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The art of distributing musical material among the instruments of an ensemble — choosing who plays what, when, and how.
Scoring is the practical craft of orchestration. Consider: which instrument's timbre best suits the musical idea? What register? What dynamic? How does the balance work? Distribute parts so that each section has something meaningful to play. Avoid overscoring — sometimes less is more.
Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" — a masterclass in scoring, transforming piano music into orchestral color.
Scoring is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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