At some point a young composer will face what seems a daunting task: writing for orchestra. The main challenges are the lack of familiarity with most of the instruments we will be writing for, and to imagine how different combinations of timbre may sound. There are many orchestration texts that are useful for consulting details concerning register, idiomatic aspects, and other information that, unless we play the instruments, we may not know off-hand. In this chapter I will focus on works and topics that are not generally covered in the available literature. Since I believe that when writing for large forces, orchestration should be an integral part of the compositional process, my observations will not be about how to orchestrate as an abstract concept, with rules about what to do or not to do when writing for the orchestra. Instead, I will provide my insights on selected orchestral passages, focusing mainly on how the specific sonorities were achieved. Beyond the bibliography at the end of this book, there are many instructional videos on instrumental techniques available on YouTube, as well as the scores that are posted with accompanying soundtracks which are recommended.
The Development of the Modern Orchestra
The idea of orchestration as a separate discipline from composition is a nineteenth-century development. Notwithstanding the discoveries and advancements during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in terms of orchestration, and the fact that composers consciously applied their acquired instrumental knowledge in their works, the terms orchestration or instrumentation were never used. The first recorded instance of such terminology is the German term Instrumentierung, which appears in an 1807 musical lexicon by Heinrich Koch.1 Although the first decades of the nineteenth century saw the appearance of textbooks dealing with instrumentation,2 it is with the publication of Hector Berlioz’s Grande traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (1843) that we have the first important theoretical text on the subject. It did not take long after the appearance of this treatise for the concept of the orchestra as we know it today to crystallise and to become normative.
By the time Scheherazade (1888) by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes (1897–9), and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 (1888) were written, the orchestral ensemble became in great measure the format that, to this day, persists as a template for composers to work with, or rather to work around. During the twentieth century, there were many examples of resistance against the fossilised nature of the orchestra; however, the heft of its institutionalization together with the museum quality of concert programs may explain why it remains today as the default option for large-scale ensemble writing. The advent of computer technology together with the arrival and evolution of notation software over the last four decades have changed the way we work as composers. While these programs, combined with the almost real-life quality of virtual sounds, are of great advantage to all of us, they also posit the danger of not understanding the idiomatic aspects and limitations of each instrument, since the computer can and will make a synthesised rendering of anything one puts down on the virtual score.
In his Principles of Orchestration (1913), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov painstakingly addresses many of the issues regarding timbre, voicing of chords, homogenous and heterogeneous groupings, and dynamic balances between the different families of instruments. In chapter III of the treatise, he contends that ‘the art of orchestration demands a beautiful and well-balanced distribution of chords forming the harmonic texture. Moreover, transparency, accuracy and purity in the movement of each part are essential conditions if satisfactory resonance is to be obtained. No perfection in resonance can accrue from faulty progression of parts.’3 These principles are still valid today; good orchestration will never save a badly written work.
The First Half of the Twentieth Century
The first significant act of rebellion against the prevailing late nineteenth-century framework was Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (1911–13). The expansion in terms of instruments (including inclusion of the Caribbean guiro – referred to as rape guero – at rehearsal number 70), the massive sonorities, the non-normative deployment of instruments such as the bassoon in the high register, together with other aspects related to rhythm, pitch, and form, argue for the work to be regarded as truly radical within the musical context of 1913.
To consider how novel Stravinsky’s conception of the orchestra was, let us focus on a chord in short score version (Example 7.1; see also four bars before rehearsal number 13).4 The chord is already interesting in its sonority, and the voicing is as important as the pitch content. But what denaturalised it, creating a new kind of synthetic sound, is the orchestration. The lightness of the six solo violas in the upper pitches (the high D played as a natural harmonic) combined with the bass clarinet in the lowest note transform the chord into an ‘unearthly’ sound, a synthesised sonority that in its alterity did not exist before. If we re-voice the chord into a more traditionally functional way and re-orchestrate it using the string section, the results will be less striking. Without changing the pitch content, we have normalised the way it sounds.
Example 7.1 Two voicings of a chord from Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (1911–13), 4 bb. before fig. 13.
