Symphony no. 5 Arrangement Progress Thread

[caters]

Out of all the Beethoven symphonies, I figured the easiest to arrange would be Symphony no. 5 both because I know it better than the other symphonies and because of the rhythmic unification of all the movements. However, I knew that in order to make it easier on the players, I needed to have a chamber ensemble, not just a solo or a duet. Even a quartet probably wouldn't have cut it. So how would I get across the feel of the orchestra while keeping it as a Chamber Ensemble? I eventually decided on this:

• 1 Flute
• 1 Piano
• 2 Violins
• 1 Viola
• 1 Cello
• 1 Double Bass

The Piano both adds more power to the motivic melody through its octaves and gives me space to put in the bassoon and oboe and/or clarinet notes. It also gives me more of a chance for instrumental variety between 2 entrances of the same melody while at the same time unifying almost everything(there are a few moments when the piano just doesn't play). The other instruments mostly stick to their preassigned parts.

It took me 3 days to arrange the first movement. I know I don't have the beaming right nor do I have slurs in there. I will put those in later. What do you think of it so far? Too few accents? Anything unplayable? Here are the MP3 and PDF:

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Symphony no. 5 I - Allegro con Brio

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• Symphony no. 5 I - Allegro con Brio

[danishali903]

In the days of Beethoven, there was a trend by music publishers to make arrangements of symphonic works for smaller ensembles for publicity and money-making reasons. For better or worse, that trend continues today...There are like gazillion (ok maybe not a gazillion, but a couple hundred) “official” and “unofficial” arrangements of Beethoven symphonies (and other works...most notably the piano concerti that have been arranged for a “piano quintet” ensemble). This can be seen on IMSLP under the different arrangements/transcriptions posted there. I personally have played two different arrangements of the 5th Symphony for String Quartet. I think we talked about this in another post of yours, but all these arrangements sacrifice the integrity of the piece in question...with varied results.

 

As for this arrangement...I found it confusing. The music and structure is unchanged, so that’s good! It’s the instrumentation that is puzzling...mostly the addition of the piano. I think this might’ve worked (and have been more of an interesting arrangement) if it was arranged for piano and string quartet (or quintet). According to your reasoning, the piano was added to basically fill in the wind voices, which makes perfect sense! But 3/4s of the time, the piano is mostly doubling the violin melodic line and the bass line in the double bass. I think you’d be better off having an expanded wind section for your chamber ensemble (maybe a woodwind quartet and string quintet combined to make a nonet). You also note that only 1 flute is required, yet there are multiple areas where there two notes in the flute staff in one measure, indicating 2 players (like measure 44 and onwards). A single viola CANNOT play the double stops in measures 44-51...just impossible. 

 

There are some notation errors, most notably in measures 6-23 (I think the flute and piano left hand are the culprits here). Double check your harmonies in measures 79 and 80 too. There are some bad notation practices that you should avoid. Whenever a figure like in 158-159 (half note tied to half note with slash), write out the eight notes in 159, because that looks really confusing. I really think you should also write those bass notes an octave lower 5 bars before the end...that is just asking for trouble.

[Tónskáld]

Yes, and similarly, the bass is such a gargantuan instrument that it can't produce any bowed double stops greater than a perfect fifth (unless one of them is an open string), so that final octave will have to be adjusted.

[caters]

9 hours ago, danishali903 said:

In the days of Beethoven, there was a trend by music publishers to make arrangements of symphonic works for smaller ensembles for publicity and money-making reasons. For better or worse, that trend continues today...There are like gazillion (ok maybe not a gazillion, but a couple hundred) “official” and “unofficial” arrangements of Beethoven symphonies (and other works...most notably the piano concerti that have been arranged for a “piano quintet” ensemble). This can be seen on IMSLP under the different arrangements/transcriptions posted there. I personally have played two different arrangements of the 5th Symphony for String Quartet. I think we talked about this in another post of yours, but all these arrangements sacrifice the integrity of the piece in question...with varied results.

