By the early nineteenth century, the orchestra was fairly standardized: strings, divided into first and second violins (typically about 16 each in a full-size group), violas (12), cellos (12) and double basses (8); woodwind, consisting of two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; and brass, usually two or four horns, two trumpets, occasionally three trombones, with percussion, generally just timpani. It expanded and extended its range of colour during the century. The strings were unaltered, though increased in number. The flutes could be augmented with a piccolo, the oboes with an English horn, the clarinets with a bass clarinet or a smaller high-pitched clarinet (or both) and the bassoons with a double bassoon; each of these four sections might have as many as four players, some playing two or more instruments of the same type as the music might demand (the fingering on a flute, a piccolo or an alto flute, for example, was virtually the same, enabling the player to switch over easily). The horns generally numbered four, possibly even eight in a large-scale work; there would be two or three trumpets, three trombones (two tenor, one bass) and a tuba. The percussion offered a wide range of possibilities beyond the standard timpani; sometimes there were two harps. An orchestra of this size needed conducting, with a baton, from a raised podium.

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