Expert: David Froom - 5/4/2011

Question
QUESTION: How effective is transcription in music/Advantages and Disadvantages of arranging music? (with particular reference to the Jacques Loussier and the Feruccio Busoni transcriptions of Bach's works)

ANSWER: At its best, transcription of music, especially as it becomes recomposition, can make a new and wonderful work.  Stravinsky's Pulcinella, and Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana are two fabulous examples.  Also in this category are arrangements of transcribed folk songs by Bartok and Copland, or Copland's use of a Shaker tune in his "Appalacian Spring."

Ranked below this, I think, there are faithful transcriptions that never-the-less represent the personality of the arranger/composer.  Busoni's transcriptions of Bach fall into this category, as do Stokowsi's (and other composers') orchestral arrangements of Bach.  These sound like late 19th, early 20th century works, but make use of Bach's music.  Sometimes these can be pretty wonderful (I have a terrific recording of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas arranged for Saxophone Quartet).

Also below the best, I think, are creative uses of material that take it to a completely different style of music.  So not only Loussier, but also pop tunes based on classical melodies (and there are dozens of these).

At its worst (and people who hate Loussier would put him here), an arrangement can sound like spraying graffiti on a beautiful object, especially if the arrangement strikes the listener as crass.  This opinion could more politely stated as the arrangement reminding listeners of something they'd rather be listening to.

Those are my thoughts.  However, it is perfectly OK to like what you like.  If the music has been recorded and released on CD, somebody else must believe in it.  There are no rules about what gives pleasure.

David Froom

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: perhaps im thinking of more what are the advantages/disadvantages of arranging when compared to original composition

Answer
Arrangements or transcriptions or recompositions or anything based on pre-existing material happen either because a composer was hired specifically to do it, or he/she was inspired to do it.  It is, perhaps, less work than inventing new material, but that's not a given, depending on what the composer decides to do with the material.  

The only advantage I can imagine is when the original material evokes a connection that the composer can't otherwise create.  In Bartok's and Copland's case, arrangement of folk melodies was a clear and obvious attempt to define a national sound.  Others have used the material within the context of their own sound for what it might evoke (say Puccini's use of a Chinese tune in Turnadot or the US national anthem in Madama Butterfly).  

I think Busoni must have done his Bach arrangements both so he could play the pieces on the piano and because he could imagine Bach's music in this different, Busonian context.  Brahms also did a couple of Bach piano transcriptions, so maybe Busoni was evoking those as well.  A more recent and more radical retransformation of Bach is Robin Holloway's "Gilded Goldbergs,"  which began as his desire to have a two-piano version of the Goldberg Variations (because the solo version was technically inaccessible to him), but, as he worked on it, it turned into a personal statement about this music.

I have no idea why Loussier did what he did, though it is probably just because he had the idea and thought it would sound great.  Then, when he was satisfied with the result, he decided to share it with the public.  His original inspiration may have come from the Swingle Singers Bach transcriptions, or maybe even the synthesizer "Switched-on Bach," both of these from the late 1960s.

There also are people who are strictly arrangers, that is, they don't compose otherwise.  

I hope this gives you what you are looking for.  

David Froom