Elektra (opera) - Style and Instrumentation

Style and Instrumentation

Musically, Elektra deploys dissonance, chromaticism and extremely fluid tonality in a way which recalls but moves beyond the same composer's Salome of 1905, and which represents Strauss's furthest advances in modernism, from which he later retreated. The bitonal or extended Elektra chord is a well known dissonance from the opera while harmonic parallelism is also prominent modernist technique.

To support the overwhelming emotional content of the opera, Strauss uses a very large and in some ways unusual orchestra, with the following instrumentation: woodwind: piccolo (doubling fourth flute, although this is omitted from the instrumentation list at the beginning of the score), 3 flutes (flute 3 doubling piccolo 2), 3 oboes (oboe 3 doubling English horn), heckelphone, clarinet in E-flat, 4 clarinets in B-flat and A, 2 basset horns, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon; brass: 8 horns (horns 5-8 doubling 2 B-flat tenor and 2 F bass Wagner tubas), 6 trumpets, bass trumpet, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, contrabass trombone, tuba; percussion: 6-8 timpani (2 players), snare drum, bass drum (with switch), cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, castanets, glockenspiel; keyboards: celesta (ad libitum); strings: 2 harps (doubled if possible at the end), 24 violins divided into three groups, 18 Violas divided into three groups (the first of which, unusually, doubles as the fourth violin section), 12 cellos divided into two groups, 8 double basses