orchestration
noun
Simple meaning
Arranging a piece of music for an orchestra and assigning parts to the different musical instruments.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
awrkuhstrayshuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɔɹkəstˈɹeɪʃən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountableby extension
The control of diverse elements.
The act of arranging a piece of music for an orchestra and assigning parts to the different musical instruments
An arrangement of a piece of music for performance by an orchestra or band
uncountableby extensioncomputing
The automated arrangement, coordination, and management of computer systems, middleware, and services.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The act of arranging a piece of music for an orchestra and assigning parts to the different musical instruments
Used this way, orchestration is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a musical use: it is everyday language among musicians and listeners, and specialised outside that.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Music/performance
- Arts writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use orchestration
- “The skillful orchestration of his political campaign.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to The control of diverse elements.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.