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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
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====Orchestration==== {{listen|type=music|image=none|help=no|filename=Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies (ISRC USUAN1100270).oga|title=Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy|description="Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from ''[[The Nutcracker]]'' makes extensive use of the then newly invented and very rare [[celesta]].}} Like other late Romantic composers, Tchaikovsky relied heavily on [[orchestration]] for musical effects.<ref>Holoman, ''New Grove'' (2001), 12:413.</ref> Tchaikovsky, however, became noted for the "sensual opulence" and "voluptuous timbrel virtuosity" of his orchestration.<ref>Maes, 73; Taruskin, ''Grove Opera'', 4:669.</ref> Like Glinka, Tchaikovsky tended toward bright primary [[timbre|colors]] and sharply delineated contrasts of [[texture (music)|texture]].<ref>Brown, ''New Grove''vol. 18, p. 628; Hopkins, ''New Grove (1980)'', 13:698.</ref> However, beginning with the [[Symphony No. 3 (Tchaikovsky)|Third Symphony]], Tchaikovsky experimented with an increased range of timbres.<ref>Maes, 78.</ref> Tchaikovsky's scoring was noted and admired by some of his peers. Rimsky-Korsakov regularly referred his students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to it and called it "devoid of all striving after effect, [to] give a healthy, beautiful sonority".<ref>As quoted in Taruskin, ''Stravinsky'', 206.</ref> This sonority, musicologist [[Richard Taruskin]] pointed out, is essentially Germanic in effect. Tchaikovsky's expert use of having two or more instruments play a melody simultaneously (a practice called [[Voicing (music)#Doubling|doubling]]) and his ear for uncanny combinations of instruments resulted in "a generalized orchestral sonority in which the individual timbres of the instruments, being thoroughly mixed, would vanish".<ref>Taruskin, ''Stravinsky'', 206</ref>
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