Arrangement
(Ger.
Bearbeitung).
The
reworking of a musical composition, usually for a different medium from that of
the original.
1. Definition and
scope.
2. History to 1600.
3. 1600–1800.
4. 19th and 20th
centuries.
5. Conclusion.
MALCOLM BOYD
Arrangement
1. Definition and scope.
The
word ‘arrangement’ might be applied to any piece of music based on or
incorporating pre-existing material: variation form, the contrafactum, the
parody mass, the pasticcio, and liturgical works based on a cantus firmus all
involve some measure of arrangement. In the sense in which it is commonly used
among musicians, however, the word may be taken to mean either the transference
of a composition from one medium to another or the elaboration (or
simplification) of a piece, with or without a change of medium. In either case
some degree of recomposition is usually involved, and the result may vary from
a straightforward, almost literal, transcription to a paraphrase which is more
the work of the arranger than of the original composer. It should be added,
though, that the distinction implicit here between an arrangement and a Transcription is by no means universally
accepted (cf the article ‘Arrangement’ in Grove 5 and the title-pages of
Liszt’s piano ‘transcriptions’).
Arrangements
exist in large numbers from all periods of musical history, and though external
factors have influenced their character the reasons for their existence cut
across stylistic and historical boundaries. Commercial interest has played an
important part, especially since the invention of music printing. Opportunist
publishers from Petrucci onwards have looked for financial reward either from
arrangements of established works or from the simultaneous publication of music
in different forms. English madrigals were advertised as being ‘apt for voices
as for viols’; Dowland’s songs were published in a form which allowed for
performance either as a solo with lute accompaniment or as a partsong; in the
18th century the English market was flooded with arrangements of vocal and
other music for the popular and ubiquitous flute; and ever since their
composition popular ‘classics’ such as Rachmaninoff’s C
minor Prelude and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight
of the Bumble Bee have been arranged for almost every conceivable
instrument and instrumental combination. Practical considerations of a
different kind govern the preparation of vocal scores of operas and choral
works, in which the orchestral part is reduced and printed, usually on two
staves, in a form more or less playable at the keyboard. Such arrangements
require little more than technical competence on the part of the arranger,
though creative artists of the first rank have occasionally undertaken the
task, often in a spirit of homage to the composer. Bülow prepared the vocal
scores of some of Wagner’s music dramas, and Berg did a similar service for
Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. Several composers have arranged the music of
others as a means of perfecting themselves in a particular form, technique or
medium. Bach and Mozart, for example, both made arrangements of other
composers’ concertos before writing any of their own.
A
large number of arrangements originate because performers want to extend the
repertory of instruments which, for one reason or another, have not been
favoured with a large or rewarding corpus of original solo compositions. Until
such players as Segovia and Tertis improved the status of their instruments,
guitarists and viola players had to rely to a considerable extent on
arrangements, and this is still the case with brass bands and (in so far as
they exist) salon orchestras. Arrangements of this kind necessarily involve a
transference from one instrumental medium to another, but there are also numerous
examples of arrangements which alter the layout but not the instrumentation of
the original. Virtuoso piano pieces have often been published in arrangements
which place them within the scope of the amateur; others, such as Chopin’s Etudes
in Godowsky’s arrangements, have been made even more difficult as a challenge
to professional keyboard technique. Orchestral works have sometimes been
reorchestrated, either to take advantage of improvements in the design of
instruments (the brass parts of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, for example, are
not always heard as the composer wrote them) or because the original is
considered to be in some respect deficient. Mahler’s reorchestration of
Schumann’s symphonies and Rimsky-Korsakov’s of Musorgsky’s operas come into this
category. There is also a relatively small group of arrangements made to
accommodate a player’s physical disability, for example those for the
one-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein, and those for the three-handed piano duo,
Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick.
