"Percussion Orchestrations" instrumental dictionary.

Sometime ago, in the article "Percussion Orchestrations in Spanish", I showed you a website named "Percussion Orchestrations" administrated by Ed Cervenka which, among other services, explains the distribution and parts of percussion instruments for more than 7500 works of the symphonic, operatic and contemporary repertoire. On that article I explained how I translated that web into Spanish.

It also contains an instrumental dictionary in several languages, but at the moment it was decided not to translate it due to the very hard work involved. Well, we are not afraid of difficulties, and the website that is now a worldwide reference, can now offer that database in Spanish.

© Percussion Orchestrations

 
This new service has been online since last april, and Ed Cervenka announced this update on the corresponding newsletter.

© Percussion Orchestrations

There are still some details to be refined, and some descriptions may be added, but the main corpus is already done.

I encourage you to visit this  website, and if you work in an orchestra, you will find it essential.

…et in Arcadia ego.

© David Valdés

Percussion Orchestrations in Spanish.

Organizing a percussion section, where every work recquires a different number of percussionists, different instruments, asigning parts to musicians…, is a hard task. This involves the principal (who asigns parts, determines which instruments are to be used, where to set them up…), the stage mannager (who is in charge of the logistics), the personnel mannager (who contracts the extra percussionists needed), the artistic comitee and the music director (in charge of deciding the works to be played during the season).

All this hard work was done by the orchestras themselves, as there was not a global archive with all the repertory specifying the distribution of parts, number of extras needed, what instruments to use, if they can be shared among musicians… It was back in 2004 that Percussion Orchestrations landed on the internet filling that gap.

© Percussion Orchestrations

This powerful site is now a fundamental tool for orchestras arround the world. Since early this year, it´s not only written in English: it also features an Italian, German, French and Spanish version.

© Percussion Orchestrations

I was in charge of translating the web into Spanish, and I´d like to thank Ed Cervenka (founder of Percussion Orchestrations) for the confidence he put on me to make this project possible.

© Percussion Orchestrations

Visit Percussion Orchestrations. As percussionists, I´m sure you will find it of great interest.

…et in Arcadia ego.

© David Valdés