 

As for this arrangement...I found it confusing. The music and structure is unchanged, so that’s good! It’s the instrumentation that is puzzling...mostly the addition of the piano. I think this might’ve worked (and have been more of an interesting arrangement) if it was arranged for piano and string quartet (or quintet). According to your reasoning, the piano was added to basically fill in the wind voices, which makes perfect sense! But 3/4s of the time, the piano is mostly doubling the violin melodic line and the bass line in the double bass. I think you’d be better off having an expanded wind section for your chamber ensemble (maybe a woodwind quartet and string quintet combined to make a nonet). You also note that only 1 flute is required, yet there are multiple areas where there two notes in the flute staff in one measure, indicating 2 players (like measure 44 and onwards). A single viola CANNOT play the double stops in measures 44-51...just impossible. 

 

There are some notation errors, most notably in measures 6-23 (I think the flute and piano left hand are the culprits here). Double check your harmonies in measures 79 and 80 too. There are some bad notation practices that you should avoid. Whenever a figure like in 158-159 (half note tied to half note with slash), write out the eight notes in 159, because that looks really confusing. I really think you should also write those bass notes an octave lower 5 bars before the end...that is just asking for trouble.

 

I also added the piano to get the power of the original orchestra across in a chamber ensemble. That is partly the reason for the violin doublings(also, where the piano doubles the violin, there isn't much going on in the woodwinds). Also, the woodwind notes are more prevalent in the piano than you think. As for the two notes in the flute staff that indicates 2 players, I just have the flute in my ensemble take the lower of the 2 notes. I'm going to have to adjust the viola double stops in measures 44-51 to be something like C and G aren't I? As for the half note tied to a tremolo, that should be easy to understand that the first eighth note of the tremolo is part of the tie and the other 3 are articulated separately, especially given how well known Beethoven's Fifth is and the fact that every score of it I have seen uses these tremolos in place of actually writing out the eighth notes. Taking the bass notes down an octave from bar 497 to bar 502 would mean that the low C in the final double stop in the double bass would show up as red in my Musescore software for being "out of range". If I do that, I would need to make sure that the bassist has a double bass with a C extension if I get this performed. And I have no idea how likely it is for a bassist in a chamber ensemble to have a double bass with a C extension versus having a double bass without the extension.

1 hour ago, Tónskáld said:

Yes, and similarly, the bass is such a gargantuan instrument that it can't produce any bowed double stops greater than a perfect fifth (unless one of them is an open string), so that final octave will have to be adjusted.

 

I didn't know the biggest double stop possible on the double bass when fingered is a perfect fifth. I thought it could reach an octave. Evidently not.

[danishali903]

8 hours ago, caters said:

I also added the piano to get the power of the original orchestra across in a chamber ensemble.

I don't quite understand what you mean by that. When you're reducing a piece meant for 40-50 players to a piece for 7 people, you are going to lose that "power" regardless of the piano. My main gripe is not with the addition of the piano, its the way it's used in the ensemble. I'm not a pianist myself so I can't really give you any feedback about how to write for the instrument. I can recommend you to listen to Liszt's transcription of the Beethoven symphony and see how transcribes/arranges the piece for solo piano (you can find the score at IMSLP.com)

 

8 hours ago, caters said:

As for the half note tied to a tremolo, that should be easy to understand that the first eighth note of the tremolo is part of the tie and the other 3 are articulated separately, especially given how well known Beethoven's Fifth is and the fact that every score of it I have seen uses these tremolos in place of actually writing out the eighth notes.

Just to nitpick...those aren't "tremolos". They're just a short-hand way of writing 8th notes, which most composers do use. It's just in figures like those that you must "spell out" your notation clearly. You are assuming that the musician who plays your piece is already familiar with it (in this case most people probably are)...just a good habit to make it easier for musicians by spelling it out.

[caters]

@danishali903

I know how Liszt transcribes it for solo piano, I have played that exact transcription. Liszt uses almost constant octaves to get the piano as close as possible to the orchestra in sonority. You can see that I use a lot of octaves in the piano part of my chamber arrangement, again to get the ensemble as close as possible to the power of a symphony orchestra. And at those most powerful moments, where all the instruments state the Fate Motif in unison, I have the same notes being played in 5 or even 6 octaves.

[aMusicComposer]

The thing is that Liszt's transcriptions (which I too have played) are written for a solo piano. Not a piano as part of a chamber ensemble. Having the piano doubling so much and playing those octave will lose the sound of the other instruments. It's what happens if a pianist plays in any chamber ensemble for the first time. I think you should take some of the piano bits out all together to change the sonority a bit from time to time.