How it sounds

Listening to a friend conduct his own composition -- a fifty piece orchestra -- I was wondering how it struck him: did it sound the way he had conceived it would? Better? Worse? Was he surprised by some things? Like, for example, how some things drown out each other and are totally lost? When composing again, would he now compose differently?

Now, Charles Rosen (The Classical Style) writes that orchestras did not use to rehearse in the classical times. (Haydn once suggested in a letter that as for the Paris symphonies at least one rehearsal would be nice to have, please). And Braunbehrens (Mozart in Vienna) adds that all musicians were by and large amateurs -- assorted footmen, bellhops, and shoeshines who got a few florins extra a month for playing the clarinet in His Lordships' orchestra (if his lordship had such a fancy).

We by comparison have professional orchestras which rehearse a great deal. It is therefore entirely possible that no classical (or baroque) composer ever heard any of his works as well performed as they happen to be from time to time these days (sometimes happen to be, since so many miss the mark); and that none of them ever knew how good they could sound.

Did it -- lack of experience with a half-decent orchestra -- limit their potential? Had Beethoven -- or Mozart -- had a symphonic orchestra of his own -- like Mahler -- to command, would he -- they -- have composed differently? Better?