The instruments, and what to watch

An orchestra is arranged so that you can see what you are hearing. The layout is nearly the same in every hall in the world, and once you know it you can follow a symphony with your eyes as much as your ears: watch who the conductor turns to, and you will know where the next big moment is coming from.

The map

From your seat, the strings fill the front half of the stage in a fan. First violins are on the far left, second violins next to them or on the far right depending on the orchestra, violas in the middle, cellos to the right, and the double basses standing or perched on stools along the right edge. Behind the strings, in a row across the middle, sit the woodwinds: flutes and oboes in front, clarinets and bassoons behind them. Behind and to the sides of the woodwinds are the brass: horns usually on the left, trumpets and trombones on the right, tuba at the end. Percussion runs along the back wall with the timpani, the big copper kettledrums, at the centre. A harp, a piano or a celesta, when the piece needs one, sits at the left edge near the first violins.

Strings

About sixty of the hundred players are string players, and they carry most of the music most of the time. The first violins usually have the tune; the seconds and violas fill in the harmony underneath; the cellos have the bass line and, in the Romantic repertoire, the second most beautiful melodies in the piece; the basses give the whole thing a floor. Watch the bows: when a whole section moves together it means the composer wanted one huge voice, and when the bows suddenly stop and the players pluck the strings, that dry ticking is called pizzicato. The player at the front left, closest to the conductor, is the concertmaster, who leads the strings and plays any solo violin passages.

Woodwinds

Two or three of each: flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, plus a piccolo, an English horn, a bass clarinet or a contrabassoon when the score asks. Each has a distinct voice, which is the point: the flute is silver and airy, the oboe reedy and plaintive (it plays the tuning note at the start because its pitch is the most stable), the clarinet warm and smooth across a huge range, the bassoon dry, woody and often funny. Composers hand the tune from one to the next in the quiet middle of a movement. When the strings drop out and a single wind player stands alone in the sound, that is the composer saying: listen to this voice.

Brass

Horns, trumpets, trombones and tuba. The horns are the orchestra's romantics, warm and heroic, the sound of forests and hunting calls and, in film music, of every hero's theme; four of them is normal, eight is Mahler or Strauss showing off. Trumpets cut through everything and are saved for arrivals and fanfares. Trombones and tuba are the weight at the bottom, used sparingly in the eighteenth century and everywhere after Beethoven. The brass sit still for long stretches, then all lift their instruments at once. That lift is your cue; the next thirty seconds will be loud.

Percussion

The timpanist is the one percussionist who plays in almost every piece, tuning the drums to specific notes between entries by bending over them and listening. Everything else, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, glockenspiel, xylophone, tam-tam, is brought in for colour. Watch the cymbal player: the walk to the front of the riser, the long wait, the single crash. The best moment in Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and the last chord of a thousand symphonies belong to that person.

The conductor

The conductor makes no sound and is the only person facing the wrong way. The right hand keeps time with the baton; the left shapes everything else, volume, colour, the cue that tells the horn player now. Most of the real work happened in rehearsal. In the concert the conductor's job is to keep a hundred people breathing together and to make decisions in the moment, a slightly longer pause here, a faster finish there, that turn a correct performance into a live one. If you want to know where to look during the music, look where the conductor is looking.

Moments to watch for

The oboe's tuning A and the silence after it, before the conductor walks on. The whole string section switching from bows to pizzicato and back. A woodwind solo, the player half rising from the chair. The brass lifting their bells. The timpanist's crescendo roll into a big arrival. The harpist's hands on a glissando. The last chord, the conductor's arms coming down, and the half-second of silence before the applause, which is the best silence in the building.

Every concert page on this site tells you the works and, on the work's own page, what forces it calls for, so you can tell before you buy a ticket whether you are in for a chamber-sized Haydn evening or a Mahler night with the extra brass. The glossary has the rest of the vocabulary.

Written by OrchestraFinder. Dotted words open a short definition; the full glossary is here.