Quotes About Oboes

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?

Battle in the Snow has an unusual orchestration calling for five piccolos, five oboes, a battery of eight percussion, two grand pianos, and two or three harps, in addition to the normal orchestral complement," Williams notes. "This was necessary in order to achieve a bizarre sound, a mechanical, brutal sound for the sequence showing Imperial walkers.