Brahms Symphonies Nos. 6 thru 14...and onward

[Chaszz]

Moderator, please don't move this thread to another forum, for instance the Brahms forum, since it may not be read in a lightly visited location, and I would like the widest possible audience for it. I am interested in finding software to orchestrate Brahms chamber music into symphonic mode, as Schoenberg did when he orchestrated the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 into a full orchestral version. The idea of new Brahms "symphonies" is very exciting to me. I have contacted the Brahms Society about the possibility of gathering subscribers to commission a composer to do this, and it is being discussed. In the meantime it occured to me there might be software to do this or something like it. I have looked on the web but most music software is not directed solely at orchestration and the orchestration abilities of the various products are not discussed in any detail at all. Also the minute I encounter the word 'midi' I am for some odd reason unable to continue reading that page. Any help will be appreciated. Also if anyone is interested in the first option, becoming a contributor at any level to commission a competent composer to do this, please let me know and I'll put your name on a list, for if and when. Moderator, if any part of this post is objectionable, please inform me by email so it doesn't just disappear from my view. Thanks.     

[springrite]

Much of Brahms, from the "Veiled Symphonies" that were his three piano sonatas onwards, would work as symphonies with proper orchestration. If you can commission a composer to do it, great! BUT, please do not use a software to orchestrate Brahms. I do not want great music to be abused that way.

[Chaszz]

Much of Brahms, from the "Veiled Symphonies" that were his three piano sonatas onwards, would work as symphonies with proper orchestration. If you can commission a composer to do it, great! BUT, please do not use a software to orchestrate Brahms. I do not want great music to be abused that way.

If it turned out inferior or anything unworthy of the work, I would destroy it, of course. Since the chamber works are  perfect as they stand, to have any inferior adaptation would be as unacceptable to me as to any Brahms lover.

[springrite]

If it turned out inferior or anything unworthy of the work, I would destroy it, of course. Since the chamber works are  perfect as they stand, to have any inferior adaptation would be as unacceptable to me as to any Brahms lover.

Do you think it is possible to have an orchestration software that produces anything other than "inferior adaptations" of Brahms? If not, the person who write the software has to be a far far better orchestrator than Brahms could ever dream to be.

[Florestan]

No offense meant but this would be an exercise in futility. Besides what Paul has already said about using a software, I wonder who would be interested to hear what Brahms never intended to write? Had he wanted to write more symphonies he'd have done it. However he did not, and frankly, trying to convert his chamber music into what Brahms never intended it to be is kind of blasphemous. This from a devout Brahmsian. 

[Opus106]

I wonder who would be interested to hear what Brahms never intended to write?

Chaszz, for one, and some of the members of the aforementioned Brahms Society, for a few more, who have at least considered the possibility.

Surely you don't mean an (re-)arrangement has no appeal to anyone? Or do you take issue with arranging Brahms' music specifically? Even so perhaps we, with hindsight, can see/hear things that Brahms didn't (or couldn't!). (Smite me! )

[Florestan]

Or do you take issue with arranging Brahms' music specifically? Even so perhaps we, with hindsight, can see/hear things that Brahms didn't (or couldn't!). (Smite me! )

Oh yeah, poor Brahms, he couldn't even understand his own music...

[Cato]

I will simply note that Schoenberg orchestrated only one Brahms chamber work because - in his opinion - the Piano Quartet #1 worked better as an orchestral composition.  One could debate the merits of his opinion...with some peril!   

The ten Scriabin Piano Sonatas could also be good candidates for such an exercise: Alexander Nemtin used some of the late piano pieces in his orchestral "realization" of the Prefatory Action (Mysterium).

But again, the composer originally thought of his work for a piano, not an orchestra.

[some guy]

Since the chamber works are perfect as they stand....

Well, now there's some irony for ya!

Big fan of irony, myself.

[CriticalI]

If you are looking for a program which can take a chamber score and automatically turn it into an orchestral score, I'm pretty sure there would be no such thing. The question of where (and how) to use brass and winds would have to be taken by a human being.

[Scarpia]

If you are looking for a program which can take a chamber score and automatically turn it into an orchestral score, I'm pretty sure there would be no such thing. The question of where (and how) to use brass and winds would have to be taken by a human being.

That is exactly right.  You can write a program that transcribes a piece to another key, and maybe a program that transcribes a string quartet to a wind quintet by assigning each melodic line to the instrument which is best suited to play it, based on the range of the various instruments, etc.   But transforming a piece from a chamber ensemble to an orchestra with a much larger range of instruments would involve many, many artistic judgements.  Orchestrating a piano part is even more problematic, since many pianistic effects are not suited to an orchestra.  To imagine that a computer program could make those judgements at all (let alone as well as Brahms would have) is utterly absurd.

[Chaszz]

That is exactly right.  You can write a program that transcribes a piece to another key, and maybe a program that transcribes a string quartet to a wind quintet by assigning each melodic line to the instrument which is best suited to play it, based on the range of the various instruments, etc.   But transforming a piece from a chamber ensemble to an orchestra with a much larger range of instruments would involve many, many artistic judgements.  Orchestrating a piano part is even more problematic, since many pianistic effects are not suited to an orchestra.  To imagine that a computer program could make those judgements at all (let alone as well as Brahms would have) is utterly absurd.

Well, I am duly chastised. In my mind the software option was not really a likely one, but I thought I'd ask. I also wrote to the support desk of one popular composing/arranging program, and he wrote back and said it could not be done as software now stands.

