area, they may not be able to see the conductor or hear the orchestra. Even if they can hear the orchestra, their perception of the pitch and timing may be affected by the distance and refraction of the sound. If trumpet or french horn players attempt to tune their notes by ear to the orchestra pitch that they hear, their pitch may sound flat to the audience and conductor even if it is "correct" to the trumpeter or french hornists' ear, because a brass instrument's pitch varies over a long distance, and thus may sound flat in comparison to the orchestra.
To overcome these issues, conductors sometimes have an assistant who cues the offstage player, but this can result in miscues or time lags. These problems have led to a number of humorous anecdotes in the 19th and early 20th century, such as the case cited by Sir Malcolm Arnold, in which he jokes about a performance of Beethoven's Leonore Overture in which the offstage trumpet part was "conspicuous by its absence", because the backstage performer misunderstood the cue, and failed to play. Since the 1980s, both of these challenges have been surmounted with technology. To ensure that the offstage performer is in rhythm with the orchestra, a closed-circuit TV can be set up backstage to transmit video feed of the conductor's moving stick and hands. To ensure that the offstage performer is in pitch with the rest of the orchestra, the offstage performer can play while watching an electronic tuner
which indicates whether they are sharp or flat.
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
players (also called an offstage trumpet call), horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
players, or percussionists from a symphony orchestra or opera orchestra play a note, melody, or rhythm from behind the stage. This creates a distant, muted effect which composers use to suggest "celestial voices", melancholy, or nostalgia, or to create a haunting effect.
History
In Act III of Berlioz's opera Les TroyensLes Troyens
Les Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...
, a group of offstage trumpets plays a distorted-sounding fanfare along with cornets to create an unusual dramatic effect. In Beethoven's overture for Leonore Overture and in Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
he used an offstage trumpet call.
In Respighi
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...
's The Pines of Rome, he uses an offstage trumpet for "Pines Near a Catacomb"; after the low strings play solemn chords, and the trombones play a simple, ancient-sounding Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
-style melody, an offstage trumpet introduces the piece's second theme. Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
used offstage trumpets during a battle scene in Ein Heldenleben
Ein Heldenleben
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40, is a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1898, and heralds the composer's more mature period in this genre...
("A Hero's Life"). Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
's Quiet City
Quiet City (music)
Quiet City is a well-known composition for trumpet, cor anglais, and string orchestra by Aaron Copland.In 1940, Copland wrote incidental music for the play Quiet City by Irwin Shaw. The next year he knitted some of it into a ten-minute piece composition designed to be performed independently of the...
used an offstage trumpet. Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
's Symphony No. 2 in C minor uses an offstage brass ensemble of trumpets, french horns, and percussion. While the offstage trumpet's distant sound can create an emotional effect, critic Maurice Brown warned in 1971 that it can become an overused cliché.
Performance challenges
Offstage music performed in the theater as an effect in a play is often less problematic than performing offstage music with an orchestra. In a theater context, the offstage sound effects are less likely to have to be synchronized exactly with other rhythms or pitches. For example, in some Shakespeare plays, the script calls for an offstage bugle call to indicate that enemy soldiers are in the distance. This cue does not have to aligned with any other pitches or rhythms; it only needs to occur within the correct part of a scene, so a leeway of several seconds is acceptable.Performing offstage music that has to be in sync with a larger ensemble on the stage involves potential problems with rhythm and pitch, because a difference of even a part of a second or a fraction of a semitone of pitch will be noticeable to the audience. If the conductor wants a truly muted and distant sound, the offstage player needs to be behind the stage or in an adjoining hall, not merely standing in the wings of the stage. If the offstage player is in an adjoining hallway or room behind the stage area, they may not be able to see the conductor or hear the orchestra. Even if they can hear the orchestra, their perception of the pitch and timing may be affected by the distance and refraction of the sound. If trumpet or french horn players attempt to tune their notes by ear to the orchestra pitch that they hear, their pitch may sound flat to the audience and conductor even if it is "correct" to the trumpeter or french hornists' ear, because a brass instrument's pitch varies over a long distance, and thus may sound flat in comparison to the orchestra.
To overcome these issues, conductors sometimes have an assistant who cues the offstage player, but this can result in miscues or time lags. These problems have led to a number of humorous anecdotes in the 19th and early 20th century, such as the case cited by Sir Malcolm Arnold, in which he jokes about a performance of Beethoven's Leonore Overture in which the offstage trumpet part was "conspicuous by its absence", because the backstage performer misunderstood the cue, and failed to play. Since the 1980s, both of these challenges have been surmounted with technology. To ensure that the offstage performer is in rhythm with the orchestra, a closed-circuit TV can be set up backstage to transmit video feed of the conductor's moving stick and hands. To ensure that the offstage performer is in pitch with the rest of the orchestra, the offstage performer can play while watching an electronic tuner
Electronic tuner
The term electronic tuner can refer to a number of different things, depending which discipline you wish to study.In the Discipline of radio frequency electronics an electronic tuner is a device which tunes across a part of the radio frequency spectrum by the application of a voltage or appropriate...
which indicates whether they are sharp or flat.
