Talk:Orchestration
From Academic Kids
Are we sure about this Mussorgsky stuff? It's true that Rimsky reorchestrated and retouched quite a few of Mussorgsky's pieces (notably Night on Bare Mountain and Boris Godounov), but these were pieces which had already been completed (including orchestration) by Mussorgsky. If Rimsky (or anyone else for that matter) did complete unfinished works by Mussorgsky, what were they?
I've removed mention of posthumous orchestrations of Mahler, by the way. The only piece that's been touched after his death is his Symphony No. 10, but that was more a process of reconstruction and completion than simple orchestration. I've put in Bartók and Berg instead, which make better examples, I think. --Camembert
- Okay, sounds fine for replacing Mahler. Might want to keep it short and just have the links to the composer pages though (assuming mention of the posthumous orchestration is available on the composer page...).
- For Mussorgky stuff, I didn't know that he had already orchestrated Pictures. I know the Ravel orchestration is based on Rimsky's edition of the piano score. Some of the song cycles have been orchestrated by RK, Glazunov, and more recent contributors, but I'm not sure whether Mussorgsky ever intended them to be more than piano and voice arrangements. I'm sure I have read program/liner notes of Mussorgsky operas mentioning Rimsky's (or others') completion and orchestration of some sections. In fact, isn't the orchestration for Dance of the Persian Slaves, the most famous fragment of Kovanshchina, commonly attributed to RK? I'll check into the facts more later, but if someone else is working from something better than memory of program/liner notes, then go for it.
- Chinasaur 21:42, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)
- I admit I don't know Khovanshchina very well, and I don't have anything very conclusive to hand on it, so you might be right on that point. On the others, though: it's true, of course, that Mussorgsky never orchestrated Pictures, but then I don't think he ever intended to do so did he? As far as he was concerned it was a piano work. I'm reasonably certain this is also the case with his songs - he never intended to orchestrate them.
- Anyway, I'll check into all this more later as well (I have Calvocoressi's shorter biog here, but it's not yielding up too much on a quick check). We'll get it cracked between us, I'm sure :) --Camembert
- I guess one thing we should recognize in the article is that not all posthumous orchestration is truly waranted in many people's views. These are complicated issues and most of this should be dealt with in the composer article, where it's easier to go into the intricacies of whether an orchestration was really ever in the original composer's plans or whether a particular case is more an orchestration or a larger reworking, etc.. I do feel that people looking up this orchestration article might be looking for this phenomenon specifically, so I think we should say something, but I think an introduction to the idea and some handwavey examples is good enough for here. Chinasaur 19:08, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)
