March 22, 1922
MUSICAL COURIER
24
PRACTICAL INSTRUMENTATION
For School, Popular and Symphony Orchestras
By FRANK PATTERSON Author of The Perfect Modernist
[Twelfth Installment]
(This series of articles ivas begun in the issue of January 4)
Copyrighted, 1923, by The Musical Courier Company.
piano or some other instrument, but effective in their orchestral arrangement. In America such things have been, until recently, with the advent of the movie orchestra, relegated to amateur orchestras or small hotel or theater orchestras. This׳ fact is responsible for such arrangements as this simplification of the melody of the Henselt piece (Ex. 26b), which altogether destroys its original charm.
Ex 26b
Students will do well to bear this condition in mind and to accommodate their orchestrations to the capacities of those by whom they are likely to be played. In other words, if the work is not musically up to the standard of our symphony orchestras it is a waste of time to arrange it in such a manner that it can only be played by such organizations. If it is both light of character and difficult of content, like the Henselt piece, it will certainly not be worth while to arrange it at all, as the symphony orchestras will not play it, and other orchestras cannot.
Two additional examples from Sinding’s Rustling of Spring will serve further to illustrate the essential difference between the piano and the orchestra. (See Ex. 25c and d.)
Ex. 25c.
Orchestral Simplifications
Speaking of Sinding, the arrangement for small orchestra of his Rustling of Spring illustrates a simple and effective orchestral treatment of piano arpeggios when used agitato. The piano arrangement is shown in Ex. 25a, and the orchestration in Ex. 25b.
It is seen that the tremolo is substituted for the broken chords of the piano part. The broken chords would be difficult for the orchestra, and would give less of the intended agitato effect than the tremolo. A somewhat similar passage for the strings is to be found in Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite, but the emotional effect is quite different, and the arpeggio an integral part of the musical idea. Another alteration of the same note group is the basis of the melodic idea of Henselt’s popular piano study known as If I Were a Bird. (Ex. 26a.)
It has an especial interest for us because attempts made to arrange it for orchestra have not been successful. The reason is that the music is too difficult for any but symphony players as it stands, and yet so simple that any alteration of it robs it of its charm.
There are, of course, limits to what was said above as to arrangements for orchestra, especially for small orchestra. Works of extreme difficulty, or very unviolinistic, might be played by symphony orchestras, but sometimes have not the musical attraction to interest such organizations. Indeed, in America, such organizations rarely play anything that was not written originally for the orchestra. The movie houses are beginning to furnish that sort of pleasure, but, broadly speaking, one must go abroad (to Germany) to hear symphonic renditions of such things as the Liszt Rhapsodies, the Chopin Polonaises, and the hundreds of other similar pieces, originally intended for