Definition of Orchestra

Orchestra

The space in a theater between the stage and the audience; -- originally appropriated by the Greeks to the chorus and its evolutions, afterward by the Romans to persons of distinction, and by the moderns to a band of instrumental musicians.

The place in any public hall appropriated to a band of instrumental musicians.

Loosely: A band of instrumental musicians performing in a theater, concert hall, or other place of public amusement.

Strictly: A band suitable for the performance of symphonies, overtures, etc., as well as for the accompaniment of operas, oratorios, cantatas, masses, and the like, or of vocal and instrumental solos.

A band composed, for the largest part, of players of the various viol instruments, many of each kind, together with a proper complement of wind instruments of wood and brass; -- as distinguished from a military or street band of players on wind instruments, and from an assemblage of solo players for the rendering of concerted pieces, such as septets, octets, and the like.

The instruments employed by a full band, collectively; as, an orchestra of forty stringed instruments, with proper complement of wind instruments.

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Orchestra Quotations

Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.
Mae West

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
Gustav Mahler

I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.
John Fahey

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
Thomas Beecham

I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.
Stephen Sondheim

There's sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.
Jello Biafra

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.
Anne Rice

And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

It's not all that different with the orchestra. There are orchestras that seem to be encased in dough, so that first you have to break through the normal routine, and clear out the openings.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears.
Burt Bacharach

Pardon me for loitering in front of an orchestra.
John Goodman

You can't play a symphony alone, it takes an orchestra to play it.
Navjot Singh Sidhu

The musician writes for the orchestra what his inner voice sings to him; the painter rarely relies without disadvantage solely upon the images which his inner eye presents to him; nature gives him his forms, study governs his combinations of them.
Hermann Ebbinghaus

If a professional musician in a symphony orchestra is playing Beethoven. But this particular orchestra have played this particular chestnut so many times, they can play it in their sleep. Does the genius remain present in the music or not?
Robert Fripp

So, you can set up an orchestra down this end of the railway station playing one particular area, and simultaneously at the other end something completely different going on. And in the middle they meet, or not, depending.
Robert Fripp

When I want 30 musicians in the orchestra, I get 30.
Les Baxter

To not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I've done all my life, and not to be able to phrase lyrics and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated.
Barbara Walters

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals.
Herbert Read

The first nine albums there was never a Synthesiser, never any Orchestra. There was never any other player except us on the albums.
Brian May

There is much modern music that is better adapted to a wind combination than to a string, although for obvious reasons originally scored for an orchestra. If in such cases the interpretation is equal to the composition the balance of a wind combination is more satisfying.
John Philip Sousa

It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge.
James Levine

I often play on the cello-bass side of the orchestra, because I prefer the deep sounds. I can't hear the violins well.
Evelyn Glennie

You get more nervous in front of a lot of people. That's why, when you play a concerto, you play with a small orchestra, in some place where you don't feel that it is as important as Carnegie Hall.
Itzhak Perlman

Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out.
James Levine

It's just that, when the orchestra look at me, I want them to see a completely involved person who reflects what we rehearsed, and whose function is to make it possible for them to do it.
James Levine

Toting around a full orchestra on tour is very ambitious. I would consider doing a show now and then, like do a show at Radio City or Carnegie Hall with a full orchestra.
Vanessa Carlton

When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in.
Itzhak Perlman

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
Max Lucado

And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.
Elvis Costello

I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.
Itzhak Perlman

More Orchestra Quotations

Orchestra Translations

orchestra in Afrikaans is orkes
orchestra in Dutch is band, muziekkorps, orkest
orchestra in French is orchestre
orchestra in German is Orchester
orchestra in Italian is orchestra
orchestra in Swedish is orkester, orkester, kapell

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