There are certainly other ways to reimagine the same pitches with different results and varying degrees of musical interest. What becomes clear is that, although we can start with an abstract conception in terms of pitch content, the results will depend not only on how a chord is voiced, but also on the registers we use and the choices we make during the process of orchestration. This last aspect of register is exemplified in the opening bars of The Rite of Spring where the bassoon plays in the upper limits of its register. I will venture to affirm that, more than the notes themselves, it is register and timbre that come into focus.
Dull, perfunctory, and generic orchestration must be avoided, and the material assigned to each instrument should not be based on vague notions of register, dynamics or colour. It is always very tempting, when presented with a large number of instruments, to feel like a child in a metaphorical candy store. Composers like Mahler, Stravinsky, or Debussy never used more than what was needed to achieve their intentions, and their choice of instruments was never uncritical. It is illuminating to examine their scores and study how their choice of instruments is integral to the musical results.
Doublings are one of the most difficult aspects to handle when making decisions about melodic material. We generally decide to double a musical line or melody in response to audibility, but also to look for colour. The choice should never be just about register, and must always be carefully measured according to dynamics, contour, and timbre. In Dialogue du vent et de la mer (see seven bars after rehearsal number 54) from Debussy’s La Mer (1903–5), a remarkable doubling occurs with flute and oboe that goes beyond simple melodic enhancement. In previous iterations (such as rehearsal number 46), the same motive appears doubled in rhythmic unison and in octaves between the oboe, English horn, and bassoon, a more homogenous sonority out of Rimsky-Korsakov’s sound world. However, when the same motive reappears here it is transformed by means of orchestration: the sonority floating in the air, evading any semblance of a simple reduction of instrumental timbres.
This sonority is the outcome of a doubling, where the oboe plays in unison with the flute but articulates each beginning of the phrases in crotchet triplets while the flute plays the same triplet as a minim followed by a crotchet. To further enhance the effect, Debussy stratifies the orchestral accompaniment in three distinct areas: a combination of a low pedal holding the same interval of a fifth (D♭–A♭) that is articulated with a tremolo in the cellos while the basses and the fourth French horn hold a D♭ and an A♭; a central register with harps playing a measured tremolo of a minor third an octave apart (A♭ and F, completing a D♭ major chord with the lower instruments) is joined by tremolos in violas and second violins playing sul tasto; and a high A♭ played in harmonics by the first player of each stand in the first violins. This diffusion of a D♭ major chord sounds full and ethereal at the same time, while the high A♭ harmonic creates gentle friction with the B♭♭ and B ♭ of the melody that contributes to the shimmering effect of the passage. The precision demonstrated by Debussy in terms of how to effectively convey in the score the difference between background and foreground, and which instruments and modes of playing are assigned, is a fundamental goal for composers who aspire to master the orchestra.
Another paragon of orchestral meticulousness is Daphnis et Chloé (1909–12) by Maurice Ravel. Notable in this work is the use of orchestral pedal tones, ‘hidden’ agents that are fundamental within the orchestral texture. The first sound we hear in the ballet score is a low pedal on the note A with the timpani playing tremolo, the double basses, and on the second bar the second divisi of the violoncellos. The bass drum picks up the tremolo (five bars after rehearsal number 2) as an unpitched echo with a new low F pedal played in octaves by the double basses, taken up at rehearsal number 3 with a low F played by the fourth French horn in conjunction with the second divisi of the double basses. Although the first musical signal we hear in the work is a pedal tone, it quickly recedes to the background, giving way to melodic and harmonic content which becomes the focus of the listener’s attention. These ubiquitous long tones function as a kind of binding glue that holds the orchestral textures together and contributes to the fullness of the orchestral sound. Also worth studying is Ravel’s near-constant use of divisi in the strings, which can be interpreted as a counterstatement to the prevailing massive sonority of nineteenth-century orchestral string writing.
