Violin Mastery - ARTHUR HARTMANN - Part 5
ARRANGING VERSUS TRANSCRIBING
Arthur Hartmann, like Kreisler, Elman, Maud Powell and others of his colleagues, has enriched the literature of the violin with some notably fine transcriptions. And it is a subject on which he has well-defined opinions and regarding which he makes certain distinctions: “An ‘arrangement,’” he said, “as a rule, is a purely commercial affair, into which neither art nor æsthetics enter. It usually consists in writing off the melody of a song—in other words, playing the ‘tune’ on an instrument instead of hearing it sung with words—or in the case of a piano composition, in writing off the upper voice, leaving the rest intact, regardless of sonority, tone-color or even effectiveness, and, furthermore, without consideration of the idiomatic principles of the instrument to which the adaptation was meant to fit.
“A ‘transcription,’ on the other hand, can be raised to the dignity of an art-work. Indeed, at times it may even surpass the original, in the quality of thought brought into the work, the delicate and sympathetic treatment and by the many subtleties which an artist can introduce to make it thoroughly a re-creation of his chosen instrument.
“It is the transcriber’s privilege—providing he be sufficiently the artist to approach the personality of another artist with reverence—to donate his own gifts of ingenuity, and to exercise his judgment in either adding, omitting, harmonically or otherwise embellishing the work (while preserving the original idea and characteristics), so as to thoroughly re-create it, so completely destroying the very sensing of the original timbre that one involuntarily exclaims, ‘Truly, this never was anything but a violin piece!’ It is this, the blending and fusion of two personalities in the achievement of an art-ideal, that is the result of a true adaptation.
“Among the transcriptions I have most enjoyed making were those of Debussy’s Il pleure dans mon cœur, and La Fille aux cheveaux de lin. Debussy was my cherished friend, and they represent a labor of love. Though Debussy was not, generally speaking, an advocate of transcriptions, he liked these, and I remember when I first played La Fille aux cheveaux de lin for him, and came to a bit of counterpoint I had introduced in the violin melody, whistling the harmonics, he nodded approvingly with a ‘pas bête ça!‘ (Not stupid, that!)
Violin Mastery
Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
by Frederick H. Martens
Published 1919
