Virtual orchestra refers to a variety of different types of technologies and art forms. Most commonly used to refer to orchestral simulations, either for pre-recorded or live environments, it also has been used in other ways, such as IRCAM's virtual orchestra database.
Overview
Due to the development of high capacity samplers, the recording of large instrumental sample libraries, and the capabilities of modern sequencers, simulating traditional orchestra performances has become quite sophisticated. Although the process of developing a particular score requires great skill and sensitivity, and can take a long time, the method is more economical than using a full complement of acoustic musicians. For this reason, much of the music heard on television, and in cinema, uses some form of a virtual orchestra.
The term virtual orchestra is used today to describe the real-time simulation of a traditional acoustic orchestra in live performance genres such as musical theater, ballet, and opera. This use of virtual orchestras emphasizes the interactive capabilities of the technology as opposed to pre-recorded and studio-based genres such as film scores. The term virtual orchestra implies a high degree of human interaction during live performance and suggests that the method simulates both the sound and behavior of an acoustic orchestra. The behavioral characteristics include the ability to follow tempo in real time while making simultaneous adjustments to various expressive parameters including volume, articulation, and phrasing. While the definition has expanded to include creative and research activity in a broader aesthetic range beyond traditional orchestral simulations, the ability to interact with the sonic and behavioral elements in real time via human performance has remained one the requisite attributes of a virtual orchestra.
Its use, particularly in live performances, has been controversial, as many musicians see it as a threat to their vocations. There have been multiple union pickets at performances that used or intended to use this technology, such as the 2003 Broadway musicians strike, that began as a dispute over pit minimums, and rapidly escalated into a referendum on virtual orchestras. Other disputes arose in London's West End, when Sir Cameron Mackintosh moved the long-running production of Les Misérables from the Palace to the Queen's Theatre, necessitating a reduction in orchestra size due to space issues, and several productions by the Opera Company of Brooklyn.
Virtual orchestra philosophy
Sonic
The philosophical and developmental trajectory of the electronic music art form was set on its course in the 1950s and first articulated by the early European electronic music artists such as Eimert, Stockhausen, Krenek, Koenig, and Boulez. In the words of Herbert Eimert:
(In electronic music) "… there has been no extension of traditional procedure. By the radical nature of its technical apparatus, electronic music is compelled to deal with sound phenomena unknown to musicians of earlier times. The disruption by the electronic means, of the sound world as we have known it leads to new musical possibilities, the ultimate consequences of which can hardly yet be appreciated……here we touch on a most widespread misconception: namely, the idea that one can make music 'traditionally' with electronic means."
The aesthetic foundation of electronic music began to propagate from the post-World War II studios of Europe. An aesthetic propagation that would not be challenged until the introduction of live performance synthesizers (MiniMoogs) in 1970. The trajectory set in motion by the Europeans would split and divide into a myriad of paths, facilitated by transistors, integrated circuits, computers, networks, satellites and the Internet. Yet even into the late 1980s and beyond, the virtual orchestra was criticized for its divergence from the original aesthetic trajectory. The criticism suggested that it was unimaginative to set the Virtual Orchestra's sights on a target of simulation when its potential could be better served by allowing it to function idiomatically while moving the art form forward along the original trajectory of experimentalism. But it was precisely the constraints of, and adherence to this experimentalism that had confined the electronic music art form to the margins of the music industry and prevented its use in the mainstream.