In his book Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, Theodor W. Adorno makes one of the most compelling observations I have read about the composer’s orchestration. Adorno argues that in the first movement (one bar after rehearsal number 10) of the Fourth Symphony (1899–1900), the four flutes in unison, rather than reinforcing the sound, turn the instruments into a single sound, that of an imaginary ocarina.5 This is another example of using doublings as a way of transforming timbre. In this passage, orchestration becomes a metaphor, a means of expressing something that goes beyond the materials; as Adorno writes, ‘it creates an effect sui generis, that of a dream ocarina: such must have been children’s instruments that no one ever heard’.6 Almost a hundred years later, Krzysztof Penderecki reifies Mahler’s illusory ocarina in The Dream of Jacob (1974), this time not in the form of a childhood memory, but rather in the form of real ocarinas, creating a sound world that is at once strange and familiar.
My observations about the works discussed so far relate both to the specific technical approaches and to the inherent aesthetics of the composers. As timbre and colour became focal points, the new sounds stemming from non-tonal chordal constructions further radicalised the way composers used the orchestra. The concept of Klangfarbenmelodie of the Second Viennese School, and other explorations by mid-century composers still provide fertile ground for us to rethink the way we approach the orchestra. What we learn by looking at these scores is that orchestral sounds are not the result of applied knowledge acquired in textbooks; they are the outcome of both the musical material and the expressive needs of the composers. In Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 (1914–15), or Arnold Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31 (1926–8), the superimposed hierarchical structure of the orchestra did not impede the imaginative rethinking of the medium. Both works start as if the premise is an ensemble piece, and in the case of Berg a percussion group! The fragmentation that characterises the music of these two composers and the orchestral colours they create are inseparable from harmonic, contrapuntal, and rhythmic ideas. Contrary to being some kind of mannerism, the music emanates from abstract compositional concepts.
Most of the modern literature on orchestration emphasises European music; however, there are composers from non-European countries that are as prodigious as their European counterparts. The Malambo from Alberto Ginastera’s Danzas del Ballet Estancia (1941) turns the orchestra into a sonic vision from the Argentinian Pampas. At the beginning of the movement, Ginastera transforms the traditional strummed guitar accompaniment into orchestral textures that combine oboes, trumpets, violins II, violas, and piano (left hand); meanwhile, the arpeggios in the flute and piccolo (doubled by the right hand of the piano), together with the glissandi of violins I, remind us of the simple static triadic harmonies that are characteristic of the genre.
Ginastera’s Malambo is one of the most successful pieces in the repertoire in terms of the precise articulation of complex orchestral rhythmic structures. In the above-discussed passage, the superimposition of groupings of six quavers and three crotchets are punctuated by percussion instruments and trumpets with rhythms that, together with the other instruments, create a metaphor for a malambo ensemble (guitar, drums, and percussive sounds, like stomping on the floor, produced by the dancers).7 This metaphor goes so far as to sustain the illusion of the dance movements in the way the percussion and the glissandi on piano (e.g. rehearsal number 2) evoke the kinetic nature of the dance. Ginastera takes the use of percussion out of the exotic, fully integrating the ensemble to express the essence of the Argentinian malambo; here the percussion ensemble is not supplementary, but it is rather an integral part of the music’s formal and sonic structure.
After the Second World War
After Stravinsky’s breakthrough, we must wait until the avant-garde of the post-war era of the 1950s and 1960s to hear again the kind of tectonic movement that audiences experienced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Composers like György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Krzysztof Penderecki still used traditional orchestral formats, but their compositional processes led them to reimagine the ensemble. The sounds of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen (1955–7), Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), and György Ligeti’s Atmosphères (1961) are as distant to the sounds of the first half of the twentieth century as Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was to its predecessors. In Ligeti’s case, we can see new types of synthetic sound textures, as I previously noted in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (Example 7.1).
The first measure of Atmosphères presents a massive tone-cluster with a divisi in the string section, creating an orchestral texture of atomised diffusion. Ligeti’s idea of using extreme divisi is not merely colouristic; it responds directly to his concept of micropolyphony where multiple lines of dense counterpoint obscure the polyphony, creating in that way a textural mass of sound. In terms of orchestration, one of the most striking moments occurs between rehearsal letters E and G in the orchestral score. The aural illusion and synthesis of a glissando is achieved by pure means of orchestration, for none of the instruments playing in this passage actually executes a glissando. Through meticulously staggered rhythmic displacements and a complex web of dynamic changes, Ligeti moves the orchestral mass in a virtually fluid and continuous manner. The orchestral sounds of Atmosphères are uncanny and otherworldly, but what is remarkable is that they are inseparable from the compositional processes. They are the result of the intersection between form, registers, timbre, dynamics, and micropolyphonic structures.
