Why does an orchestra have many people playing the same instruments? How does it add to the overall performance?
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Many here are explaining the balance for amount of sound produced. I’ll give another reason and analogy. It also helps with the richness of the sound. Imagine a paintbrush with hundreds or more bristles. Each of the bristles is one violin. The type of stroke is very different from one where you drag a piece of cloth dipped in paint across a canvas. Sure you can paint with both, but the texture of the paint will be vastly different from one brush to the next. Each instrument section is like a different brush. They have different colors, textures, timbres, sizes/volumes that different artists want to use differently. This is the difference between a string quartet and a string orchestra. The sound quality is vastly different when there are many of the “same” instrument doing almost exactly the same thing but with minor barely noticeable differences in timing, tone, intonation, volume, etc.
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