Ease of Arranging: Extreme Variation

I have noticed over time, as I arrange more pieces by more composers, the ease of said arrangements varies wildly from composer to composer and even within the same composer. But, at the same time, I see enough consistency to put composers into specific Arrangement Difficulty categories from the Easy to the Super Hard. I sometimes get the crave to arrange a piece by a composer. Sometimes it’s because it’s one of my favorites from said composer like Mozart and Horn Concerto no. 2. Sometimes it’s out of curiosity or just to see if I can do it like the 1 time I tried arranging a Bach piece and let’s just say that it didn’t turn out well. And sometimes it’s because I want to learn a piece, but can’t find an arrangement of the full piece (this is particularly true for piano arrangements). Composers from vastly different eras end up in the same difficulty and likewise, composers from the same era end up in completely different difficulties. Here are the composers I have arranged and some that I might arrange, sorted by Arrangement Difficulty.

Easy

These are the ones that I can arrange fast, sometimes within hours, and are easy to arrange for just about any ensemble balanced in registers with minimal tweaking. 2 of these are from the Classical Era and others from eras before and after. These include:

Known

Haydn

Easiest of any composer thus far to arrange

Mozart 

Almost, but not quite as easy as Haydn. Sometimes I actually have to add notes to Mozart and Haydn rather than the subtraction I have to do with Beethoven when arranging.

Debussy

Despite the more adventurous harmonies, I find it easier to arrange than say Chopin.

Tchaikovsky

Despite the large orchestra in some of his works, I can always reduce it to piano very easily as there’s a lot of doubling.

Estimated 

None

Medium

These are the ones for which I need to do more tweaking, but I still find relatively easy to arrange, takes just a little bit more time to do the arrangement. And this is where the ensemble really starts to make a difference in the time.

Known

Chopin

Not as easy to arrange as Mozart, especially those cadenzas, but still not that hard.

Vivaldi

Relatively easy to arrange for duet, haven’t bothered with other ensembles yet.

Estimated 

• Handel
• Mendelssohn
• Schubert
• Pachelbel
• Brahms <- Despite a style similar to Beethoven, I think it would be easier for me to arrange Brahms than it is for me to arrange Beethoven.

Hard

These are the ones for which I need to make significant changes to make it work, while still trying to keep the harmonic and melodic integrity of the piece in question. Example, a cluster chord shows up in the left hand under the right hand playing a more normal chord and I have to fit a 9 note chord into a quartet, can’t do it, I have to distill the chord to its harmonic backbone. Or another example, a long sustained 4 note chord shows up and the left hand is still playing the bass line underneath it, I have to turn the chord into an arpeggio(by the way, these examples are from the same arrangement I did a couple years back, that F minor sonata by Beethoven I arranged for a string quartet, which among other Beethoven arrangements brings Beethoven into the Hard zone).

Known 

Beethoven

My favorite composer of all time, and the hardest so far that I have arranged, very few easy arrangements.

Estimated 

• Liszt
• Rachmaninoff
• Mahler
• Paganini
• Shostakovich
• Mussorgsky
• Bach

Super Hard

These are the ones that are so complex(like more complex than Beethoven or Liszt) and/or dissonant(Secundal chords, polychords, etc.) that I couldn’t even imagine doing an arrangement of one of their pieces. They are all Modern Era/Impressionist 

Known 

None

Estimated 

• Holst
• Stravinsky
• Ravel
• Satie
• Prokofiev
• Schoenberg

Sorry if I made any mistakes spelling the names of some of these composers, I tried to minimize them.

Interesting...

...although I'm not entirely sure of the point of this post it's interesting to see your perspective on different composers.

I would always say, for any composer, creating a good arrangement/transcription is extremely tough - as you have to be able to emulate effectively their "style" so that it seems that they could have written the arrangement.

I would most certainly not Debussy or Tchaik "easy." Each to their own, I guess.

But yes, interesting post. What do other forum members think of relative eases of arranging music? Could be an interesting discussion.

aMC

1 hour ago, aMusicComposer said:

would always say, for any composer, creating a good arrangement/transcription is extremely tough - as you have to be able to emulate effectively their "style" so that it seems that they could have written the arrangement.

Style is the least of my problems as an arranger. Orchestration(like taking a piano sonata and arranging it for orchestra) and Harmony are much harder to get right, especially for composers in the Hard and Super Hard zones, like Beethoven, where the bass and melody are of equal importance and equally spread amongst the registers of the piano. I mean take the Appassionata Sonata, one of my favorite Beethoven Sonatas for instance. The times when the right hand is playing the melody and the left hand the bass are about equal to the times when the right hand takes the role of bass and the left hand is playing the melody. This combined with the large chords across both hands and the octave tremolo and really everything about Beethoven's style is what makes arranging Beethoven so much more of a challenge for me than Tchaikovsky or Chopin, even though Tchaikovsky and Chopin have more intricate melodies, more polyrhythms, and more adventurous harmonies than Beethoven.

And sometimes the harmony is left ambiguous like with Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the octave C's in the first theme. Those octave C's could be either D7 or C major, given the key of G major, which means that it is down to me as an arranger to decide which harmony it is. When arranging it for orchestra, keeping the strings in their roles in the original quartet, I decided on C major because it sounded better vs the other option of D7 with an emphasized chordal seventh just sounding gross.