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The music was furnished by colored performers on the violin, except on great occasions, when some of the Marine Band played an accompaniment on flutes and clarinets.
His orchestra contains the usual modern equipment 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, an English horn, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, kettledrums, glockenspiel, cymbals, 2 harps, and strings; yet one may count on but little more than the fingers of both hands the pages in which this apparatus is employed in its full strength.
The slow ascending phrase here has a full song and sway. The end is in spirited duet of two quick motives. The second movement, modérément lent, begins in revery on the answer of original motive, and the stately pathos of the theme, in horns, clarinets and violas, with rhythmic strings, grows naturally out of the mood.
Wagner usually employs his wind in groups of at least three in each colour e.g. three flutes, two oboi and one English horn, two clarinets and a bass clarinet, etc. and so is able to keep his colours pure.
The instrumentation is here of a very peculiar effect and quite a novel coloring; the stringed instruments are muted, and clarinets occur for the first time, and very prominently, both alone and in combination with the horns and bassoons.
The list of instruments comprises 4 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contra-bassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, kettle-drums, cymbals, bass-drum, snare-drum, triangle, glockenspiel, gong, harp and strings. The plan of movements is very original and in a way, two-fold.
Somewhat suddenly the oboe holds a long note and then, with the bassoons, has a tune that is almost sentimental. But presently the clarinets make mocking retorts. The clarinet breaks in with the sentimental tune in faster time while the brass all the while are playing as before. There are all kinds of pranks, often at the same time.
As an illustration, the opening of the third act may be quoted, in which Elisabeth is represented by the wood-wind by the clarinets and bassoons in the hour of her deep affliction and abasement, and by the flutes and hautboys when her soul has finally cast off all the trammels of earth and Wolfram by the violoncello.
In the background, the cavalry division was lined up in columns; behind that was its artillery, in the same order of formation. At a given signal, the troops advanced five hundred metres, and, as soon as they halted, drums, clarinets and trumpets beat and sounded from all parts of the field, saluting the arrival of the military governor of Paris.
Most painful were the shrieking, strident cries produced by a pair of clarinets, and altogether there came from out of the knots of the serpents a hideous chaos of sound, drawn onward by a team of six horses, and received with wild cheers by the crowd, for it was really the new triumphal march freshly down from town, but in which the bandsmen were not perfect as regarded their parts.
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