Principles of Orchestration

By Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

Edited by Maximilian Steinberg

English translation by Edward Agate

Rimsky-Korsakov had long been engrossed in his treatise on orchestration. We have in our possession a thick note book of some 200 pages in fine hand writing, dating from the years 1873-1874, containing a monograph on the question of acoustics, a classification of wind instruments and a detailed description of the construction and fingering of the different kinds of flute, the oboe, clarinet and horn.

In his "Memoirs of my musical...