Question about Orchestra Seating

[nimrod79]

Hi all,

I had a quick question regarding orchestra seating.

So many works from the nineteenth and early twentieth century were written under the assumption that the first and second violins would face each other.  Thus, antiphonal dialogue between the two sets of strings could be better heard and reinforced. 

In light of this, why do most orchestras seat the violins together on the conductor's left?  Do any still sit the violins facing each other?

[jochanaan]

It seems to have been Stokowski who altered the "standard seating" plan.  He was constantly experimenting with seating in his orchestras, and soon came to favor the approach that a majority of orchestras still use (at least here in the US), with all the violins on one side and the lower strings on the other.  (That wasn't all he experimented with either; he simply could not keep his paws off classic scores or even modern ones! Sometimes it even helped. )

Many early stereo recordings still seem to have used the old seating.  I have Guido Cantelli and the NBC Symphony playing Franck's Symphony in an RCA stereo recording made days after Toscanini's 1954 retirement, and they use the two-sided seating.  A 1960s Bruckner 7 with The Hague Philharmonic uses a similar seating.  And at least one orchestra has gone back to it in the last decade or so: in recordings from the 1990s, Gerard Schwarz has the Seattle Symphony sit in the old way, with first violins, cellos, and basses on the left, seconds and violas on the right.

[nimrod79]

Thanks for the informative answer.

[M forever]

Some people stuck with the old seating for a long time or never changed. Kubelík, for instance, always used the old seating. Kempe also used it well into the 60s. Some orchestras in Russia, specifically in Leningrad/St.Petersburg, never changed. The old seating started coming back more and more, partially through the influence of "HIP" performers (Harnoncourt uses it most of the time), but also more "traditional" conductors such as Thielemann. A few months ago, Elder conducted the BSO in Shostakovich 4 and also had the orchestra set up that way. Dohnányi also sometimes did it. Boulez and Barenboim have also been seen using it more and more recently, same with Rattle, he has experimented with that, too. I saw the LAPO set up the old way a number of times with Salonen, too. So it has become much more common again than it used to be. That's a good thing. It really makes more sense, especially the divided violins.

[eyeresist]

I read that Boult wanted to use the old seating for a recording in the 60s (probably Elgar  ), but the producer insisted that for some technical reason it wasn't possible. Shame. I can understand that the "new" seating might somehow make it easier to balance a mono recording, but stereo should render all those arguments nonsense.


Incidentally, I saw Gilmetti do a Brahms cycle with small orchestra and old seating style; very good it was too.

[M forever]

Gilmetti or Gelmetti?

[eyeresist]

Gilmetti or Gelmetti?

The latter, sorry. Soon to be ex-chief of the Sydney Symphony. They're playing one of his own compositions for his farewell concert, which I guess will be nice for those who turn up!

[scarpia]

Having the 1st and 2nd violins split on the left and right obviously  brings out antiphonal effects, when a melody is "tossed" back and forth between first and second violins.   I've read (somewhere) that the motivation for keeping 1st and 2nd violins together is to produce a more forceful impression when the two sections play together (in unison, thirds, etc).   Another issue which I've seem mentioned is that a violinist or violist sitting to the left of the conductor naturally holds the instrument inclined towards the audience, so that direct sound coming out of the f-holes is projected forward.  If the violins are split the 2nd violins are holding their violins inclined away from the audience, producing a weaker sound.

I generally prefer a split section.

[eyeresist]

Another issue which I've seem mentioned is that a violinist or violist sitting to the left of the conductor naturally holds the instrument inclined towards the audience, so that direct sound coming out of the f-holes is projected forward.  If the violins are split the 2nd violins are holding their violins inclined away from the audience, producing a weaker sound.

Obvious solution is that all the seconds need to be left-handers.

[Novi]

This past weekend, I heard the LSO do the entire Prokofieff symphony cycle.

For #1 to 5, Gergiev had the violins together, but split them in antiphonal formation for 6 and 7.

Except for the 'Classical,' this was the first time I'd ever actually heard the rest, so I'm not familiar with them at all, so can't tell why 6 and 7, apart from the rest, would benefit from this. Is there any reason for this particular change?

Cheers.

[eyeresist]

This past weekend, I heard the LSO do the entire Prokofieff symphony cycle.

For #1 to 5, Gergiev had the violins together, but split them in antiphonal formation for 6 and 7.

Except for the 'Classical,' this was the first time I'd ever actually heard the rest, so I'm not familiar with them at all, so can't tell why 6 and 7, apart from the rest, would benefit from this. Is there any reason for this particular change?