In
considering all these and other categories of arrangements, any attempt to
equate the motives of the arranger with the artistic merits of the result would
be misleading. It is, however, possible to distinguish between the purely
practical arrangement, in which there is little or no artistic involvement on
the arranger’s part, and the more creative arrangement, in which the original
composition is, as it were, filtered through the musical imagination of the
arranger. Arrangements by creative musicians are clearly the more important
kind, both on account of their intrinsic merits and because they often serve to
illuminate the musical personality of the composer-arranger; it is therefore
towards this second type of arrangement that attention will be mainly directed
in the historical conspectus that follows.
Arrangement
2. History to 1600.
Some
element of arrangement is present in the medieval trope and clausula, as well
as in those early motets where a vocal part is replaced by an instrumental one
(or vice versa), but the most important type of arrangement in the period up to
1600 is the keyboard or lute intabulation of vocal polyphony. The earliest
examples of such keyboard arrangements (indeed the earliest extant keyboard
pieces of any kind) are in the early 14th-century Robertsbridge Manuscript (GB-Lbl
Add.28550), whose contents include intabulations of two motets from the musical
appendix to the contemporary Roman de Fauvel (F-Pn fr.146). Far
from being simple transcriptions of the vocal originals, these intabulations
feature a florid elaboration of the upper part which is unmistakably
instrumental in conception, and this is something which remains characteristic
of all later keyboard intabulations. Ex.1a shows the beginning of the
motet Adesta–Firmissime–Alleluya Benedictus, and ex.1b the
keyboard version of the same passage. Also from the 14th century are some of
the keyboard arrangements in the important Faenza Manuscript 117 (I-FZc),
which includes intabulations of vocal music by Jacopo da Bologna, Machaut,
Landini and others. The principles governing these arrangements are similar to
those of the Robertsbridge Manuscript, but the finger technique required of the
performer is more advanced.
Intabulations
are also to be found in the Buxheimer Orgelbuch (D-Mbs Cim.352b),
which dates from about 1470, as well as examples of a rather different type of
arrangement (if it can be called that) which occurs in several other German
organ books of the 15th century, including Conrad Paumann’s Fundamentum
organisandi (D-Bsb 40613) (1452). Where the original vocal source is
a monody, this is often made to serve as cantus firmus in the left hand,
supporting what is presumably a free and often very florid part in the right.
The technique had been applied in the Faenza Manuscript to plainsong Kyries and
Glorias, but is here used for secular melodies also. Ex.2 shows the opening of the song Ellend du hast: (a)
from the Lochamer Liederbuch (c1450, D-Bsb 40613); (b)
from Paumann’s Fundamentum, with the melody in the left hand; and (c)
from one of the six versions in the Buxheimer Orgelbuch (no.50). Clearly such
pieces as these, and similar ones based on basse danse melodies, should be
regarded as variations rather than as arrangements.
With
the introduction of music printing and the wider dissemination of instruments
in the 16th century, intabulations proliferated not only in Germany but in
Italy, Spain and France as well (see BrownI for a list of all printed
arrangements with their sources). To those for keyboard must be added a vast
literature of similar pieces for lute and vihuela, beginning with Francesco
Spinacino’s first book of Intabulatura de lauto, published by Petrucci
in 1507. Lute intabulations have a particular interest for the scholar since
the tablature does not directly indicate pitch but tells the player which fret
to use for each note; consequently lute arrangements can assist in determining
the application of musica ficta to 16th-century vocal polyphony. Among
the most famous examples is the arrangement for vihuela by Luys de Narváez of
Josquin’s motet Mille regretz as Canción del emperador. Here
melodic elaboration is not confined to the top part (see ex.3). The lute’s function as an accompanying instrument is
exemplified in numerous arrangements of polyphonic music in which all voice
parts but the top one are transcribed for the instrument, resulting in a solo
song with lute accompaniment. Such arrangements were important in preparing for
the new monodic style that emerged towards the end of the 16th century.
Arrangement
3. 1600–1800.
