What are all the instruments in an orchestra?

3 September 2025, 17:30

Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at Classic FM Live

Let’s explore the instruments of the orchestra, section by section...

Composers have been writing music for the group of instruments we call an orchestra for the last four centuries. Endlessly adaptable and always evolving, an orchestra can be made up of 20 players or 120. Composers use the instruments of the orchestra to evoke characters, places, and moods, tell stories, and express a huge range of emotions – like a painter mixing colours or a chef selecting ingredients. So what are the instruments that make all this possible?

The orchestra consists of four main families of instruments: strings, woodwind, brass and percussion. There are plenty of optional extras, but you’ll find these four families in almost all orchestral music.

The word ‘orchestra’ comes from Ancient Greek. It originally denoted a semicircular area in a theatre where the chorus sang and danced, and the orchestra is still laid out in a semi-circular formation today.

QUIZ: Can you put the musical instrument in its correct place in the orchestra?

The string family

Sitting at the front, around the conductor, are the instruments in the string family. To play them, musicians draw a bow across the strings to make them vibrate, and the hollow wooden body of the instrument amplifies the sound. A shorter, thinner or tighter string makes a higher-pitched sound, and a longer, thicker or looser string makes a lower-pitched sound. String players can also pluck the strings with their fingers – this is called pizzicato, the Italian word for pinched or plucked.

Today, most strings are made from a mix of metal and synthetic materials. But they used to be made from catgut (actually the intestines of a sheep or goat, not a cat). Gut strings are still used by players wanting an ‘authentic’ sound for music written before the First World War. Catgut was also used for stringing tennis racquets, and hanging the weights in grandfather clocks.

Jessie Montgomery: Strum

Violin

How many? A standard symphony orchestra has 16 first violins and 14 second violins.

There are more violins in the orchestra than any other instrument: around 30. The first violins are the most likely to be playing the main melody of a piece – the tune you’ll be humming on the way home from a concert. The second violins might play a complementary melody, in a musical conversation with the first violins, or join forces with the lower string instruments to provide the harmony.

Edward Elgar: Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op.20 / Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Viola

How many? 12

The violin’s bigger cousin, the viola has a richer, darker tone. Like the altos or tenors in a choir, the violas are usually at the heart of the harmony, helping to give the string section its full, lush sound.

Instrument: Viola

Cello

How many? 10

Together with the double basses, the cellos provide the bass notes of the string section. Composers often give the cellos important melodies too, making the most of their wide range and expressive sound.

Today’s string instruments developed from an earlier family of bowed string instruments called viols. The Italian name for the ancestor of the cello was the viola da gamba - ‘viol of the leg’, because it was held with the legs, whereas the ancestor of the viola and violin was the viola da braccio - ‘viol of the arm’.

Rossini: Wilhelm Tell – Ouvertüre ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Christoph Eschenbach

Double bass

How many? 8

The lowest-pitched string instrument, the double bass (often just called a bass) is played standing up. As well as orchestras, it’s a key member of jazz bands, where it’s plucked rather than played with a bow.

Mahler symphony No.1-3M (3/4) G.Dudamel Los Angles Philharmonic

The woodwind family

The woodwind section sits at the heart of the orchestra, adding its vivid and varied colours to the composer’s palette. To play a woodwind instrument, musicians make the air inside the instrument vibrate using their breath. Closing or opening holes with their fingers (either directly on the holes or by pressing down metal keys) changes the length of the column of air to alter the pitch. A longer column of air makes a lower pitched sound, and vice versa. As their name suggests, the instruments in this family were all originally made of wood. If you learned the recorder at school, you’ve played a woodwind instrument that has been around since the Medieval period.

Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra, Mvt 2: Presentando le coppie (Benjamin Zander, Boston Philharmonic)

Flute

How many? 2

The flute is the only woodwind instrument that is held sideways. The flautist makes a sound by blowing air across a hole near one end. Try this yourself by blowing across the top of a bottle – different amounts of water in the bottle will give you different pitches. Flutes have been made of metal since the mid-19th century, but players in period instrument orchestras use wooden flutes for an ‘authentic’ sound when they perform music from the Baroque and Classical periods. Composers often choose the flute to evoke the sound of birdsong or rippling water.

The earliest known musical instruments are flutes dating from around 43,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found flutes made from the bones of cave bears and vultures, and the tusks of mammoths.

PROKOFIEV Peter and the Wolf (Sydney Symphony Orchestra / Northey / Dame Edna)

Piccolo

How many? 0-1

The piccolo is the flute’s tiny sibling – piccolo means small in Italian. It sounds one octave higher than the flute. You might think composers would only call for a piccolo when they want a sweet, delicate sound. But the ancestors of the piccolo were military instruments: their high-pitched sound could be heard above the noise of battle. You might hear it being used to evoke war and violence too.

The flute also has bigger siblings – you’ll occasionally come across the mellow sound of the alto or bass flute in 20th- and 21st-century music.

Rossini: "Semiramide" Overture / Rattle · Berliner Philharmoniker

Oboe

How many? 2

The oboe is a double-reed instrument. The oboist blows air through a reed, made of a piece of cane folded in half and tied onto a metal tube, that fits into the top of the body of the instrument. Because the oboe has a clear and penetrating sound, it’s the job of the Principal Oboe to play an A for all the other instruments to tune to, before the concert begins.

Professional oboists and bassoonists make their own reeds, shaping the cane with specialist gouging and scraping tools, and winding it with thread. They will usually have several spare reeds ready, as occasionally one splits during a performance.

Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Jaime Martín

Cor Anglais

How many? 0-1

The cor anglais is a bigger, lower-pitched cousin of the oboe. Confusingly, its name is French for ‘English horn’, but it’s not English, and it’s not a horn. Composers often employ the expressive sound of the cor anglais for melancholy or heart-wrenching melodies.

Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 (From The New World), 2. Largo - Gustavo Dudamel, Berliner Philharmoniker

Clarinet

How many? 2-4

The clarinet is a single-reed instrument. The sound is produced by the vibrations of a wide, flat reed against the mouthpiece. Like the flute, the clarinet has siblings of different sizes – the ones you’re most likely to hear in a large symphony orchestra are the high-pitched E flat clarinet, and the deep bass clarinet.

Brahms: 3. Sinfonie ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Bassoon

How many? 2

The bassoon is a double-reed instrument over a metre long. It’s held diagonally in front of the body, and the reed is attached to a crook, a curved metal tube through which the air reaches the main body of the instrument. The sound of the bassoon blends well with the lower string and brass instruments as well as being the bass voice of the woodwind family.

Stravinsky The Rite of Spring // London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle

Contrabassoon

How many? 0-1

The biggest member of the woodwind family, the contrabassoon is a beast of an instrument (and it can make a great growling sound if required). It consists of over five metres of tubing, bent over on itself in a paperclip shape to make it manageable to play. The contrabassoon produces the lowest notes in the entire orchestra.

Professional players of large instruments like the contrabassoon or double bass get paid a small extra fee called porterage in recognition of the difficulty of getting around with their instruments.

Ravel: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand - Bertrand Chamayou & Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra HD

Saxophone

How many? 0-4

The saxophone is an occasional visitor to the orchestra, particularly in music from the late 19th and 20th centuries, and music influenced by jazz. It’s classed as a woodwind instrument because it’s related to the clarinet, with a single reed, but it has always been made of metal. It’s the only orchestral instrument named after a person: Belgian instrument-maker Adolphe Sax, who patented it in the 1840s.

Pictures at an Exhibition (complete) / Modest Mussorgsky / Semyon Bychkov / Oslo Philharmonic

The brass family

The brass family may sit at the back of the orchestra, but they’re easy to see, shining under the stage lights, and even easier to hear. Brass players produce a sound by ‘buzzing’ with their lips, into a cup-shaped mouthpiece (or cone-shaped, in the case of the horn). Pressing down valves opens up different lengths of tubing to produce different pitches (the exception is the trombone, where the player changes the length of the tubing using a slide). Brass players can play several different notes with each length of tubing by changing the tension of their lips.

