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This course unit provides a comprehensive training in the practice of orchestration and its relationship to the other parameters of musical composition. It involves close collaboration with the professional orchestras based in Â鶹Æƽâ°æ. Weekly seminars are supplemented by attendance at BBC Philharmonic and/or Hallé Orchestra rehearsals. Course content is tailored to complement the current concert season. 

Student would normally hold a first degree in Music

• To provide students with an advanced understanding of instruments and the principles underlying late 19^th century to contemporary approaches to orchestration.

• To acquaint students with techniques of orchestration through both theoretical study and analysis, and practical engagement through attendance at BBC Philharmonic and/or Hallé Orchestra rehearsals.

• To provide an understanding as to how the practice of orchestration relates to the other parameters of musical composition.

By the end of the course-unit students should have:

• Studied a variety of 20th/21st-century musical scores.
• Developed a comprehensive understanding of 20th century to contemporary practice in orchestration and its relationship to the other parameters of musical composition.
• Developed skills in problem solving, analysis, aesthetics, and judgment.
• Made a detailed study of the orchestration of a selected composer and put this knowledge into practice in their own orchestration of a piano piece (or work for voice or solo instrument with piano) by the same composer.
• Developed acute aural awareness in the balancing and combination of instruments, in terms of timbre, dynamics and density.
• Learned to make appropriate aesthetic judgments.
• Developed creative decision-making.
• Developed skills in orchestral layout of scores and preparation of parts, which involves professionalism, proof-reading, organizational skills and attention to detail.

Adler, Samuel - The Study of Orchestration (Norton, 1989)

Blatter, Alfred - Instrumentation and Orchestration (Schirmer, 1997)

Piston, Walter - Orchestration (Gollancz, 1955)

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay - Principles of Orchestration (Dover, 1964)