The
practice of transferring vocal music to instruments continued during the next
two centuries and beyond. Among the many keyboard arrangements of vocal pieces
in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (GB-Cfm) is one by Peter Philips of
Caccini’s well-known song Amarilli mia bella. Philips repeated the first
part of the song as printed in Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (Florence,
1601–2) and gave a different version each time, so that the result is both an
arrangement and a variation of the original (see ex.4). Arrangements of this kind are to be found throughout the
Baroque period; the six ‘Schübler’ organ chorales by Bach (bwv645–50),
at least five of which are transcriptions of movements from the cantatas, are
much later examples in the same tradition.
However,
the surge of interest in instrumental music of all kinds that characterizes the
Baroque period brought with it a new type of arrangement in which vocal music
was for the first time not involved. Transcriptions from one instrumental
medium to another were particularly cultivated in the period (late 17th century
and early 18th) which saw the rise and dissemination of the concerto. Francesco
Geminiani, as well as arranging his own music for the harpsichord, adapted
Corelli’s opp.3 and 5 violin sonatas as concerti grossi, and some of Domenico
Scarlatti’s harpsichord sonatas were turned into highly successful string
concertos by Charles Avison. At Weimar J.G. Walther and J.S. Bach adapted
concertos by Albinoni, Torelli, Telemann, Vivaldi and others for the organ and
for the harpsichord, almost certainly at the behest of their patron Prince
Johann Ernst. In many cases Bach made an almost literal transcription of the
original, but often he subtly altered the harmony or filled out the texture
with new counterpoints. In ex.5b, from the slow movement of bwv975 (arranged from Vivaldi’s op.4 no.6), he elaborated
Vivaldi’s straightforward violin melody (ex.5a) and enriched the harmony
with a totally chromatic bass line, while replacing the original bass
suspensions with others in the middle of the harmony. Bach’s later arrangements
include one of Vivaldi’s Concerto for four violins and strings op.3 no.10 as a
concerto for four harpsichords (bwv1065), and most of his
other keyboard concertos with accompaniment are similarly arrangements of
earlier works by himself or others.
Another
aspect of Bach as arranger is his practice of re-using material from earlier,
and sometimes quite different, works; the Mass in B minor furnishes several
familiar examples. This practice, usually referred to as ‘parody’ (see Parody
(i)), was
fairly widespread in a period when themes were largely fashioned on prototypes
and when originality was measured as much in terms of craftsmanship as of
melodic invention. Schütz incorporated music by Andrea Gabrieli, Alessandro
Grandi and Monteverdi into his own compositions, and Francesco Durante
transformed recitatives from Alessandro Scarlatti’s secular cantatas into
chamber duets; Handel’s habit of re-using old music of his own, as well as
appropriating music by other composers that suited his needs, is well known.
The practice was justified by the extent to which the ‘borrowed’ material was
refashioned. In the case of Handel this amounted often to a complete recomposition
which entirely transformed the original.
Haydn’s
three different versions of Die sieben letzten Worte unserers Erlösers am
Kreuze (as an orchestral piece, 1786; for string quartet, 1787; and as an
oratorio, c1796) provide a locus classicus in the history of
arrangement. But the key figure of the late 18th century is Mozart. Mozart is
important less for the number than for the nature of his arrangements. His
piano concertos k37, 39–41 and 107, based on movements
from sonatas by Raupach, Honauer, J.C. Bach and others, are not without
interest, but of more far-reaching importance is the rescoring for string trio
and quartet of fugues by J.S. Bach (including some from Das wohltemperirte
Klavier) and the reorchestration of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Messiah,
Alexander’s Feast and Ode for St Cecilia’s Day. These
arrangements, all done for Baron van Swieten, an enthusiast for Baroque music,
are significant in representing the attitudes of their time to earlier music;
together with the works heard at the Handel commemoration of 1784, they stand
at the head of a long line of Bach transcriptions and Handel reorchestrations
which continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, only to be
discredited afterwards.
Arrangement
4. 19th and 20th centuries.