List of pieces that call for offstage instruments
- Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
- Leonore Overture No. 3FidelioFidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
– 1 trumpet
- Leonore Overture No. 3
- Hector BerliozHector BerliozHector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
- Grand messe des morts (Requiem)Requiem (Berlioz)The Grande Messe des morts, Op. 5 by Hector Berlioz was composed in 1837. The Grande Messe des Morts is one of Berlioz's best-known works, with a tremendous orchestration of woodwind and brass instruments, including four antiphonal offstage brass ensembles placed at the corners of the concert stage...
– 4 brass bands, placed north, south, east and west of the audience
- Grand messe des morts (Requiem)
- Havergal BrianHavergal BrianHavergal Brian , was a British classical composer.Brian acquired a legendary status at the time of his rediscovery in the 1950s and 1960s for the many symphonies he had managed to write. By the end of his life he had completed 32, an unusually large number for any composer since Haydn or Mozart...
- Symphony No. 1 (The Gothic)Symphony No. 1 (Havergal Brian)The Symphony No. 1 in D minor by Havergal Brian was composed between 1919 and 1927, and partly owes its notoriety to being perhaps the largest symphony ever composed...
– Four groups, each containing 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, 2 tubas and 1 set of timpani
- Symphony No. 1 (The Gothic)
- Gustav MahlerGustav MahlerGustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
- Symphony No. 1Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany...
– 2 trumpets - Symphony No. 2Symphony No. 2 (Mahler)The Symphony No. 2 by Gustav Mahler, known as the Resurrection, was written between 1888 and 1894, and first performed in 1895. Apart from the Eighth Symphony, this symphony was Mahler's most popular and successful work during his lifetime. It is his first major work that would eventually mark his...
– 4 trumpets, 4–6 horns, bass drum with cymbals attached, triangle and timpani - Symphony No. 3Symphony No. 3 (Mahler)The Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1893 and 1896. It is his longest piece and is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire, with a typical performance lasting around ninety to one hundred minutes.- Structure :...
– Snare drums and posthorn - Symphony No. 6Symphony No. 6 (Mahler)The Symphony No. 6 in A minor by Gustav Mahler, sometimes referred to as the Tragische , was composed between 1903 and 1904 . The work's first performance was in Essen, on May 27, 1906, conducted by the composer.The tragic, even nihilistic ending of No...
– Cowbells and deep tubular bells - Symphony No. 7Symphony No. 7 (Mahler)Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony was written in 1904-05, with repeated revisions to the scoring. It is sometimes referred to by the title Song of the Night , though this title was not Mahler's own and he disapproved of it. Although the symphony is often described as being in the key of 'E minor,'...
– Cowbells - Symphony No. 8Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is often performed with fewer than a...
– 4 trumpets and 3 trombones
- Symphony No. 1
- Sergei ProkofievSergei ProkofievSergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
- Lieutenant Kijé SuiteLieutenant Kije (Prokofiev)Lieutenant Kijé or Kizhe , originally Kizh , is the protagonist of an anecdote going back to the time of Emperor Paul I of Russia; the story was used as the basis of a novella by Yury Tynyanov published in 1927 and filmed in 1934 with music by Sergei Prokofiev...
- 1 cornet
- Lieutenant Kijé Suite
- Ottorino RespighiOttorino RespighiOttorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...
- Feste RomaneFeste RomaneFeste Romane is a work for very large symphony orchestra composed in 1926, by the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi. It is a tone poem depicting scenes from Ancient Rome of the Roman Empire...
– 3 BuccineBuccinaA buccina or bucina , anglicized buccin or bucine, is a brass instrument used in the ancient Roman army similar to the Cornu. An aeneator who blew a buccina was called a "buccinator" or "bucinator" ....
(3 soprano) - Pines of Rome – 6 BuccineBuccinaA buccina or bucina , anglicized buccin or bucine, is a brass instrument used in the ancient Roman army similar to the Cornu. An aeneator who blew a buccina was called a "buccinator" or "bucinator" ....
(2 soprano, 2 tenor, 2 bass) and 1 trumpet
- Feste Romane
- Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
- Festive OvertureFestive Overture (Shostakovich)The Festive Overture in A major, Op. 96, was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1954 for a concert held at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to commemorate the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution ....
– 4 horns, 3 trumpets and 3 trombones - Song of the ForestsSong of the ForestsDmitri Shostakovich composed his oratorio The Song of the Forests, Op. 81, in the summer of 1949. It was written to celebrate the forestation of the Russian steppes following the end of World War II...
– 6 trumpets and 6 trombones
- Festive Overture
- Richard StraussRichard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
- Eine Alpensinfonie – 12 horns, 2 trumpets and 2 trombones
- Ein Heldenleben – 3 trumpets
- Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
- 1812 Overture1812 OvertureThe Year 1812, Festival Overture in E flat major, Op. 49, popularly known as the 1812 Overture or the Overture of 1812 is an overture written by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1880 to commemorate Russia's defense of Moscow against Napoleon's advancing Grande Armée at the Battle of...
– "Open" instrumentation consisting of "any extra brass instruments" available.
- 1812 Overture