I don't know the scores, so can't answer this question. It does seem strange he didn't divide the violins for the Classical, though.

[RebLem]

Klemperer was another conductor who used divisi seating.  Listen to his recordings of Mozart symphonies.  Yes, its non-HIP, big orchestra Mozart, but the divisi violins still make a difference for the better.

I think the real reason for having the violins together is that its easier on conductors, and since they get to make the decisions, that's the way it is.  But the music suffers in most music, IMO.

[Superhorn]

    When  the  noted  music  critic  Andrew  Porter  was  music  critic   for  the  New  Yorker  magazine,  which  now  has  Alex  Ross  in  this  job  during  the  70s  and  80s,  he  was  a  stickler  for  divided  violins  and  would often  dismiss  a  performance  out  of  hand  for  not using  this  seating  format.
   It  never  mattered  that  much  to  me,  and  I  always  thought  this  was  pedantic  nitpicking,  but  than again I  always  found  Porter  annoyingly  pedantic  about  niceties  of  musicological   correctness  in  his  reviews.
   Different  seating  plans  work  better  in  different  concert  halls.  What's  good  for  one venue  may  be  bad  for  another.
   When  Dohnanyi   adopted  divided  violins  in  Cleveland,  the  players  in  question  hated  it. 

[drogulus]

I read that Boult wanted to use the old seating for a recording in the 60s (probably Elgar  ), but the producer insisted that for some technical reason it wasn't possible. Shame. I can understand that the "new" seating might somehow make it easier to balance a mono recording, but stereo should render all those arguments nonsense.

     Boult did use the old seating in at least some of his recordings.

     I found this on a blog:

     Up until the early part of the 20th century, most composers would have expected the violin sections to be divided left and right, and they accordingly wrote in a lot of antiphonal effects, with themes thrown back and forth between the violin sections. Elgar's "Enigma Variations" has many such effects; the second variation, "H.D.S-P.," begins with the first violins playing a phrase that is then echoed by the seconds, and the variation mostly consists of the firsts and seconds bouncing phrases back and forth. When the violins are divided, as they would have been in Elgar's time, this is a great antiphonal effect, as you can hear in recordings by Adrian Boult and Pierre Monteux. When the first and second violins are seated together on the conductor's left, this effect doesn't really come off, and on a recording, it's completely lost (because it's hard to hear the first and second violins as distinct sections). There are many other examples, e.g. Mahler's ninth symphony, where the opening theme is begun by the second violins, not the first violins, which -- with divided violins -- has an element of surprise built into it, because the tune isn't coming from the side of the hall that we subconsciously expect a violin melody to come from.

As illustrated here, Leopold Stokowski (in the '30s with the Philadelphia Orchestra) was the one who really popularized the practice of seating all the violins together on the left; he did it, in part, to create a big, rich, string-heavy sound. Record producers liked the seating because it made an orchestra easier to record (I'm not sure of the technical reasons for this). More importantly, violinists liked it because it made it easier for one section to hear the other, and because it didn't require the second violinists to sit, in effect, with their backs to the audience. I think the split-violin seating became more and more inconvenient as orchestras got bigger and bigger.

So with a combination of pressure from the musicians and the record companies, and probably other factors that I'm not remembering right now, more and more conductors started switching to the massed-violin setup. But it was kind of gradual. For example, in Fritz Reiner's earliest stereo recordings with the Chicago symphony, you can hear that the violins are divided left and right; a few years later he stopped doing it. The ironic thing is that by the time stereo recording came in, there were few split-violin setups around to take advantage of stereo separation.

There were a few holdouts who just refused to give up the divided-violin seating. Toscanini did it to the end of his life (though he didn't get to record in stereo, so you can't tell this on his recordings); so did Otto Klemperer; so did Pierre Monteux; and so did Adrian Boult. Boult actually wrote a letter to the GRAMOPHONE magazine in the '60s, soliciting readers' opinions on whether he should continue with the seating; he'd gotten so many complaints from orchestral violinists who didn't like the seating that he was unsure whether it was worth going on with it. Among younger conductors, Rafael Kubelik was one who liked the divided-violin seating enough that he tried to use it with any orchestra that would let him (all his recordings with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, including his Mahler cycle, use the seating).

The seating started to creep back in in the late '70s/early '80s, but it was a haphazard thing. Now it seems to be gradually on its way to becoming the norm again. Most of the period-instrument groups use the setup most of the time. Among the modern-instrument conductors who have adopted the setup are James Levine (with the Met orchestra), Michael Tilson Thomas (in San Francisco), Riccardo Muti (at La Scala) and Daniel Barenboim (in Chicago).
     

