Glockenspiel Orchestral Use

The Glockenspiel is a fantastic instrument to highlight soft chords or double a melody. It works especially well to play the highest note of a pointillistic chord or line on the Glockenspiel. However, when doubling very active melodies on it, you should rather prefer to put just the important notes of the melody into the Glockenspiel as otherwise you will get a lot of annoying high frequency “pling” sustaining into each other.

Additionally avoid to have the Glockenspiel play a melody on its own in the orchestra. Even though it stands out quite well, due to the fact that it has a lot of high harmonics but less carrying power on the actual tone, it will obscure the melody it is playing when it is not doubled somewhere else and will make the actual pitches of the melody not really that clear.