It was inevitable that in an age marked like the present by specialization in all the arts and in all branches of learning as well, the need would one day be felt of a history of orchestration. In attempting to supply it with this book Dr. Coerne has filled a want in English musical literature. Of treatises devoted to the art of writing for the orchestra there is no lack. Berlioz, the greatest master of the art before Wagner, wrote such a treatise, which while it was still looked upon as in many respects a model, was revised and brought down to date by Richard Strauss; but invaluable as this treatise is and as are the more voluminous treatises of the Belgian Gevaërt, the German Hofmann and the Englishman Prout, they are after all study-books for the creative musician, and only by laborious comparison of their illustrative examples, or the scores of composers, can the historical inquirer learn aught of the evolution of the art to which they are devoted. Even then his view is restricted, practically, to the music composed since the closing decades of the eighteenth century. The explanation of this fact is that while the art of music is always spoken of as young in the handbooks, that of orchestration is much younger. The student of orchestration, say the teachers, can derive little benefit from a study of scores older than those of Haydn and Mozart because some of the instruments of their predecessors are obsolete and so is their manner of writing for the instruments still in use. This, however, brings small comfort to the historical investigator who is quite as desirous to know what the orchestra was like prior to Haydn and Mozart, and the Mannheim symphonists, as he is to learn the steps by which it reached its present marvellous efficiency. It is the help which it extends in this direction which makes the "Histoire de L'Instrumentation" of M. Lavoix, to which our author acknowledges indebtedness, valuable; but that work is accessible only to students who have knowledge of the French language.