When horns and trumpets first joined the orchestra back in the early 18th century, they didn’t have valves. These ‘natural’ instruments, still used in period instrument ensembles today, can only play the notes of the harmonic series – a handful of notes all relating to a single key (think of bugle calls like the Last Post – they also use only the notes of the harmonic series, as bugles don’t have valves). To play pieces or movements in different keys, players had to change crooks – detachable pieces of tubing that changed the overall length of the instrument. Valves were added to trumpets in the early 19th century, and to horns in the mid-19th century, enabling them to play all the notes of the chromatic scale.

Richard Strauss: Festmusik der Stadt Wien

Horn

How many? 2-8

The tubing of the horn is curled into a round shape, ending in a wide bell. As well as the tension of their lips and the different combinations of valves, horn players use the position of their right hand in the bell to change the pitch and timbre of the sound. Horns almost always come in pairs – two in Baroque and Classical music, and four from the Romantic period onwards. Late-Romantic composers like Wagner and Strauss (whose father was a horn player) used eight or more. A horn section playing in four-part harmony can sound serene or strident, sad or celebratory, playful or just plain gorgeous.

Sunrise: Santtu conducts Strauss

Trumpet

How many? 3

The trumpet is the highest-pitched member of the brass family. Trumpets and drums were first added to the orchestra in the Baroque period to conjure up a martial mood, and the trumpet section is often called upon for moments of drama or triumph. It has a more sensitive side too, and sometimes gets to play soulful melodies. And it’s indispensable in music influenced by jazz.

Occasionally you’ll find the trumpet’s not-quite-identical twin the cornet in an orchestra, though it’s mostly used in brass bands. The cornet’s conical tubing gives it a mellower, more lyrical sound.

Sunrise: Santtu conducts Strauss

Trombone

How many? 3 (two tenor trombones, one bass trombone)

Trombones have been regular members of the orchestra since the early 19th century. Unlike the rest of the brass family, the trombone has a slide to change its pitch. This means it’s the best instrument in the orchestra for playing a glissando (Italian for ‘sliding’), moving smoothly from one pitch to another. The trombone’s ancestor, the sackbut, accompanied church choirs, and composers still use the trombone to evoke a grand or sacred atmosphere. It’s great for exciting, jazzy or humorous moments too.

Mozart: Requiem – Tuba mirum – Trombone

Tuba

How many? 0-1

The huge tuba is the bass member of the brass family. It was invented in the 1830s, and has been a regular fixture in the orchestra since the mid-19th century.

The tuba’s smaller sibling, the euphonium, makes an occasional appearance in the orchestra, though it’s mainly found in brass bands.

Pictures at an Exhibition (complete) / Modest Mussorgsky / Semyon Bychkov / Oslo Philharmonic

The percussion family

All the instruments that are played by hitting something, usually with a stick or beater, are members of the percussion section.

Timpani, usually in combination with trumpets, were the first to join the orchestra in the 18th century. A mid-19th-century orchestra might also include bass drum, cymbals, and maybe snare drum, cymbals or triangle. From the late 19th century onwards, more and more percussion instruments joined the party – Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold features 18 anvils!

As well as adding drama and colour to the music and highlighting the rhythm, a composer’s choice of percussion instruments can evoke a place or culture. For example, in West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein uses a huge percussion section including congas, cowbell and maracas to create a Latin American sound.

Gustavo Dudamel - Bernstein: West Side Story - Mambo (Sinfónica Simón Bolívar Orchestra, BBC Proms)

Timpani

Timpani, nicknamed timps, are a pair (or sometimes more) of large drums, their skins stretched over a hemispherical copper bowl. They are tuned by changing the tension of the skin – on modern instruments this is done using pedals. The timpanist has a range of hard and soft mallets to choose from depending on the type of sound required.

