Orchestral music

Orchestral music is music written for performance by an orchestra, a large ensemble organized into instrumental sections such as strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion.

Orchestra: An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble whose players perform together under a conductor. The ensemble itself supplies the sections and performers for which orchestral music is written.
Symphony: A symphony is an extended orchestral composition, usually divided into multiple contrasting movements. It is a major form in which orchestral music develops large-scale musical arguments.
Baroque music: Baroque music is European art music broadly dated from around 1600 to 1750, marked by practices such as basso continuo. Its court and theater ensembles helped establish practices inherited by later orchestral music.
Hector Berlioz: Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer and writer known for bold orchestration and large-scale works. His Treatise on Instrumentation systematized knowledge of orchestral instruments and their effects.
Chamber music: Chamber music is instrumental music for a small ensemble, typically with one performer per part. Its smaller forces contrast with the multiple players often assigned to orchestral parts.
Orchestration: Orchestration is the assignment of musical material to instruments or instrumental groups. It determines which orchestral colors carry each part of a composition.
Concerto: A concerto is a composition that sets one or more solo instruments in musical dialogue with an orchestra. It uses the orchestra both as partner and contrast to a featured soloist.
Mannheim school: The Mannheim school was an eighteenth-century circle of composers and performers associated with the Mannheim court orchestra. Its ensemble techniques and dynamic effects influenced the emerging symphonic style.
Richard Wagner: Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, and theater director best known for his operas and music dramas. His expanded orchestral forces and continuous musical writing transformed opera's orchestral role.
Solo instrumental music: Solo instrumental music is music written primarily for one instrumental performer, with or without accompaniment. It centers a single player rather than a large ensemble of instrumental sections.

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