Interesting facts about the symphony orchestra

Interesting facts about the symphony orchestra

We invite you to familiarize yourself with interesting and fascinating facts related to the symphony orchestra, which were gathered quite a lot, for its long history. We hope that with such interesting information we will be able to surprise not only lovers of ballet art, but also discover something new, even for true professionals in this field.

• The formation of a symphony orchestra took place over several centuries from small ensembles and it began in the 16th-17th centuries, when new genres in music appeared and a change in the group of performers was required. Completely small composition was determined only in the XVIII century.
• The number of musicians can vary from 50 to 110 people, depending on the work or place of performance. The largest number of performers ever recorded relates to a performance in the city of Oslo at the Yullevaal Stadium in 1964, with a total of 20,100 people taking part in it.
• Sometimes, you can hear the name of the pair, triple symphony orchestra, it is given by the number of wind instruments represented in it and denotes its size.
• L. Beethoven made a huge contribution to the development of the orchestra, so in his work a classical or small symphony orchestra was finally established, and in a later period, features of a large composition were outlined.
• The symphony orchestra uses German and American musicians. So, in the Russian - is used American.
• Among all the orchestras of the world, there is only one who chooses a conductor himself, and if something happens, he can do it at any time - this is the Vienna Philharmonic team.
• There are bands and no conductor at all. For the first time, such an idea was adopted in 1922 by Persimfans in Russia. It was connected with the ideology of that time, which valued collective work. Later this example was followed by other orchestras, even today in Prague and Australia there are orchestras without a conductor.

• The orchestra is tuned by the oboe or the tuning fork, the latter in turn, with time, sounds higher and higher. The fact is that initially, in different countries it sounded differently. In the 18th century in Germany, its sound was lower than Italian, but higher than French. It was believed that the higher the setting, the brighter the sound will be, and any team tends to do so. That is why his tone was raised from 380 Hz (Baroque) to 442 Hz in our time. Moreover, this figure has become a control, but it also manages to exceed up to 445 Hz, as is done in Vienna.
• Up until the 19th century, the conductor’s duties also included playing the harpsichord or violin. In addition, they did not have a conductor's baton, the beat was beat off by the composer or a musician with the help of an instrument or nods of the head.
• The prestigious English magazine Gramophone, which is recognized as an authoritative publication in the field of classical music, has published a list of the best orchestras in the world; Russian groups have taken positions 14, 15 and 16 in it.