On the other issue of whether this should be done at all, by a competent human, I stand my ground. Brahms had a living to make, and perhaps made more money from chamber music than from symphonies, especially if one factors in the long hours spent orchestrating a symphony. Had this not been the case some of his fertile ideas may have been turned into one or two additional symphonies rather than chamber works.

But before you criticize me for second-guessing the composer (thank god the Shark is gone!)...  it doesn't matter. For sheer pleasure I'd like to hear something like this, and if other people share my enthusiasm, hopefully we'll have a go at it. Lately I am enjoying hearing the First Piano Quartet alternately in its original form and in Schoenberg's arrangement, over and over, and my pleasure in each is deepened by the experience, although it may not accord with someone else's concept of the canon. One may not like everything Stowkowski did in arranging Bach for large orchestra, or even any of it. One may not like the way Gould interpreted Wagner. But these things are out there in the wider repertory, for those who want to hear them. This would be a similar situation... Once again I invite anyone possibily interested in helping out to let me know.

[Scarpia]

Well, I am duly chastised. In my mind the software option was not really a likely one, but I thought I'd ask. I also wrote to the support desk of one popular composing/arranging program, and he wrote back and said it could not be done as software now stands.

On the other issue of whether this should be done at all, by a competent human, I stand my ground. Brahms had a living to make, and perhaps made more money from chamber music than from symphonies, especially if one factors in the long hours spent orchestrating a symphony. Had this not been the case some of his fertile ideas may have been turned into one or two more symphonies rather than chamber works. But before you criticize me for second-guessing the composer,  it doesn't matter. For sheer pleasure I'd like to hear something like this, and if other people share my enthusiasm, hopefully we'll have a go at it. One may not like everything Stowkowski did in arranging Bach for large orchestra, or even any of it. One may not like the way Gould interpreted Wagner. But these things are out there in the wider repertory, for those who want to hear them. This would be a similar situation... Once again I invite anyone possibily interested in helping out to let me know.

Clearly it could be done by a human, but I think producing a worthy orchestration of a chamber work by Brahms would probably require nearly as much creative effort as writing an original piece.  Schoenberg had the nerve to do it, but he was one of the most technically skilled composers of the 20th century and a pretty arrogant guy.

[ggluek]

If it were to be done right (regardless of whether one judges it necessary), it takes more than just mindless software, however skillful.  It needs a really good knowledge of Brahms and a good ear.  Schoenberg had both (excepting that xylophone in the last movement, which was mainly nose-thumbing).  Witness the hundreds of hours expended by at least five different people trying to orchestrate the unfinished parts of Mahler's Tenth -- little of which really sounds like Mahler.  You have to find someone steeped in Brahms, whose knows instrumentation.

[Madiel]

On the other issue of whether this should be done at all, by a competent human, I stand my ground. Brahms had a living to make, and perhaps made more money from chamber music than from symphonies, especially if one factors in the long hours spent orchestrating a symphony. Had this not been the case some of his fertile ideas may have been turned into one or two additional symphonies rather than chamber works.

I would have thought working out which musical ideas were appropriate for which forces was a key part of what composers did.  It doesn't matter whether you're writing chamber music because that's where the market is, you're still aiming to come up with motifs that work well for chamber music.  If you had more scope to write orchestral works, you wouldn't merely transplant the same ideas into orchestral works.

[Cato]

Witness the hundreds of hours expended by at least five different people trying to orchestrate the unfinished parts of Mahler's Tenth -- little of which really sounds like Mahler. 

Well...yes and no.  I would not say "little of which sounds like Mahler."  What we cannot know is whether Mahler was evolving in a different direction, and thus that would explain why the Tenth Symphony sounds - at times - different.  Certainly the later symphonies - e.g. the Seventh and Ninth - show changes from e.g. Das Klagende Lied and the First Symphony, which development is only to be expected.

To be sure, the incomplete nature of the sketch is the main factor.

Can you explain the comment about the "nose-thumbing" xylophone in Schoenberg's orchestration?   

[ggluek]

I guess what I meant by "nose-thumbing" was a flip way of saying it was Schoenberg insisting on being Schoenberg -- because there was no way Brahms would have introduced a xylophone there.  :-)  That wasn't part of his color pallette.

cheers --

[Cato]

I guess what I meant by "nose-thumbing" was a flip way of saying it was Schoenberg insisting on being Schoenberg -- because there was no way Brahms would have introduced a xylophone there.  :-)  That wasn't part of his color pallette.

cheers --

0:)  True: I am not sure anybody ever asked Arnie Baby why he did that!  Brahms probably would not get down low on the xylo!

[Karl Henning]

I guess what I meant by "nose-thumbing" was a flip way of saying it was Schoenberg insisting on being Schoenberg -- because there was no way Brahms would have introduced a xylophone there.  :-)  That wasn't part of his color pallette.

That is true; but on one artistic plane, irrelevant ; )

I mean, that for such a project I should not expect Schoenberg to feel compelled to confine himself to a Brahms orchestra (which, after all, is curiously trimmer in scoring than that of his elder, Berlioz, e.g.)  It is of a piece with a core principle of Schoenberg's artistic philosophy, on lines similar to Never do what a copyist can do for you.

[springrite]

That is true; but on one artistic plane, irrelevant ; )

I mean, that for such a project I should not expect Schoenberg to feel compelled to confine himself to a Brahms orchestra (which, after all, is curiously trimmer in scoring than that of his elder, Berlioz, e.g.)  It is of a piece with a core principle of Schoenberg's artistic philosophy, on lines similar to Never do what a copyist can do for you.

What I love about the Cello Concerto is that Arnie did BOTH--the baroque and his own thing. Magnificent!