Orchestration

I got a flame email from a reader just a bit ago who was not happy that I called Ms. Palin a village idiot.  Anyway, the email was full of capital letters and colored text and I could hear her raise her voice and perhaps actually foam at the mouth a little bit.  In short, her message contained all the letters of the alphabet and she "orchestrated" them. 
We do the same in music.  A lot of music is written for piano and then those notes, the tones and rhythms are applied to other instruments to give it perhaps more "color" or emplasis...instead of the black and white of a piano, there is an entire spectrum of instrumental colors to choose from. Here is a perfect example. It is "Alborado del Gracioso"..first in the original piano version and here in the "orchestrated" verson. Some call this a "transcription", that is transcribed or adopted, to the orchestra. How that transcription is treated, the choices made, constitute the orchestration. (the translation is "song of the clown"). It contains, unlike my email, no profanities and no references to my deceased mother.

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