Arrangement and transcription

A practice that was much employed in the 20th century, although by no means confined to it, was the writing of arrangements and transcriptions. Though little distinction was made between the two, there were differences. A transcription is essentially the adaptation of a composition for an instrument or instruments other than those for which it was originally written. An arrangement is a similar procedure, although the arranger often feels free to take musical liberties with elements of the original score. This is especially true of arrangements for jazz or rock groups and arrangements of popular compositions or songs from musical comedies.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, chamber and orchestral music was transcribed, or “arranged,” for the piano for the purpose of study and, of course, for the pleasure of playing at home the music that had been heard at a concert. This practice has continued into the 21st century. Piano versions of many 18th- and 19th-century orchestral works exist in two- and four-hand arrangements. Another common practice is to reduce the orchestral parts of concertos to a keyboard version to enable students to study and play these works without an orchestra.

The symphonic band, despite its popularity in Great Britain and North America, was faced with a dearth of repertoire written specifically for it. In the past, one answer was to transcribe orchestral works for band, substituting particularly the clarinets, with their wide pitch range, for the strings of the symphony orchestra. The necessity for that substitution is no longer so great because in recent times composers have written much more music specifically for the symphonic band.

The dance band predominant in the 1930s and 1940s is treated roughly in the following way by arrangers: the saxophones carry the melody more frequently than the other sections; the trumpets provide embellishment or figures that work around the melody; the trombones either are combined with the trumpets or serve as a melodic instrument; the piano and guitar provide harmonic filler; and the double bass and drums set the rhythm.

The jazz or rock arranger has done much more than simply transcribe the keyboard version of a song. All forms of popular music in the 20th and 21st centuries have been involved in the art of improvising. Musicians working in this field almost always embellish the music as they perform it. The jazz or rock arranger in a sense improvises on manuscript paper. In making an arrangement for a group of musicians the arranger will embellish both the harmonic structure and the melody of the composition; or the arrangement will be worked out in rehearsal and memorized or written down later. Usually, the arranger keeps enough of the original material to enable the listener to recognize the source. His skill depends on how well he can manipulate the materials of the original and on his originality in scoring the composition for the group at his disposal. The men and women who work in this field are frequently composers of popular music themselves.