[M forever]

Mahler's ninth symphony, where the opening theme is begun by the second violins, not the first violins, which -- with divided violins -- has an element of surprise built into it, because the tune isn't coming from the side of the hall that we subconsciously expect a violin melody to come from.

I think that's reading a little bit too much into it.

More importantly, violinists liked it because it made it easier for one section to hear the other, and because it didn't require the second violinists to sit, in effect, with their backs to the audience.

Well, not really, they are more sitting with the side facing the audience, just like they do when they are on the other side, although the instruments' tops point away from the audience, but that doesn't make such a big difference because violins point more up than to the side usually. The sound is dispersed in the hall anyway.
It's not quite true that sitting together makes the first violins much easier to hear. You can typically hear them everywhere all or most of the time anyway. And it's not like the 2nd violins play together only with the 1st violins. All sections in the orchestra play together with each other.
Having the violins divided actually makes the 2nd violins easier to hear separately, it "opens" the string sound more and it is good when the 2nds have to play more freely as if they were just following the 1sts all the time.
That, however, may be where some of the "complaints" of musicians may have come from. In theory, in a good orchestra, all the players are on a similarly high level and there shouldn't be a difference between the 1st and the 2nd violins, but in reality, especially in past decades, the less good violin players would often end up in the 2nds and it is easier for them to "hide" behind the 1sts when they are wedged behind them. Some players don't like sitting öut there" at the front of the stage, more exposed. But that is not an issue at all with good orchestras.
And it really does sound better when they are divided. Plus, in that seating, the celli and basses are usually on the left side, behind the first violins, so the sonic spectrum is really more open and less "massed". I think that part of Stokowski's reasons may not even have been acoustical, but simply because from a choreographic point of view, it may look more homgenous when you have all the violins together on one side. And we know that choreography was just as important to Stokowski as everything else.

[Senta]

Interesting discussion, as I have seen a few different orchestras lately which varied in seating.

The Atlanta Symphony under Spano and Dallas Symphony under van Zweden were both set up exactly the same, all the violins to the left, and so on, basses on the right. Winds in the back middle, horns in the left behind violins. However, I had been used to hearing the Houston Symphony with Hans Graf, an Austrian, who always uses the divided seating.

Out of those three, the last have the weakest violin sound, though that has may have more to do with the players than the seating.

With the Atlanta Symphony, who by far had the best strings as far as amount of sound, intonation, and technique, I personally really enjoyed hearing (and seeing) the masses of violins and hearing the thick harmonies lock in as they went from unison playing to divisi. In fact, I didn't miss the divided setup at all. The main rep was a Bach/Stokowski orchestration and Brahms 1st. Perhaps they don't set up like this all time, I don't know, but for that concert it worked really well. I was sitting to the right of middle, so in effect their tone holes were facing toward me, and the massed sound was simply gorgeous. I don't mind the seating either way, if the playing is excellent.

Though, I do prefer many, or most, contemporary works to be seated divided, because it seems that in a lot of modern/contemporary music there are dovetailing lines or effects trading between 1sts and 2nds, as well as complex divisis and harmonics which are heard and absorbed much better with divided sections - in one big section, those details can get lost.

[Szykneij]

I just got back from Symphony Hall, Boston, where Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphonies 2 and 3. The performance was excellent, but he had a very unusual seating arrangement.

The basses were on stage right behind the first violins. The second violins faced the first violins on stage left. The cellos were strung across the front and right center while the violas formed a wedge between the cellos and seconds.

The woodwinds and brass were on risers in two rows, back center, while the timpanist was on the top riser in the center of the ensemble.

I had nosebleed seats, but they were smack in the middle of the second balcony, so I had a central vantage point soundwise. I found it a bit odd to be hearing the basses from my left instead of my right.

Did Barenboim use a traditional seating arrangement with Chicago, or did he mix things up there, too?

This picture isn't from tonight, but it gives a rough idea of the arrangement I saw:

[jochanaan]

Szykneij, that looks like the "traditional" string seating.  What's unusual to me in the picture is the horns in three rows on stage left...?  And of course, it looks like an expanded woodwind section a la Mahler or Wagner.  And four harps!  Definitely a big group, but without the additional percussion one might expect...

[Karl Henning]

Cheers, jo! Nice to 'see' you again!

[jochanaan]

Thanks, Karl!  My Internet access is rather limited, but I like to drop in every once in a long while.