From 1979 to 1982, I studied composition with Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. At that time, he had completed his opera Le Grand Macabre (1974–7), and a group of students went with him to hear a performance in Hamburg. I remember afterwards that one of the aspects that he was unhappy with was the orchestration (he revised the work in 1996). As complex and dense as his music can be, Ligeti was always preoccupied with absolute clarity and precision in terms of orchestration. He once remarked to me how frustrated he was after the premiere of Melodien (1971). He thought that the linear clarity he was striving for was not achieved, a notion that was dispelled after he heard subsequent performances of the work.
During the last decades of the twentieth century the surge of sinfonietta-style chamber orchestras has produced many works that pull away from the gravitational forces of the orchestra. The inclusion of live electronics has made possible new sonorities and textures that were not available before. However, the orchestra remains as vital a vehicle as it ever was, and there are many composers working today producing innovative orchestral music. At the end of the chapter, I will provide a list of works for further study.
From the Piano to the Orchestra: Sketches and the Short Score
When approaching composing for orchestra, we can consider several different methodologies. One possibility is to work from a short score, a sketch notated in two or more staves approximating the scope of a piano piece. We can also bypass the short score and go directly to the orchestral template, composing and orchestrating at the same time. This approach requires a clear idea of what the composer wants to do: in other words, it requires as a precondition having conceived the music in its final shape before committing it to paper or the notation software of choice. A third way would be to combine the idea of the short score and use the orchestra template to sketch out ideas. Any of these methods can be useful, and sometimes all three are combined.
Although orchestration is not just about transcribing notes from one medium to another, for many composers, the piano is the neutral field of work where ideas are elaborated. Some of the ideas come in the form of passages that include pedalling or that convey certain characteristics of the piano as an instrument. We need to ask ourselves how the effects and sonorities we have in mind, which are usually notated in sketch form, are going to be transformed into orchestral music. In the historical repertoire, we have many examples of how composers transferred sounds from keyboard works to the orchestra. The best examples are those that fully recontextualised the work, avoiding the plain act of a literal mapping of pitches. Ravel is the quintessential example, with brilliant orchestrations of his own piano pieces as well as the masterful rendering of Modeste Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (1922), which are worth studying in detail. When I think of writing for winds and brass, ‘Catacombæ (Sepulcrum Romanum)’ [‘Catacombs (Roman Tomb)’] immediately comes to mind as a model for such ensemble writing. The precision in voicing and use of registers avoid the grey and muddled sonorities often heard in wind ensemble pieces.
The orchestration of ‘La grande porte de Kiev’ [‘The Great Gate of Kiev’] is another example of clarity and precision. At rehearsal number 110, Ravel renders the accented piano chords on each downbeat and the low notes on each second beat of the left hand in a striking manner. While the French horns with bass clarinet and tuba play sustained tones, they are reinforced by percussion, harp, and lower-strings pizzicatos. The effect of the percussive sounds of the piano with its characteristic quick decay is achieved by combining these elements, which by themselves would not be as effective. The percussion section consists of an actual bell playing at each downbeat, while a cymbal and a tam-tam reinforce both the lower tones and the resonance created by the bell.
In Moussorgsky’s original score, purely pianistic passages require reinterpretation. Five bars after rehearsal number 111 in the orchestral score is such a case: here the strings articulate in static slow-moving tremolos the broken chord figurations of the right hand in the piano score, while the flutes, oboes, and clarinets play chords in semibreves providing harmonic support and adding the sustained upper resonances we hear when using the pedal. At this point, Ravel uses the full orchestra to enhance the crescendo marked by Moussorgsky. It is also interesting to observe that, as the music gets louder and the density increases with the illusion of clanging bells, Ravel never turns the orchestra into a murky wash of undifferentiated sonorities. For example, at rehearsal number 112, changing from arco to pizzicato in the third divisi of the first and second violins, and the second divisi of violas is a necessary act of clarification within the texture. While playing the main melody, the pizzicato notes reinforce the plucked sound of the harps. The effect of combining the harps with pizzicato strings evokes the percussive nature of the piano and clarifies the orchestral texture without being intrusive.