Esa-Pekka Salonen | Mahler's Symphony No. 3 | VI. Langsam—Ruhevoll—Empfunden

Tuned percussion

Tuned percussion is the collective name for percussion instruments that can play specific pitches. Apart from the timpani, other tuned percussion instruments include those with keys, like the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone. These are played with two, four, or even six mallets. Tubular bells, a set of suspended metal tubes, are also occasional members of the orchestra.

Untuned percussion

Untuned percussion instruments include the bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, and woodblock. The drum kit sometimes features too, especially in film and TV soundtracks. The sky’s the limit when it comes to adding untuned percussion instruments to the orchestra – composer Gabriela Ortiz even writes for the quijada, a Mexican instrument made from a donkey’s jawbone.

The timpanist in an orchestra only plays timps, whereas the other musicians in the percussion section need to be able to play all the other percussion instruments. As well playing any number of different instruments that you hit, the percussionists’ job could involve winding a wind machine, swinging a rattle, or even blowing a conch shell.

Schostakowitsch: 15. Sinfonie ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Other instruments

Several instruments don’t fit neatly into the four main families of strings, woodwind, brass and percussion, but nevertheless are often found in orchestras. Think of them as those family friends who are often around for special occasions.

Harp

Almost two metres tall, and often gold, the harp is one of the most visually striking instruments. To play it, the harpist uses their fingers to pluck the 47 strings, and their feet to change the tension of the strings using pedals. Using the A pedal, for example, they can loosen all the A strings of the harp to play A flat, or tighten them all to play A sharp. Running their fingers up and down all the strings produces a glissando (sliding) effect.

It can take up to half an hour to tune a harp – the harpist has to arrive early to make sure every string is in tune before a rehearsal or concert starts. When a professional symphony orchestra goes on tour, the harp and other large instruments are transported in a temperature- and humidity-controlled truck, so that they’re not too out of tune when they arrive at a new venue.

Jiří Bělohlávek, SOPK - Bedřich Smetana: Má vlast / My Country (Vyšehrad)

Keyboards

Several keyboard instruments are regular visitors to the orchestra. You’ll find the harpsichord, an ancestor of the piano, in orchestral music from the 17th and early 18th centuries. The harpsichordist plays the semi-improvised ‘continuo’ part, a sort of harmonic accompaniment.

Large-scale music for choir and orchestra, especially Christian religious music, sometimes features the organ. The piano has been used as an orchestral instrument by some 20th- and 21st-century composers. Then there’s the celeste, which has a keyboard like a piano, and keys that strike metal plates to make an ethereal sound – its name is French for ‘heavenly’.

Simon Rattle & Berliner Philharmoniker – Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker)

Voice

In opera and choral music, the orchestra accompanies the human voice. But sometimes, composers use voices like an extra orchestral instrument, not to convey meaning through words, but to add an extra colour to their palette.

Holst: Die Planeten ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Hugh Wolff

Recorded sound and electronics

Over the last 100 years, composers have added recorded sound, electronic instruments, and live electronic manipulation of sound (for example using loop pedals or MIDI keyboards) to their toolbox. The other-worldly sound of early electronic instruments including the theremin and ondes martenot made them popular with composers of film and TV soundtracks, especially horror and sci-fi.

The first use of recorded sound in an orchestral work is the nightingale song in Respighi’s Pines of Rome, premiered in 1924. Respighi’s score specifies a particular gramophone record, first released in 1910.

Respighi: Pini di Roma ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Juraj Valčuha

The orchestra of the future

Orchestral instruments are still being improved, developed and invented, and composers, performers and instrument-makers are always on the lookout for new ways to create sounds. We can listen and watch in new ways too, for example using virtual reality headsets or augmented reality glasses. As the orchestra continues to evolve, what might it look and sound like 100 years from now?