I’ve wondered about this for years and years. In the last movement of Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony, the 1st and 2nd violins play what sounds like a melody and a harmonizing line - a six or seven note descending sigh. But they’re not really playing that - they’re playing alternating notes of the melody and the harmony. In recordings it can’t be heard. And I’ve heard the piece many times in the concert hall and I still can’t hear it as it’s written. Who can? Is this a bit of precious orchestration that is more apparent than real? Has anyone here conducted it? Can you hear the difference? What’s that all about?
I’ve just glanced casually through the score and I didn’t notice anything that shouldn’t be audible. Can you point out a specific passage?
If you mean the opening measures, then the answer is ‘Yes, the crossed voices should be audible to the conductor and the players.’ It will be easier to hear in the violas and celli because of the different timbres of the instruments, but even in the 1st and 2nd violins, the interlocking phrases sound different than if it were arranged so that the 1sts always had the higher note and the 2nds the lower.
Picture it this way - you have two people singing ‘Row your boat’ as a round. If, instead of each person sticking with the melody, you sang it so that Dave always sang the higher note and Jake always sang the lower, it would sound different, even if all the same notes were present. Instead of each person singing CCCDE/EDEFG/C’C’GGEECC/GFEDC in their turn, you would get Dave singing
C’C’GGEEEE/GFEFG over and over again and Jake singing
C—C–CDC/EDEDC over and over again. The notes are there, but the voices are different. Depending on how different Dave and Jake’s voices are, this could sound anywhere from ‘odd in a way you can’t quite put your finger on’ to ‘WTF?’
Yes, from the podium or from within the orchestra, I think you could hear the interplay of the celli and the violas. Not so much with the first and second fiddles, and my question is, does the audience hear that? I never have, and I imagine that from the podium or from other parts of the orchestra it might be audible, but it might not. I have never played that piece, but there are spots in the orchestra where the difference would be hard to hear. So who hears it? Just the conductor? The violins? What’s the point? I suspect it is an effect that Tchaikovsky may have wanted to play with, but that never really worked all that well, as marvelous as he was with instrumentation.
I’m well out on the limb of my own opinion, here. Keep your salt shaker handy.
Two things - the B in the first beat of the first violin should be slightly louder and more prominent than the higher F# in the second violin. Then, the F# should join to the A# while the B joins to the E for the second beat. Again, unless the music states otherwise, the 1st violin should be what comes out as a melody, even when it crosses voices with the 2nd violin. Both groups of instruments should be treating their parts as independent lines that serve as melody and counter-melody.
If it sounds like the F# joins to the E and the B joins to the A#, then the composer’s intention is not being fulfilled. If Tchaikovsky had wanted us to hear it as F# E D C# B C#, he would have written it that way. The melody is B E G# C# E# C#.
Now, how obvious should this be to the listener? That’s up to the taste of the conductor, the players and the listener. It’s like putting mustard and sage in maccheroni and cheese - if it’s so much that I’m aware of it, it may well spoil the taste for me. If there’s none whatsoever, there’s nothing special about the dish.
This is a challenge with all music where there are overlapping voices. Bach - how do you bring out the interplay of the fugue’s subject and counter-subject? How much of the underlying structure should be evident on first hearing and how much should be like the studs in a wall - vital to the structure but never meant to be obvious? Differentiating voices is much easier on a piano, where you have the option of playing one note louder than the others - what do you do on a harpsichord, where the notes have the same dynamic? However you chose to make the differentiation - duration, tone colour, phrasing, dynamics - there’s no point in a fugue where you can’t hear the interplay of the voices.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
I’m not an orchestral aficionado, but IIRC, isn’t there a controversy regarding whether orchestras have their 1st and 2nd violins sitting next to each other or across from each other? I suspect the configuration of the orchestra in your recording would produce a different affect.
That’s how I learned to preserve crossed parts when I do multitracks on YouTube–making it sound like it’s coming from different directions.
I don’t buy this, mainly because when that introductory theme comes back later in the movement, it IS written in the first violins as F# E D C# B C#. The voices don’t alternate. And in recordings and even in the concert hall, it sounds - at least to me - the same as the crossed-voice version. I’d love to know the real story about this. In fact, now that I think about it, I may have an opportunity to ask a (MAJOR) conductor about this in the near future and if I learn anything relevant, I’ll report back here.
The interesting thing is, in recordings and live performances I’ve heard, is that the two violin sections sound identical. Does anyone know of a recording made by an orchestra in which the second violins are on the opposite side? Can you actually hear the melody crossing back and forth?
I’d suggest that the effect is audible, if subtly, here. Not so much hearing it clearly ‘cross back and forth’, but a certain pulsation in timbre which wouldn’t happen without being scored the way it is. I’m sure that in the flesh it’d be much more pronounced.
I couldn’t agree more 
Another very subtle example of crossing lines is in the opening of Stravinsky’s Firebird - from bar 5, two trombones together move in 3rds, alternating between A flat & C flat to B flat & D, but with the second trombone taking the A flat and D and so emphasising the augmented 4th which has already been outlined by the lower strings from the beginning.
