Introduction
This program is an example of transcription the orchestral part of a Chinese violin concerto to an organ. The adaptation of the piece of music is used to show the adaptation method and my transcription, so that the purpose of using the method to quickly adapt other music can be achieved.
Although this music is played by the orchestral music instrument, the author uses the material of traditional Chinese melody, so that in the violin solo part, many articulation are based on Chinese folk instrument.
And in this study I will also compare other musician's works to see how they can be shown on the organ.
However, it is worth mentioning that although there is some Chinese national musical instruments expression of the main melody in this music, However, in the original work, the use of musical instruments is still composed of traditional symphony orchestra. So that I will also summarize the methods of other composers to find out what can be learned.
The ultimate goal is not only big orchestral music, but also the ensemble music and chamber music, which can find some knowledge from this research. For example, I will demonstrate how to transfer the solo instrument, an instrument group, or the corresponding instrument group. like, the String group plus the Wood instrument group, the string group plus the brass group, the Wood instrument group plus the brass group.
As far as I know, China's classical music market particularly polarizes. China has never lacked for masters whoh are also gaining some international awards, but the people who lacking appreciate the high quality of classical music. According to my understanding of my friends, many graduates who have graduated from abroad with master degree or graduated from Phd returned to China, they often facing the problem with finding a job. This is because the nationals do not get accustomed to pay for concerts on a regular basis. Although it is a great choice for most musicians to enter the orchestra, the members of the orchestra are slow to change, the talents are highly saturated, and the chances of entering the orchestra are also very low.
Recently, because of the rapid involvement of film and television media, pop music is easy to come in people's field of vision, they will be willing to spend hundreds of dollars to watch the idol's concert, this can be proved that people are capable, accepting and understanding of music. What is often missing is that it displays classical music in the public's field of vision.
What I should be done is to bring the classical instruments closer to them through the familiar music of the audience and the familiar playing styles, thus enabling people to accept the classical music culture. I hope to do my best to contribute to the Chinese classical music chain.
I am a musical person, any music or musical instrument has a masterpiece that I appreciate. The most annoying problem is that people ask me which music or music styles I like the most, but the interesting things are that I can always hear the emotions in different music or instrument sounds. And at the same time, I will also be imaging different colors from the music.
For example, Blue is the piano sound, smoothing notes sounds like a small river in a landscape painting, and the constant flow symbolizes vitality. Interestingly, the reason why I wanted to learn piano in my childhood is that I was attracted by the pointer of the blue cat on the teacher's metronome (My mother told me). The flute is like green, which gives me a strong sense of a picture on my mind. In ancient China, the literati stood on the lawn and looked at the direction of his hometown by playing the flute to express his homesick feelings, melodious of flute, which conveying his thoughts to the family of the distant hometown. Once, I heard a cello concert, that is the only once I was crying for the playing, The music was amazing, touching and shocking. The minor key with the wonderful sound of the cello, like a lover whispering in my ear, the sky is like flying many pink bubbles (Also, Cello is my favorite instrument for collaboration of chamber music).
The orchestral music is a piece of work that combines different colors. And I also think the same in the organ. By playing different organ repertories, I feel like I can see a complete painting or hear a complete story. The point of the musicians is tantamount to convey to the audience encouragement, joy and positive energy of the music. I hope that I can also bring it to my audience. Since they give me the same feeling, then I started thinking, can I combine organ and orchestra together? Playing a symphony on the organ. The characterized of the organ is a wide range of sounds and with colorful stops. Mozart called the organ is the king of the instrument because it is rich in sound and is called a symphony which only has one person.
So I began to look around to find that did anyone do the similar things before? And I do find that many composers have made transcriptions, not only from symphonies, but also opera, chamber music, string quartets and so on. At the earliest in the Baroque period, J.S Bach was beginning to transcript many pieces. Until now, more and more organists would like to adapt music to organ.
As an organist, after the performance of orchestra music, I will begin to consider that which part of voice is suitable for the pedal, and which stops are good for expressing this outstanding melody, and How will I play the tremolo bow of the violin on the organ? This also led me to look around to study other people's transcriptions and listen to numerous symphony concerts. Thanks to having those examples and analyzing, which are showing what they are doing, and made my adaptations are particularly smooth and may be encountered me that how to resolve the problems.
What is a good transcription
There are two kinds of adaptation that I was agreeing with. The first one is only changing the expression of music, and nothing else changed. And to reproduce the music completely. The second one is to retain the distinctive and essential section, and rewrite some part of music. I don't think that a good adaptation has to be exactly the same as the original one, but it must be respected by the original music. The highlights on the song can be integrated into the creation on the basis of the original music.
The adaptation of Edwin Arthur Kreft in Handel's Largo (Ombra mai fu) is an aria in the opera "Serse (Xerxes)" by Handel)
preserves the structure of the original music, the main melody is retained, and adding a new variation in the original ending of the music. I think this adaptation is extremely reasonable. Due to the music, the three variations of the former part are dominated by soprano, alto and tenor voices respectively. Reflecting the style of the song by adapting the accompaniment part. And the last variation added by Edwin is dominated by the main part of the bass part. It considers to be particularly successful.
Bach's transcription of Vivaldi concerto also carried out some additional creation. The Baroque period is full of vibrato and impromptu elements, so I think it's reasonable to add notes or parts, and it fits the style of the era.
Original ( Left ) Transcription ( Right )
But through my research, most organists are only doing the transcription by change nothing, the reason is that they are fully committed to retaining the original features, without any changes, so that the audience can intuitively retain the familiar feeling and gain a sense of identity.
Nowadays, there is an electronic synthetic instrument in China that is particularly popular. The electronic organ is an electronic musical instrument set up on the basis of the organ. It simulates the sound of various instruments through electronic components. It is characterized by extremely similar sounds of the instruments in the orchestra. Sometimes even the human ear cannot be distinguish.
Video: Polonaise From Opera"Eugene Onegin" Peter tchaikovsky
Transcription by Zhu Lei
It can perfectly replicate the real instrument performance so that it replaces the orchestra on certain occasions. As far as I know, the Shanghai Opera Troupe has a full-time electronic organ player. By adapting the music to be performed, under certain circumstances, it has replaced some of the orchestra players. In school, when there are concerto repertoires in student solo concerts, due to a series of questions such as the funding problem and rehearsal time, students usually choose the electronic organ to act as the orchestra, thus giving the audience a better listening experience.
Adaptors usually take a long time to set the instrument and Midi. Since the electronic organ is the sound of microelectronic components, it is difficult for the player to break the tone and rhythm set by the songwriter. Thus lack of space to play their own, lose some musical personality.
The organ does not have its own fixed structure like other instruments, it is built according to the size of the building's reverberation. The stop, pitch, and tune of each organ may be different. So there won't be two identical organs in the world.
For religious reasons, organs are more common in European and American cities. But in China, there is only building the organ in the concert hall, which has a serious limitation on the spread of organ music.
the advantage of transcription music is that When organists playing a perform of transcription music, the first thing they must consider is how to adapt the music to the organ. It may not be required to follow exactly the requirements of the adaptor. This is different from the electronic organ.
Many organ builders today also incorporate modern technology to build organs. In 2018, October, I watched a concert in the Orgelpark in Amsterdam. The performer played a modern piece, and the use of pedals which can control the note to slide freely between the second. This function can be used very well on this Chinese violin concerto.
