The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34, is a 1945 musical composition by Benjamin Britten with a subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. It was based on the second movement, "Rondeau", of the Abdelazer suite. It was originally commissioned for the British educational documentary film called Instruments of the Orchestra released on 29 November 1946, directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent; Sargent also conducted the concert première on 15 October 1946 with the Liverpool Philharmonic in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, England. The work is one of the best-known pieces by the composer, and is often associated with two other works in music history: Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. This piece is also commonly played as the intro for british band Yes' live tours, starting in the 2000s. Instrumentation The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is scored for symphony orchestra: Woodwinds: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B flat and A and two bassoons Brass: four horns in F, two trumpets in C, three trombones (two tenors and one bass) and bass tuba Percussion: timpani, bass drum, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, snare drum, temple blocks, xylophone, castanets, tamtam, and whip Strings: harp, first and second violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Structure The work is based on the Rondeau from Henry Purcell's incidental music to Aphra Behn's Abdelazer, and is structured, in accordance with the plan of the original documentary film, as a way of showing off the tone colours and capacities of the various sections of the orchestra. In the introduction, the theme is initially played by the entire orchestra, then by each major family of instruments of the orchestra: first the woodwinds, then the strings, then the brass, and finally by the percussion. Each variation then features a particular instrument in-depth, generally moving through each family from the higher-pitched instruments to the lower-pitched (the order of the families is slightly different from the introduction). For example, the first variation features the piccolo and flutes; each member of the woodwind family then gets a variation, ending with the bassoon. The woodwinds are followed by the strings, brass, and finally the percussion. After the whole orchestra has been taken apart in this way, it is reassembled using an original fugue which starts with the piccolo, followed by all the