Transcriptions of Orchestral Music
Many large-scale symphonic works of the 20th century were originally composed for piano and later orchestrated. Often, the composer will give their orchestrator a piano part that has all the melody, harmony, and rhythm in it, and it is the orchestrator’s job to expand that into a full score.
The piano is an incredibly versatile instrument, and a lot of music written for the keyboard could be very effective played on an orchestra. That’s why so many classical and contemporary composers have taken to transcription of their own work or arranged others’ works for piano.
These transcriptions can range from merely adding extra instrumentation to already-existing instruments to completely overhauling the soundworld of a piece. These are the kind of things that make transcriptions challenging, but they can also be rewarding when they succeed!
Piano Transcriptions of Orchestral Music
The first challenge in transcribing orchestral music is to match the sounds and textures of the original work with the 88 keys on the piano. This is not easy, but it is necessary to do. It requires a great deal of pianistic ingenuity. The most accomplished piano transcribers are also skilled at avoiding compromises that would be ineffective on the broader musical landscape.
This is why the best piano transcriptions can be so difficult to play. The original work is a highly complex and nuanced composition, full of intricate and demanding writing techniques that the faithful transcriber is not allowed to employ. This means that the transcriber must use every bit of his or her virtuosity to transform a fundamentally non-pianistic soundworld into a world that will be idiomatic for the piano, but still retain the core musical features of the original work.
One way that transcribers achieve this is to rework the musical structure of a piece to make it more accessible for the destination instrumentation, without losing the integrity or emotional resonance of the original. It’s an art that is not for the faint of heart, and it can be a real challenge for many transcribers.
Another challenge of transcribing orchestral music is that there are certain parts of the original piece that can’t be played on the piano. These may include passages where chords are played on the treble and bass lines at the same time, or where there is a metrical dissonance that is impossible to resolve by a pianist. These are the sort of things that can be very frustrating to transcribers, and they can also be a real challenge for orchestrators who are tasked with playing these sections.
There are also a variety of percussion instruments in the orchestral version, some of which have no counterpart on the piano (e.g., timpani). It can be a challenge to find ways to transcribe these instruments, but it is important to remember that they are there for a reason.
It’s not an easy task to take the music of a famous composer and transpose it for the piano, but it is a vital part of ensuring that a piece can be enjoyed by anyone who wants to hear it. It also allows the listener to experience the nuances of the composer’s original music that would otherwise be lost in a full orchestral performance.