A different approach to using the work of another composer is the concept of expansion and elaboration. The Fandango attributed to the eighteenth-century Spanish composer Antonio Soler was the basis for my own Fandangos (2000). In this work I explored some of the basic elements of the original harpsichord piece and expanded them into an orchestral fantasy, weaving baroque motives into my sound world. The gestures and ornamental figures of the harpsichord original are amplified and examined through the orchestral lens.
In the first three bars, the D minor triad that initiates the harpsichord piece is amplified, refracted, and ultimately transformed, not only in terms of timbre but also in the nature and the intention of the original motive. Soler’s fanfare-like announcement of the key centre becomes a real fanfare played by the first trumpet with non divisi violas and French horns shadowing the articulated interval of a fifth. The initial arpeggiation is immediately refracted and echoed by the other trumpets (muted) and the oboes. The flutes now shadow the interval of the fifth in the same register as the trumpets and oboes. A simple gesture of three notes becomes material for development and orchestral speculation, with changes of register, dynamics, and rhythm.
The intersection between the tonal world of Soler and my own non-tonal approach was an important element in the development of this orchestral fantasy. Starting in bar 73 of my Fandangos, the prevalent tonal centre of D minor disintegrates. I engage the tonal diffusion at multiple levels: introduction of the chromatic aggregate, superimposition of notes running at different speeds and the use of divisi in the strings and the winds (see bars 77–83). The stratified approach to the orchestra was influenced by the nature of the compositional process – an instance where the orchestration cannot be separated from the compositional process, and where a sketch, due to textural complexity, can only contain basic foreground information. In the next section I will describe in more detail how I worked from sketches to the full score in my Sinfonia No. 4.
Orchestral reductions (i.e. transcribing from full orchestra to piano) can also be revealing. One remarkable example is Béla Bartók’s piano reduction (1944) of his Concerto for Orchestra (1943), intended as a rehearsal score for a ballet production that apparently never happened! Due to the limitations of what a pianist can play, in piano reductions the composer is forced to decide which elements are essential and which to leave out: what we get is a ‘virtual X-ray’ of the work. The published score by Boosey & Hawkes provides Bartók’s original reduction in autograph facsimile and an edited version by György Sándor. A note by the composer is also included, where he explains that small-head notes are not to be played but give a better idea of the work.
Let us look at the first page and examine what Bartók omitted or changed in the reduction. The first eleven bars contain most of the notes of the original score. Two of the changes are the three C’s played divisi by the violas at bar eight, and the line of the second flute at bar eleven which he wrote as small-head notes. String tremolos are indicated in word abbreviations (trem.), allowing the pianist to decide how best to produce the desired effect. At bar thirty we see further simplification in order to prioritise the flute melody and to facilitate the playing of the tremolos in the violins. The greatest compromise of the first page of the score happens at bar 39, where the arpeggiated lines in violas, violoncellos, and basses are reorganised in a way that makes it playable without changing the pitch content. At bar 37, a lower E pedal tone is held for at least seven measures, providing the depth of sound we hear in the orchestra (the pedal starts on bar 35 with the timpani). In György Sándor’s edited version he indicates the use of the sostenuto pedal from bars 37 to 50 as a pianistic solution for the passage.
What do we learn from this orchestral reduction? First, Bartók was concerned with keeping the score playable, and second, he wanted to ensure that what needed to be heard could come across without ambiguity. The idea of orchestral timbre and articulation was also important, even at a mimetic/metaphorical level – see the indication at bar 39, ‘metallic, quasi trombe’. Close examination and comparison between the reduction and the orchestral score will be very beneficial to any composer who wants to learn about orchestration. The reduction can also serve as a blueprint for what can go into a short score, although we need to keep in mind that an actual sketch or short score will never be as detailed as this reduction.
In any sketch or short score there are sonorities that, while not visible on the page, are nevertheless implied. I already mentioned the piano pedal, and in addition, there are doublings that the composer will add during the process of working directly with the orchestral score. Although the sketches will be incomplete and cannot provide sufficient information regarding all aspects of timbre, they allow us to jot down melodic and harmonic content without committing to all the materials that will eventually surround these ideas.