The
nature of arrangements during the 19th century was largely determined by two
important developments. One was a new interest (already evident to some extent
in the late 18th century) in instrumental colour for its own sake; the other
was the rise of the piano as both concert and domestic instrument par
excellence. The first of these developments brought with it the concept of
the composer’s creation as an inviolable entity, so that, while the
19th-century arranger would happily reorchestrate the music of the past, the
19th-century composer would go to considerable trouble to ensure that his own
music was played only on those instruments for which it was conceived. It is
difficult to find a Romantic counterpart to the Corelli–Geminiani or
Vivaldi–Bach concerto. One result of this was that most creative arrangements
of contemporary instrumental music were made by the original composer himself.
Examples include Beethoven’s arrangements of the Violin Concerto as a piano
concerto and of the Second Symphony as a piano trio, and the various versions
of Brahms’s Piano Quintet.
The
exception to most of these remarks is the piano arrangement, probably the most
interesting and the most widely cultivated type of arrangement in the 19th
century. Innumerable transcriptions brought the orchestral and chamber
repertory into the homes of domestic pianists (or piano-duettists), but more
interesting are those with which the travelling virtuoso dazzled and delighted
his audiences. Pre-eminent are those of Liszt, whose operatic arrangements
range from straightforward transcriptions (the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan
und Isolde, for instance, presents fewer problems to the pianist than does
Bülow’s version in the vocal score) to elaborate paraphrases of enormous
technical difficulty, such as those based on Mozart’s Don Giovanni,
Verdi’s Rigoletto and several of Wagner’s music dramas. Liszt’s
voluminous arrangements also include many Schubert songs, all the Beethoven
symphonies and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique; further, he was the
first important Romantic pianist-composer to reflect the spirit of the Bach
revival in arrangements of the organ music (six fugues), a tradition continued
later in the century by Tausig, Busoni and others.
Arrangements
of piano music for orchestra have usually been either by the composer himself,
or by others working after his death. An example of the former is Brahms’s
orchestration of his Variations for two pianos on a theme of Haydn (1873);
almost as well known (if less often played) is Joachim’s orchestral version of
Schubert’s Sonata in C for piano duet d812 (‘Grand Duo’).
Similar orchestral arrangements exist in great numbers in the 20th century. In
most cases some attempt is made to match the orchestration to the style of the
music (provided this is later than Bach and Handel), but that is less often the
case when the arranger was himself a real composer. In Ravel’s orchestral
version (1922) of Pictures at an Exhibition, for example, the
black-and-white originals of Musorgsky are filled out with colours which are
very much Ravel’s own. It is interesting to observe how later
composer-arrangers have crossed the stylistic divide between their own work and
that of the past. Schoenberg’s arrangement of Brahms’s G minor Piano Quartet
op.25 (1937), even more than his earlier ones of pieces by Monn, Bach and
Handel, seems to constitute a conscious act of identification with (perhaps
even nostalgia for) the past. Schoenberg uses a slightly expanded Brahmsian
orchestra in a more or less Brahmsian way. Webern’s orchestral version of the
six-part ricercare from Bach’s Musical Offering (1935), on the other
hand, sets out with the opposite intention of adapting the past to the language
of the present (ex.6). It is instructive to compare it
with the version by Igor Markevich (published 1952), who aimed (but failed) ‘to
delve into and absorb as faithfully as possible Bach’s own sonorities’. The
parodic element in Webern’s fragmented instrumentation is pursued to the point
of distortion in the several arrangements and ‘realizations’ of Peter Maxwell
Davies.
A
number of external factors have affected 20th-century practice in the making of
arrangements. The implementation of copyright agreements has made it illegal to
adapt and arrange musical works which are the property of a copyright holder
without prior permission. Radio and the gramophone have largely replaced the
piano transcription as a disseminator of the chamber, orchestral and operatic
repertory, and the Lisztian paraphrase now exists only in isolated examples
such as Ronald Stevenson’s Fantasy on themes from Britten’s Peter Grimes.
