| Summary: | The purpose of this study is to investigate how to choose, adapt, and arrange music for school full orchestras with incomplete instrumentation that are not yet ready to perform unarranged standard literature. The literature suggests that while school full orchestra directors may be able to find some published arrangements that include generous cues for missing instruments and parts for substitute instruments, the most effective approach is to alter and arrange music as-needed. When arranging, it is important for teachers to make choices that allow for their students to be successful, but also preserve the original octaves, timbres, form, and tempo of the piece, as intended by the composer. Arranging options that accommodate incomplete instrumentation are demonstrated in an arrangement by the author for school full orchestra of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 82, Movement I. Further examinations of arranging techniques and abridgement considerations are provided in an additional arrangement by the author of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Movement I, for school string orchestra. Two different published arrangements of “Dance Bacchanale,” from the opera Samson and Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns, are compared to each other and to the original, to observe how existing arrangements anticipate and accommodate incomplete instrumentation in school full orchestras. A brief history of the full orchestra ensemble in American schools is also included.
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