father of modern orchestration).

The gigantic figure of Beethoven stands apart. His music abounds in
countless leonine leaps of orchestral imagination, but his technique,
viewed in detail, remains much inferior to his titanic conception. His
use of the trumpets, standing out above the rest of the orchestra, the
difficult and unhappy intervals he gives to the horns, the distinctive
features of the string parts and his often highly-coloured employment
of the wood-wind,--these features will combine causing the student of
Beethoven to stumble upon a thousand and one points in contradiction.

It is a mistake to think that the beginner will light upon no simple
and instructive examples in modern music, in that of Wagner and
others. On the contrary, clearer, and better examples are to be found
amongst modern composers than in what is called the range of classical
music.

Extract from the Preface to the last edition.

My aim in undertaking this work is to reveal the principles of modern
orchestration in a somewhat different light than that usually brought
to bear upon the subject. I have followed these principles in
orchestrating my own works, and, wishing to impart some of my ideas to
young composers, I have quoted examples from my own compositions, or
given references to them, endeavouring to show, in all sincerity, what
is successful and what is not. No one can know except the author
himself the purpose and motives which governed him during the
composition of a certain work, and the practice of explaining the
intentions of a composer, so prevalent amongst annotators, however
reverent and discreet, appears to me far from satisfactory. They will
attribute a too closely philosophic, or excessively poetic meaning to
a plain and simple fact. Sometimes the respect which great composers'
names command will cause inferior examples to be quoted as good; cases
of carelessness or ignorance, easily explained by the imperfections of
current technique, give rise to whole pages of laborious exposition,
in defence, or even in admiration of a faulty passage.

This book is written for those who have already studied
instrumentation from Gevaert's excellent treatise, or any other
well-known manual, and who have some knowledge of a number of
orchestral scores.

I shall therefore only just touch on such technical questions as
fingering, range, emission of sound etc.[6]

[Footnote 6: A short review of these various questions forms