Whither the Transcription?
An absolutely delightful compact disc that was issued recently made me wonder whatever happened to the transcription. The disc (Naxos 8.572050) is José Serebrier's second CD with the Bournemouth Symphony of Bach transcriptions, and half of it consists of transcriptions by Leopold Stokowski of music by other composers: Palestrina, Byrd, Boccherini, Haydn, Jeremiah Clarke, and Johann Mattheson.
Why have we become such purists? What went wrong in our musical world that it is practically forbidden (I'm not sure by whom, but believe me, it is nonetheless forbidden) to perform Bach transcriptions--not to mention a Pavane and Gigue by William Byrd--in a concert hall today.
Listening to this recording caused me to realize what the purists have inflicted on the rest of us. First of all, organ recitals are rare things. In fact, even good organs are rare things. The transcription offers us a way of hearing great organ music that we might not ever encounter in a live performance. But the transcription is more than that. It is an alternative version, decked out in different colors. (Some of Stokowski's transcriptions of music other than Bach's are not of organ or even keyboard music.) Just as a play or movie derived from a book is a perfectly valid other way of experiencing the book, so a transcription is a perfectly valid way, in and of itself, of experiencing music that is based on an original that sounds different.
Listening to different transcriptions--there are wonderful Bach transcriptions by John Barbirolli, Ottorino Respighi, Lucien Caillet, Edward Elgar, Walter Damrosch, Dmitri Mitropoulos, and many others--is not meant to be a substitute or replacement for the original. But it should be a valid, alternative artistic experience, and that was the case back in the first half of the twentieth century. A look at concert programs from the 1930s and 40s, and even into the 1950s, shows a reasonably regular appearance of a range of transcriptions.
Then, from the 1960s on, it drops precipitously, clearly a result of the purist movement that seemed to say we can only perform music in the way it was written--an aesthetic that would be shocking to Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, and others. I hope we lose this puritanical streak soon, and can once again bathe ourselves in the bold colors of a good transcription. Until then, our gratitude to José Serebrier for producing two wonderful CDs.
Listening to this recording caused me to realize what the purists have inflicted on the rest of us. First of all, organ recitals are rare things. In fact, even good organs are rare things. The transcription offers us a way of hearing great organ music that we might not ever encounter in a live performance. But the transcription is more than that. It is an alternative version, decked out in different colors. (Some of Stokowski's transcriptions of music other than Bach's are not of organ or even keyboard music.) Just as a play or movie derived from a book is a perfectly valid other way of experiencing the book, so a transcription is a perfectly valid way, in and of itself, of experiencing music that is based on an original that sounds different.
Listening to different transcriptions--there are wonderful Bach transcriptions by John Barbirolli, Ottorino Respighi, Lucien Caillet, Edward Elgar, Walter Damrosch, Dmitri Mitropoulos, and many others--is not meant to be a substitute or replacement for the original. But it should be a valid, alternative artistic experience, and that was the case back in the first half of the twentieth century. A look at concert programs from the 1930s and 40s, and even into the 1950s, shows a reasonably regular appearance of a range of transcriptions.
Then, from the 1960s on, it drops precipitously, clearly a result of the purist movement that seemed to say we can only perform music in the way it was written--an aesthetic that would be shocking to Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, and others. I hope we lose this puritanical streak soon, and can once again bathe ourselves in the bold colors of a good transcription. Until then, our gratitude to José Serebrier for producing two wonderful CDs.
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