Scaled-down transcriptions

[ahinton]

Hi Clougie, yes I quite agree re the Mussorgsky/Howarth Pictures. That is a really good example of how to reinterpret a work to another medium. Taste ofcourse is essential, and this example gives off plenty.

It's the best arrangement of that work that I've ever heard (and, much as I love the original for its music, its piano writing seems to leave rather a lot to be desired)...

[Braunschlag]

It's the best arrangement of that work that I've ever heard (and, much as I love the original for its music, its piano writing seems to leave rather a lot to be desired)...

I’m reassured now about my own view on the piano writing in Pictures.
Having hacked through over a few years I could never really get to grips with the piano writing, it doesn’t really feel right, clumsy in many places.
I’d second the brass arrangement, it’s a fine thing.

[Richard Barrett]

Of course, many of these reductions date from a time before it was possible to hear orchestral music anywhere in the form of recordings, so to me there doesn't seem to be much point - why listen to the piano version(s) of Le sacre with all that fantastic orchestration taken away, when you don't actually need to? Liszt's Beethoven symphonies are very impressive in many ways of course, but again why would one want to hear them in preference to the original versions? As for making a piano trio out of La Mer that seems to me a pretty ill-conceived idea in this day and age. What's the point?

[cloughie]

Of course, many of these reductions date from a time before it was possible to hear orchestral music anywhere in the form of recordings, so to me there doesn't seem to be much point - why listen to the piano version(s) of Le sacre with all that fantastic orchestration taken away, when you don't actually need to? Liszt's Beethoven symphonies are very impressive in many ways of course, but again why would one want to hear them in preference to the original versions? As for making a piano trio out of La Mer that seems to me a pretty ill-conceived idea in this day and age. What's the point?

Because it is interestingly different!

[Richard Barrett]

Because it is interestingly different!

Well, if you say so. But again, Debussy's orchestral sound is (a) surely one of the wonders of the art of orchestration and (b) completely integrated with the musical material, so that arranging it for 3 instruments instead of 80-something is going to involve losing a lot of music. It's basically an exercise in deciding what can be left out while keeping the result more or less recognisably based on the original. It might be a more interestingly different idea to extract a version for three instruments which wouldn't be recognisable as the original piece, by only using accompanimental/subsidiary material...

[cloughie]

Well, if you say so. But again, Debussy's orchestral sound is (a) surely one of the wonders of the art of orchestration and (b) completely integrated with the musical material, so that arranging it for 3 instruments instead of 80-something is going to involve losing a lot of music. It's basically an exercise in deciding what can be left out while keeping the result more or less recognisably based on the original. It might be a more interestingly different idea to extract a version for three instruments which wouldn't be recognisable as the original piece, by only using accompanimental/subsidiary material...

Or as Ravel once suggested to Debussy, that he reorchestrate it. But yes La Mer in it’s traditional form is pretty much perfect!

[Richard Barrett]

Or as Ravel once suggested to Debussy, that he reorchestrate it. But yes La Mer in it’s traditional form is pretty much perfect!

That would certainly have been interesting! But there's too little Ravel as it is, and there might have been even less if he'd put aside the time to do that - if he was serious about it, which I don't expect he really was. On the other hand there's a great deal of music which could have been vastly improved by being orchestrated by Ravel, he could have kept himself very busy.

[BBMmk2]

Because it is interestingly different!

Quite so and also there maybe different things in the music that you haven't heard before!

[Pabmusic]

RVW was always helpful in providing cues, enabling conductors to leave out instruments. Michael Kennedy has said that an RVW cycle of the scaled-down symphonies would be desirable. Of course, no record company would dare.

[Richard Barrett]

Quite so and also there maybe different things in the music that you haven't heard before!

How can that be the case when the arrangement consists basically of taking things away? The material that's kept is surely by definition that which is "important", that is to say the material that would have been heard anyway, the material that makes the music recognisable. Is there anything, for example, that can be heard in the two-piano version of Le sacre that can't be heard in the orchestral version?

[Serial_Apologist]

Or as Ravel once suggested to Debussy, that he reorchestrate it.

I understand that brought about an end to their friendship!

[BBMmk2]

How can that be the case when the arrangement consists basically of taking things away? The material that's kept is surely by definition that which is "important", that is to say the material that would have been heard anyway, the material that makes the music recognisable. Is there anything, for example, that can be heard in the two-piano version of Le sacre that can't be heard in the orchestral version?

When I write transcriptions, at the moment for concert bands, you can usually leave everything intact. Brass bands, though, is always a different kettle of fish but I think that a skilled transcriber can usually make a very good one, without too much loss of detail.

[Serial_Apologist]

How can that be the case when the arrangement consists basically of taking things away? The material that's kept is surely by definition that which is "important", that is to say the material that would have been heard anyway, the material that makes the music recognisable. Is there anything, for example, that can be heard in the two-piano version of Le sacre that can't be heard in the orchestral version?

One's attention would be concentrated on aspects of the music other than its orchestration. I think this was partly the idea behind Schoenberg's reductions of Das Knaben Wunderhorn and Das Lied von der Erde for analytical performance by his private circle of close associates. Actually they, like the Bach, Reger and Strauss ones, are quite effective orchestrations in themselves! - giving the oft-asserted lie to the notion that Schoenberg would have destroyed Mahler's Tenth, had he been the one to complete the orchestration. But I disagree that music, once fully conceived, can really be analysed in any meaningful depth, unless one wants to go back to an earlier stage in the compositional process which may, and only may, be revealed in piano sketches or short score; but that would of course depend on whether or not a composer used piano to compose.

[Richard Barrett]

When I write transcriptions, at the moment for concert bands, you can usually leave everything intact.

The thread title, however, is specifically "scaled-down transcriptions', among which a piano trio version of La Mer was being discussed, not at all the same thing as transcribing from one kind of orchestra to another!

[Richard Barrett]

One's attention would be concentrated on aspects of the music other than its orchestration. I think this was partly the idea behind Schoenberg's reductions of Das Knaben Wunderhorn and Das Lied von der Erde for analytical performance by his private circle of close associates. Actually they, like the Bach, Reger and Strauss ones, are quite effective orchestrations in themselves! - giving the oft-asserted lie to the notion that Schoenberg would have destroyed Mahler's Tenth, had he been the one to complete the orchestration. But I disagree that music, once fully conceived, can really be analysed in any meaningful depth, unless one wants to go back to an earlier stage in the compositional process which may, and only may, be revealed in piano sketches or short score; but that would of course depend on whether or not a composer used piano to compose.

"Aspects of the music other than its orchestration"... can they really be separated in the case of something like Stravinsky's piece? The choice for Schoenberg and his associates was either to hear those pieces in their chamber-music versions or hardly ever to hear them at all, which means that their principal function has surely now been superseded by recordings.

Your comment about analysis is an interesting one to contemplate. I have the impression, not really having ever had much to do with such things, that music analysis has evolved into a self-sufficient "industry" with its own community, who probably don't feel any sense of necessity about making their work available or accessible to a wider audience. Certainly whenever I encounter any analytical stuff I feel that something essential is being missed (with the exception of a really inspiring lecture by Helmut Lachenmann about Beethoven and Webern that I once witnessed; but then HL is not an analyst of course).