Arranging

The practice of arranging music has existed alongside musical composition since the earliest times. An arrangement is any piece of music rearranged for another instrumentation or medium, such as an orchestral piece arranged for a string quartet or set to words for choral use. Music making is an inherently sociable activity; in this context, arrangements not only make it possible for music to be played by other than the original instrumentation, but also simplified arrangements may permit performances by inexperienced amateurs. In the educational sphere, arrangements for school orchestras or wind bands are common and encourage participation by young musicians. Performing together can confer valuable social and collaborative skills and has been found to benefit even preschool children.

During the past century, arrangements have often been made for any instrument or ensemble whose repertoire of “original” music is limited or the ensemble is comparatively new, such as a saxophone quartet or a flute choir. Any aspect of the original piece can be changed, whether tempo, key, harmonization, or accompaniment style.

The change of timbre may on occasions be drastic, such as an arrangement of a sacred vocal solo for handbell ensemble or xylophone duet, or a Johann Sebastian Bach keyboard Invention for piccolo and tuba. Such settings can sound quite incongruous if the listener's ear is challenged by the sound of instruments with quite different emotional connotations to the original. For example, the xylophone is often considered to have a sweet, “happy” sound, and the high frequencies also fail to reflect the lower tones that in vocal music or speech would reflect a sad or emotionally charged mood. Conversely, an instrument such as [Page 83]the cor anglais (English horn) tends to be typified as somber, plaintive, or mournful. Research has found that a change in instrumentation can adversely affect musicians' recognition of musical pieces, although nonmusicians' recognition tends to be weak regardless of changes to the original instrumentation.

The distinctions between arrangements and transcriptions are blurred, where the notes are translated or transposed but not generally rearranged with relation to one another. If Frederic Chopin's piano Prelude Op. 28 No.4 was performed with cello taking the melody and a piano the chords, but no other alterations, this would strictly be a transcription rather than an arrangement. However, if chords were changed, redistributed at different pitches, and the tune shared between the instruments in a string quintet, one might argue that it was now an arrangement.

There is also overlap between arrangements and other types of composition drawing upon “borrowed” material. While all musical arranging is a form of borrowing, the converse is not always true, and not all borrowing constitutes arranging. For example, a fantasia, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, is essentially a new work, as is Antonio Pasculli's Concerto Sopra Motivi dell'Opera La Favorita di Donizetti. More borderline are the folk tune–inspired tunes by Percy Grainger, such as “Country Gardens” or “Molly on the Shore,” idiosyncratically described as “dished up” rather than arranged. Although Grainger claimed never to have used a folk song in what he called an “original work,” many of his works would not exist without their central tunes, whether or not they were authentic folk tunes.

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