How to tell original music?

[Chris Berardi]

Hello,

This is a general music question -- how can I tell if a piece of work is the original music by a composer or if an arrangement, how can I tell what is by the composer and what is by the arranger? For example, if I received sheet music for a Vivaldi concerto, how can I tell what was written by Vivaldi and what was added by the arranger?

[SincereCorgi]

Hello,

This is a general music question -- how can I tell if a piece of work is the original music by a composer or if an arrangement, how can I tell what is by the composer and what is by the arranger? For example, if I received sheet music for a Vivaldi concerto, how can I tell what was written by Vivaldi and what was added by the arranger?

This is a difficult question to answer. You can usually trust relatively modern pieces (say, published after 1900) to be faithful to the composer's original, especially if it's from a prestigious publisher like Boosey or Universal Edition or something. Those editions will also cost you an arm and a leg.

Older music is much trickier because the 19th century saw a rash of editors adding dynamics, expression marks and fingerings to pieces by dead composers. A lot of these edited version are still being republished today by imprints like Schirmer and Dover- they're usually very prettily egraved. This kind of editing is now considered in bad taste and so companies like Henle come out with 'urtext' editions in which very, very serious Germans study autograph copies and early editions of pieces to arrive at 'pure' versions, usually with many pages of notes to explain their decisions. The urtexts will cost you an arm and a leg.

So how can you tell how pure an edition is? Well, if you have an urtext edition, you're obviously on pretty solid ground. If there's a note like 'phrasing and cadenza by (name of guy who was sort of famous on the instrument in 1950)', you pretty much know what happened. Otherwise, you can compare to or three versions of the same piece and work backwards to see how they differ. In some cases, like the Mozart clarinet concerto, the 'real' version is sort of a social construct, since barely anybody performs it on the basset clarinet for which it was originally written.

[mrmando]

If mandolins are playing it, and the composer's first name isn't Victor, it's probably an arrangement.

[billkilpatrick]

despite variations, all "anon" tunes are original.

[vkioulaphides]

If mandolins are playing it, and the composer's first name isn't Victor, it's probably an arrangement.

Thank you!

For the record, however, I do make arrangements myself, too. In fact, I do not look down on that particular, specialized art of musical arrangement (as some others habitually do) as "inferior" to original composition, and believe instead that arrangement IS composition, in many, meaningful respects. It is not for nothing that I have taken time from my (already severely limited) composing time over the past decade to work on and publish the annual volumes of my minuscule GrecoMando Editions. And it isn't for the vast wealth that I have amassed in the process, either.

Cheers,

Victor

[Chris Berardi]

Thanks for the replies.

One of the reasons I ask is that I am trying to get into professional musical typesetting -- and something like this is bound to present itself (am I arranging an arrangement, am I publishing something that someone has copyrights to -- a particular arrangement, etc.).

[vkioulaphides]

THE person to contact is Cafe regular Neil Gladd, who actually works for the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. He would certainly know where to direct you for all the appropriate answers. All I can say (from a composer's point of view) is that, if you are ONLY typesetting something as is, you are clearly NOT "arranging" it. But if you put any part of yourself into it, e.g. orchestrating it, modifying it in some way or other, etc. then you are in fact arranging it. Just my $0.02...

Best of luck with your new (and much needed) profession.

Cheers,

Victor

[Chris Berardi]

All I can say (from a composer's point of view) is that, if you are ONLY typesetting something as is, you are clearly NOT "arranging" it. But if you put any part of yourself into it, e.g. orchestrating it, modifying it in some way or other, etc. then you are in fact arranging it. Just my $0.02...

Best of luck with your new (and much needed) profession.

Yeah, I share the same thought -- it's a difference between being a copyist and an arranger (though sometimes it all gets put into the same caste).

As I was mentioning Vivaldi - there is by him a Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A minor (Op. 3, No. 6). There is a copy in Norton's Anthology. If I were to produce that as sheet music to be sold (perhaps a good starting place), how would I know if there is anything in there that is copyrighted by Norton or whoever they may have acquired that from.

Anyway, thanks for your well wishes - the hardest part (as in all professions) is how to get your foot in the door.