We are fortunate to have available, as an online resource at The Juilliard School Library’s Manuscript Collection, the sketches for Stravinsky’s Petrushka (1910–11).8 The sketches appear in twenty-four digital images. As is typical of sketches, some ideas will make it into the final score, others are quickly rejected, and many will go through transformations. Some lines appear with instrument labels, while often the composer just indicates piano or orchestra. The first ideas for the beginning of the Danse Russe appear on pp. 6 and 7, and on p. 17 the music that appears on the second page of the notebook can be mapped to the beginning of the Danse at Rehearsal Number 33 of the orchestral score (Figure 7.1). The lower staff of the short score (a variant of the sketch from pp. 6 and 7) is discarded, and the upper staff becomes the right hand of the piano and the material for the upper winds. Instead of the more dynamic moving bass line deleted in the sketch, Stravinsky opted for a harmonically static version. This change of mind directly influenced the block-like sonorities in the orchestration. On the third system of the sketch, as a reminder, he wrote at the bottom one bar of piano music (indicated as F. Piano), a pattern that becomes the piano part from Rehearsal Number 34 to 35. In this system, Stravinsky also has three staves of orchestral material in a condensed form. The upper staff contains melodic lines, while the middle and bottom staves are assigned to harmonic material and the bassline. Pages 17 and 18 are worth studying side by side with the orchestral score. We not only learn how imaginative and sophisticated Stravinsky’s orchestration was, but also gain insight into his compositional thought process.
Figure 7.1 Extract from the manuscript of Igor Stravinsky, Petrushka (1910), iii. Ink on paper.
Composers take different approaches to sketching their music, with the short score being perhaps the most useful one. Sketches can be in the form of a whole movement, or they can consist of fragments, reminders of materials that are not yet fully worked out and that are not necessarily sequential. For example, one can write a passage that may appear at a later point in the piece, or a couple of bars may serve as the seed for a longer section. As we saw in Stravinsky’s Petrushka, some ideas will be discarded, while others will be varied in the orchestral score. His sketches also reveal the importance of having a clear idea between foreground melodic material and background harmonic or bassline ideas. When I start sketching an orchestral work, I use a hybrid method that shifts between sketches, short score, and directly writing in full orchestration. The fluidity and flexibility with which instruments, staves, and pages can be added in notation software facilitate this method. With manuscript paper, this was quite cumbersome, and I remember cutting and pasting pieces of paper as I worked with my sketches.
My Sinfonia No. 4 (2008–9) for example was composed using notation software. Melodic material was directly assigned to the instruments I had in mind, although there were instances when I made changes, and I did not write doublings at the initial stage. The orchestral piano part was used to write down harmonic material that was later transferred to the orchestra; in cases where the work does not include piano, a temporary piano part can be added to the score.
The short score for the first page of the published score contained a few elements. The pattern in the cello part was abbreviated to one beat to indicate wherever the pattern changed. The main melody was sketched on the first violin line without doublings. In the percussion section, I indicated ‘pulse in crotchets’. The idea of using the bongos as the main timbre reinforced with violas and basses playing pizzicato, harp, and muted second trombone came at a later stage. In general, I sketched complex passages directly on the orchestral score, as was the case in the third movement. From bars 43 to 54, I wrote most of the lines down as they appeared in the final version. When writing for large forces, I find it difficult to abide by one specific method of laying down ideas. After finishing the first draft of a work, I always revise, change, and delete material; this process will go on until the work is finally sent to the publisher.
The most interesting orchestral works reveal the spirit and the intention of the composer. What we write should never be generic or impersonal, and aiming at writing impressive orchestral effects can result in sheer banalities. I consider the compositional process inseparable from orchestration. How a work sounds should always emanate from its structure and the materials. The late Jacob Druckman (1928–96), whom I consider a true master of orchestral writing, once told me that he used to study Mahler’s symphonies, reading one instrumental line at a time while listening to a recording. Although there are excellent texts on orchestration, I find that the best way to learn is to study in detail the extensive orchestral literature from the early twentieth century to the present.
