When you picture an orchestra, you probably imagine the usual set-up—strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion. There might even be a harp and a piano thrown in for good measure. For most symphonic music, that’s all you need. But in this article, we’ll look at seven pieces that expand the orchestra’s sonic palette with unorthodox instruments. You might expect these pieces to all be postmodern, experimental works from the 20th century, but composers have been pushing the instrumentation envelope for centuries.
1. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture
Perhaps the most famous example of an unconventional “instrument” in an orchestral work is in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, with its bombastic use of cannon fire. The piece was written for an exhibition in 1882 commemorating the 70th anniversary of Napoleon’s retreat from Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. The patriotic work depicts the Russian Empire’s victory with strains of each power’s respective national anthem (“God Save the Tsar” and “La Marseillaise”) alongside Russian Orthodox chant and folk melodies. Although Tchaikovsky hated the overture, calling it “very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit,” the dramatic use of military artillery has cemented the work as a crowd favorite, particularly at fireworks displays.
Orchestras have had to get creative in how they (safely) execute the 16 cannon shots notated in the score, not to mention the carillon bells the piece also calls for. While outdoor performances can use miniature cannons with blank cartridges, that is obviously not feasible inside the concert hall. Most modern orchestras therefore use recordings of cannon fire controlled by electronic drum pads.
In this landmark 1958 recording with Antal Doráti and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, sound engineers recorded a 1775 muzzle-loaded bronze cannon held at the US Military Academy at West Point, as well as the 74-bell carillon at The Riverside Church in New York City, editing these sounds into the orchestra’s performance.
2. Olivier Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie
Olivier Messiaen was an eccentric composer for many reasons, from his synesthesia to his fixation on ornithology. He was also fascinated by a revolutionary electronic instrument called the ondes Martenot, invented by French cellist Maurice Martenot in 1928. Martenot had been a radio operator in World War I and was inspired by the pure sound of radio waves. Similar to the theremin, the ondes Martenot creates electronic waveforms but possesses the expressive capabilities of the cello. With their right hand, the “ondist” either plays a keyboard or glides a metal ring across a metal thread with their finger. With their left hand, the ondist controls the dynamics, attack, and timbre using a control panel.
Jonny Greenwood, a noted fan of Messiaen's demonstrates his Ondes Martenot
Messiaen wrote for the instrument on several occasions, not least because his sister-in-law, Jeanne Loriod, was the reigning authority on the instrument. He calls for the ondes Martenot in his only symphony, Turangalîla-Symphonie. Composed between 1946 and 1948, the 10-movement symphony was Messiaen’s most ambitious work to date. The instrumentation itself is also monumental. In addition to the ondes Martenot, the score calls for 12 percussion instruments, solo piano, celesta, and enlarged string, woodwind, and brass sections. The ondes Martenot largely colors the other instruments in the orchestra, especially the strings in the melodic moments and the woodwinds and tuned percussion in the rhythmic moments. But it also participates in nearly every theme throughout the work, lending its high frequencies to dramatic fortissimos and softer bass range to gentler moments.
3. Leroy Anderson: The Typewriter
Unusual instruments can also be used for comedic effect. Remembered by most for his charming holiday classic "Sleigh Ride," Leroy Anderson composed numerous light orchestral miniatures, including one featuring an unlikely percussion instrument: the typewriter. Written in 1950, The Typewriter incorporates three characteristic typewriter sounds into the score: the "clickity-clack" of typing, the ring of the carriage return indicating the end of a line is near (simulated in performance by a service desk bell), and the zip of the carriage returning. While typing might seem like a simple task, the tempo of the piece is so fast that even professional stenographers cannot play the part. Percussionists are often the only ones with the wrist flexibility and rhythmic precision needed to carry it off. Plus, the typewriter cannot be any old machine. It has to be modified so that only two outside keys work to ensure the mechanism does not jam. Although contemporary audiences may not be as intimately familiar with the sounds of typewriters anymore, the piece still charms like only a Leroy Anderson composition can.
4. Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 2
Most listeners will know Estonian composer Arvo Pärt for his minimalist sacred choral works or the violin and piano piece Spiegel im Spiegel. Both employ Pärt’s signature compositional technique, “tintinnabuli” (from the Latin for “bells”), in which one voice or section arpeggiates a bell-like triad, while the other section serves a more melodic function. However, Pärt only emerged with this new “holy minimalist” style in 1976 after eight years of creative exile. Before this period, his compositions were firmly within the avant-garde, employing twelve-tone serialist techniques and unusual instrumental colors and combinations. Pärt’s Symphony No. 2, written in 1966, is a prime example. The short, three-movement work is not only based on a twelve-tone row but also incorporates several non-musical instruments, such as squeaky rubber ducks and crackling sheets of cellophane. These unusual noises are just part of a dissonant collage of sound, meant to contrast with the innocence of Tchaikovsky’s piano piece “Sweet Dreams” (from Album for the Young, Op. 39), which is quoted at the end of the symphony.
5. Ottorino Respighi: Pines of Rome
Integrating prerecorded sounds into live classical music is not particularly earth-shattering for listeners today. But did you know the first composer to do it was Ottorino Respighi in his 1924 tone poem Pines of Rome? In the third movement, “The Pines of the Janiculum,” Respighi calls for the sound of a nightingale to be played on a phonograph. To be exact, he calls for the track “Il canto dell’usignolo” (“The Song of the Nightingale”) from a disc released across Europe by The Gramophone Company between 1911 and 1913. The nightingale was recorded in Germany in 1910 by Karl Reich and Franz Hampe, marking the first commercial recording of a live bird. Respighi further specifies the record be played on a Brunswick Panatrope phonograph. A master orchestrator, Respighi could have easily suggested the distinctive sound of the nightingale with a flute or piccolo, as countless composers had done. Instead, the sound of a real bird adds a jarring sense of realism to the already evocative piece, sometimes prompting unsuspecting audience members to look around for a bird in the auditorium. He would later attempt to capture birdsong in music in his 1928 orchestral suite Gli uccelli (The Birds), which includes a movement dedicated to the nightingale.
The phonograph recording of birdsong is not the only unusual request in Respighi’s score to Pines of Rome. The fourth movement, “The Pines of the Appian Way,” calls for six buccine, a kind of circular trumpet used by the ancient Roman army. There’s just one small problem—these ancient instruments would not have been able to play the chromatic notes Respighi writes. Instead, orchestras will substitute flugelhorns or French horns to depict the triumphant army during their misty dawn march under the pines of the Appian Way.
6. Malcolm Arnold: Concerto for Harmonica
The harmonica, typically associated with folk, country, and blues music, saw a brief surge in popularity in classical music after World War II, thanks in part to Larry Adler, a virtuoso of the instrument. Adler gained fame and acceptance in classical circles by adapting works originally for solo violin for the harmonica and performing with leading orchestras around the world. Eventually, composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Benjamin, and Malcolm Arnold stepped in to fill the void in literature written expressly for the instrument. In 1954, Arnold composed Concerto for Harmonica for Adler, who premiered it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London the same year. The concerto’s three movements put the soloist through their paces, requiring flexibility, stamina, precision, and lyricism while demonstrating the often-overlooked expressive range of the instrument.
7. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Adagio and Rondo for Glass Harmonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola, and Cello, K. 617
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his Adagio and Rondo, K. 617, for a very different kind of harmonica—a glass harmonica. Like Malcolm Arnold, Mozart also wrote the work for a specific musician. In this case, it was a blind glass harmonica player named Marianne Kirchgessner. In a glass harmonica, concentric glass bowls spin on a horizontal spindle, while the player vibrates the rims of the glasses with the friction of their moistened fingertips. Although musicians had been experimenting with tuned wine glasses for centuries, Benjamin Franklin was the first to devise a mechanical “glass armonica” in 1761, opening up a world of musical possibilities. After a boom in popularity in the late 18th century, the instrument largely fell out of fashion in the 1830s. However, it has seen sporadic use in works such as Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals (1866) and Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten (1917).
Mozart had heard Kirchgessner perform in London in 1784 and again in Vienna in 1791, prompting him to write two pieces for her: an Adagio in C Major for solo glass harmonica (K. 356) and this quintet for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello. Mozart completed the quintet on May 23, 1791, and likely premiered the piece with Kirchgessner at Vienna’s Kärntnerthortheater on August 19, the composer playing the viola part. The Adagio contrasts somber chords with the ethereal sonorities of the glass harmonica, while the Rondo sees the glass harmonica in charming dialogue with the flute in this Mozart’s final chamber work.
While these instruments did not make it into standard orchestral configurations due to their obvious impracticality or changes in fashion, these pieces remind us that the makeup of an orchestra is not static, and what we consider “standard” is a fairly recent concept.