Gentlemen
This is something that has been bothering me for years. Decades ago there was a scientific doc on British TV called “How does Music Work?” Or something like that. I can’t remember the exact title, or which decade - must be the 80s or 90s - or even which channel / science strand - might have been BBC Horizon, Channel 4 Equinox, or something else. Why the bother? Thing is, the doc was fascinating and has always stayed in my memory (except for the important details just mentioned hahah). In particular, part of the programme dealt with how we perceive music and to illustrate this a section from a well known classical piece (which also I could not remember!) was played by a studio string orchestra divided into two halves. First the left half performed the part written for it, playing an odd sounding theme. Then the right half did likewise. Each half sounded odd, the music unrecognisable. Then the two halves played together and, as if by magic, the well known theme was heard. It was revelatory.
Flash forward to last week when I heard an orchestral string piece on the radio which triggered the memory of this programme. It was Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony. So I Googled combinations of words including “orchestra listener hears theme not played” and Bingo! Your thread discussing this very same effect AND a Scientific American article from 1996 giving chapter and verse including:
"*In the summer of 1893 Arthur Nikisch, then Europe’s premiere conductor, popped in on the legendary composer Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky to talk a little shop. According to Nikisch’s assistant, Richard Lert, we know only one thing for sure about their get-together: Nikisch didn’t like the way Tchaikovsky had scored the finale of his Sixth Symphony (the Pathétique), and he adamantly wanted the maestro to change it.
The contentious passages were certainly unorthodox. Tchaikovsky alternated the main theme and accompaniment between the first and second violin sections; as a result, each section played every other note of each theme. Nikisch wanted Tchaikovsky, who was preparing the piece for public debut, to rescore the movement so that the first violins would play the main theme alone, and the second violins would play only the accompaniment.
No one knows why Nikisch opposed Tchaikovsky’s score so intensely. He may have rehearsed the Pathétique, and it’s tempting to believe that he did. If so, Nikisch’s musical ire might have been aroused by a peculiar and newly discovered facet of human perception.
The odd score hardly affects a listener today, because the first and second violins sections sit together; the listener hears both themes coming from the same region of the orchestra. But 100 years ago orchestras were arranged differently. The first violins sat on the conductor’s left, and the second violins on the conductor’s right. Standing in the center, Nikisch may have felt as if he were being battered from both sides by two disjointed sets of sounds that did not integrate into a harmonious whole …*" (http://philomel.com/pdf/shawn_carlson_Scientific%20American_%201996.pdf)
Mystery solved! It’s an excellent article, well worth reading. Now if only I could remember details of that original TV doc …
Ooops, I missed off the key “science” bit that follows:
"*I say “may have felt” because (here’s that peculiar facet of perception) people don’t all hear music in precisely the same way. In fact, according to Diana Deutsch, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego, how we perceive certain sound patterns depends on our native language and whether we are right- or left-handed. Even our dialect matters: people brought up in Californian tend to hear certain sound patterns quite differently from those reared in England, for example.
The Pathétique’s contentious measures are an example of this kind of pattern. Most people’s brains blend the violins’ voices into Tchaikovsky’s intended melodies. Nikisch’s singular genius for conducting, however, suggests an extraordinary precision at discerning patterns in sound. He may have objected to the score because his ear was not fooled by the illusion.*"
I’m arriving at this conversation a few years late, I see! I’ve just created an account to write this and I wonder if anyone will read it…
I’ve had a similar low-level nagging obsession with this criss-crossing violin phrase for many years. The one thing I would add is to mention the difference that comes from playing an angular melody as opposed to a simple descending scale. With the former, there’s more inherent physical dynamism in the playing. (…although I think this is what “GorillaMan” is saying…)
Imagine two parts, identical except for being an octave apart from each other. Two players first play the parts straight, then they play them a second time, taking alternate notes from the two parts. The two renditions are the same but different. There’s more energy about the second version as the players reach for the notes. Although the individual “tunes” are more abstract, they are less mundane and can be played with more passion.
Maybe this is why he did it - and to me this would fit with how I’ve always thought of Tchaikovsky. He presents simplicity but there’s brooding drama underneath.
The asker-of-the-original-question, “CC”, questions why the arrangement goes back to the simpler scale runs later in the piece. I would say that this subtle effect is only done at the beginning because the violins are exposed. It’s a device that would be lost among the rest of the orchestra.
Sounds like Tchaikovsky was doing something that would be accomplished in a studio these days. Pan hard left for one track; pan hard right on second track, but have them play a contiguous melodic line.
The fact that apparently orchestras are organized differently prevents that stereo separation. And in a recording, if the orchestra is set up with 1V and 2V similarly close, you would miss it, too. I know nothing about classical recordings, but assume that some recordings would involve that old-school separation, where 1V’s and 2V’s are separated and panned to either side, just like folks make recordings with old baroque instruments, etc.