Device Lexicon: Part 5 - Woodwind Amalgamations (feat. Duel of the Fates)

One of the foundation rules of orchestration is that mixing two or more instrumental colours is always less brilliant than the brightest colour in the mix on its own. This means that combining for instance Trumpets and Oboes makes the result less brilliant than the Trumpets alone. You get a thicker and in some cases more substantial sound out of that mix, but your trade it for brilliance.

The extreme of this is the feared "organ effect" where doubling too much (in the middle registers) creates this undefined and thick organ-ish quality in the orchestration as we can often hear in works by inexperienced orchestrators.

With the desire for punch and brilliance in film scoring, we often hear relatively unmixed colours. For instance the  Star Wars Main Theme first statement is carried by the Trumpets alone, later by Horns+1 Tpt (to add more brightness to the Horns).

Woodwinds and particularly reed instruments with their many harmonics have a relatively strong tendency to thicken the sound and take away the brilliance.

However, in some cases, this can be an absolutely desired effect. One of the prime examples for this strategy is the first thematic statement in Duel of the Fates:

You can listen to this excerpt here (at 0:23): https://youtu.be/s1R1M-szuUo?t=23 

We have a combination of 4 woodwind colours here: Alto Flute, English Horn, Clarinet in unison and two octaves below Bassoon (with support from the Contrabassoon). This combination is very specifically picked to create a sinister and menacing quality. The choice of register is essential here: The Alto Flute is in its low mid register where it has this breathy, somehow ghostly quality. The English Horn is in its relative comfortable mid register and provides the reedy quality here. The Clarinet is in its pale sounding register just below or around sounding middle Bb and the Bassoon is in its quite low and dark register. It's quite interesting to see that the Contrabassoon jumps in to play some notes of that melody in spite of the low B still being playable on the Basson, however the switch to the Contrabassoon ensures that we don't hit the bottom few very thick notes on the Bassoon. Interestingly, this passage could have also been on the Contrabassoon all the way through but would have put the melody into the middle register of it which doesn't sound as dark as the low register (at the same pitch) of the regular Bassoon. It is also quite intersting to observe the choice of the double octave distance between the Bassoon and the other Woodwinds which could have easily been a single octave but wouldn't provide that low darkness that the Bassoon adds to the texture here but would have put it into its warm middle register.

So we can be absolutely sure that the choice of colours here is very intentional. I would presume that the Contrabassoon notes were a choice by the Orchestrator and not Williams himself. If we listen to it, it is quite astounding how heterogenous it remains, it is quite easy to hear Bassoon, English Horn and Clarinet quite distinctively in the mix. A bit trickier is to hear the Alto Flute which in general is quite soft and has the tendency to blend completely into a texture (making it so tricky to orchestrate an audible Alto Flute Solo). And yet the mixture creates a very sinister texture that fits that theme and intention perfectly.

However, we have to strongly distinguish this use here from a seemingly similar use which however has another purpose. The choice that we see here is purely a choice of color. None of the individual elements (besides maybe the Alto Flute) would have struggled to carry that theme alone regarding volume and presence in that orchestration. 

However, let's have a look at a snippet from Hedwig's Theme:

This passage starts at 4:06 in this link. Here, the purpose of the amalgamation is completely different: volume and substance. We hear that melodic phrase several times and in the middle bar it is carried by the woodwinds. Before we had Trumpets, after we have Horns. Just to give this line a chance to become halfway evenly balanced to the surrounding statements, Williams uses big parts of the woodwind section at ff for this phrase and yet they are considerably weaker than the surrounding statements. So here the trade off for brilliance is volume. Still the choice makes absolute sense as this thematic fragment is restated several times in different colours, so a less bright version of it (compared to Trumpets and Horns) creates a nice contrast.

So we have to strongly distinguish where woodwind combinations are used to create volume and substance and where they are used to create colour. However when a chance opens up to combine for colour, it can create some wonderful textures as seen in Duel of the Fates.