The Particularities of Transcriptions for Accordion of Musical Compositions with Rich Textures (on the Example of “Vocalise” by Sergei Rachmaninoff)
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Abstract
The creation of transcriptions and arrangements is closely connected with interpretation of musical compositions. A similar feature of arrangements is particularly apparent in the case of arranging musical compositions which in the original formats possess rich complex textures. Their adaptation to new instrumental conditions often involves a rather significant rethinking of the original music and a free reinterpretation of the composer’s musical notation.
The focus of the article is on two transcriptions for accordion of Sergei Rachmaninoff made by Vyacheslav Semenov (accordionist, professor at the Russian Gnesins’ Academy of Music) and Dmitri Stepanov (winner of international competitions, faculty member of the Petrozavodsk State A. K. Glazunov Conservatory). The comparison shows two different approaches to adaptation of the texture of the “Vocalise” for the accordion, stipulated by the individual challenges that each of the composers of the arrangement placed before him.
Stepanov’s version demonstrates the urge to preserve all the details of the complex textures and tessitura voices, to show the beauty of the polyphonic fabric, to reveal the value of each voice, by treating them equally. Semenov boldly sacrifices the details of the texture, focusing on the main voice; he functionally separates the different keyboards of the bayan and applies various techniques in the different sections of the composition for the purpose of demonstrating more clearly the form of the composition. The carried-out analysis convinces that at the core of every arrangement or transcription stands a musician who possesses his own concept of performance of the music. As the result of different approaches towards the process of arrangement, the same composition, without changing its content in principle, acquires various tints in the sphere of the performance of the music.
Keywords: Sergei Rachmaninoff, “Vocalise,” arrangement for bayan, interpretation, texture.
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