The harmonic crisis of the 1920s led many composers to delve into the past for
the seeds of a new musical language, which they did by collecting and arranging
earlier music. J.C. Bach, Haydn and Beethoven had responded to a vogue for
folksong arrangements in Britain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
but the folksong arrangements of Bartók and Vaughan Williams were directed
towards quite different ends. They were a means by which both composers
achieved a musical style which was at the same time nationalistic and intensely
individual. Similarly, Stravinsky’s move in an opposite direction (away from a
recognizably Russian style and towards neo-classicism) was effected with Pulcinella
(1920), a ballet based on music by Pergolesi and others. Stravinsky’s lasting
obsession with the past was evident in his arrangements of composers as diverse
as Gesualdo, Bach, Beethoven, Grieg and Tchaikovsky.
The
late 18th-century practice of reorchestrating choral masterpieces of the
Baroque period, especially those of Handel and Bach, was referred to above (see
§3), and the provision of such ‘additional accompaniments’, as they are
sometimes called, became still more widespread in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Arrangers were motivated no doubt by the practical requirements of
large, well-established choral and orchestral societies – there were advantages
in adapting the orchestration to the orchestra rather than the orchestra to the
orchestration – and perhaps, in the case of mammoth performances, by a desire
to magnify the original composer’s reputation; but there was also often a
genuine conviction that they were making positive improvements on the
‘primitive’ originals. Mozart’s versions of Handel’s oratorios gained currency
(and were further ‘improved’) despite objections from some quarters. Among the
objectors was Mendelssohn, who in his young days had provided additional
accompaniments for Handel’s ‘Dettingen’ Te Deum and Acis and Galatea
and revised Bach’s orchestration for a famous revival of the St Matthew
Passion, but who later declined to do the same for Handel’s Israel in
Egypt.
I.F.
von Mosel, C.F.G. Schwencke, Robert Franz, George Macfarren and Arthur Sullivan
were among other 19th-century musicians engaged to provide new orchestrations
for choral works by Bach, Handel and others, and their editions continued in
use during the early part of the 20th century. However, the concern for historical
accuracy in the performance of older music, which has gradually gained ground
since about 1950, has profoundly influenced attitudes towards arrangements in
general. Both the additional accompaniments of the 19th century and inflated
orchestral versions of Baroque instrumental pieces, such as those by Elgar,
Beecham, Harty and Stokowski, have been discredited. The ‘edition’ has replaced
the ‘arrangement’, in critical esteem at least. Usually the distinction between
one and the other is quite clear, but this is dependent to some extent on
interpretation of the historical evidence. Raymond Leppard’s versions of
17th-century Venetian opera, for example, purport to be editions, though many
musicologists would class them as arrangements.
Arrangement
5. Conclusion.
Few
areas of musical activity involve the aesthetic (and even the ethical) judgment
of the musician as much as does the practice of arrangement. This involvement
is at its most intense in the case of those arrangements which set out to
popularize an acknowledged masterpiece, either by adapting it for the stage or
film (or, worse still, for the television advertisement), or by ‘jazzing up’
its rhythms and instrumentation. In either case the arrangement will often earn
the musician’s disapproval, and even his or her resentment. However, it is
clearly inconsistent to deplore solely on aesthetic grounds the arrangements of
Borodin’s music in the musical Kismet, or the Bach arrangements made for
the Swingle Singers, while using lack of ‘historical authenticity’ as the only
stick to beat other, more seriously intentioned arrangements. Every arrangement
creates its own historical authenticity, and Mozart’s version of Handel’s Messiah
has been accorded the distinction of two scholarly editions and at least one
complete, carefully prepared recording. Perhaps one day there will be
‘historically accurate’ performances of Ebenezer Prout’s version (1902), with
ornamentation restricted to frequent use of the portamento.
It would
be unrealistic to propose that arrangements should be judged without reference
to the original, but it is perhaps only by regarding the arrangement and the
original as two different versions of the same piece that a solution to the
aesthetic dilemma they so often create will be found.
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