Piano Music - Bach Transcriptions

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📖 "Arrangement, adaptation of pieces for other instruments than those for which they were written by the composer. For example, the pianoforte score of an orchestral work is an Arrangement; in the same way pianoforte duets are 'arranged' as solos; also pianoforte works scored for orchestra are called arrangements. The opposite of Arrangement is an 'original composition.'"
Hugo Riemann Dictionary of Music (1896)

📖 "As long as there are creative musicians who can improvise and imagine backgrounds and settings, the art of transcription will remain timeless."
Earl Wild

📖 "I think that all transcriptions should be considered as the transcriber's additions or interpretation, rather than the faithful reproduction of the opriginal into another medium. … It can all be reduced to the problem of whether the end justifies the means, whether the psychological disruption of an entity is counter-balanced with a new vital expression."
Egon Petri

📖 "The virtuosi who lived before the penultimate generation [of Liszt] really played nothing but their own compositions and other works with their own alterations; they played what they had put in order for themselves, what came 'pat' to them and only what they themselves could do as regards feeling as well as technique. And the public went to Paganini in order to hear Paganini (and not something by Beethoven). Today virtuosi must be quick-change artists: the spiritual tension which the salto-mortale from a Beethoven Hammerklavier Sonata to a Liszt Rhapsody demands is quite another achievement than that of pure pianoforte playing in itself. Thus in the virtuso sense transcriptions are suiting another's ideas to the personality of the transcriber. With weak personalities such transcriptions become weak pictures of stronger originals, and mediocrity, which is always in the majority, brought forth, during the virtuosi period, a great number of mediocre and even tasteless and distorted transcriptions. Music like this gave transcription a bad name and forced it into an altogether subordinate position. It is only necessary to mention J. S. Bach in order, with one decisive blow, to raise the rank of the transcription to artistic honour in the reader's estimation. He was one of the most prolific arrangers of his own and other pieces, especially as organist. From him I learnt to recognise the truth that Good and Great Universal Music remains the same through whatever medium it is sounded. but also the second truth, that different mediums each have a different language (their own) in which this music again sounds somewhat differently."
Ferruccio Busoni The Essence of Music

📖 "The frequent opposition aroused by my transcriptions and the opposition which senseless criticism often evoked in me made me try to reach some clarity on this point. My final opinion about it is this: that notation is itself the transcription of an abstract idea. The moment that the pen takes possession of it the thought loses its original form. The intention of writing down an idea necessitates already a choice of time and key. The composer is obliged to decide on the form and the key and they determine more and more clearly the course to be taken and the limitations. Even if much of the idea is origianl and indestructible and continues to exist this will be pressed down from the moment of decision, into the type belonging to a class. The idea becomes a sonata or a concerto; this is already an attangement of the original. From this first transcription to the second is a comparatively short and unimportant step. Yet, in general, people make a fuss only about the second. In doing so they overlook the fact that a transcription does not destroy the original; so there can be no question of loss arising from it. The performance of a work is also a transcription, and this too - however free the performance may be - can never do away with the original. For the musical work of art exists whole and intact before it has sounded and after the sound is finished. It is, at the same time, in and outside of Time. Most of Beethoven's pianoforte compositions, moreover, sound like transcriptions from the orchestra and most of Schumann's orchestral works sound like arrangements from the pianoforte - and they are so in certain ways."
Ferruccio Busoni The Essence of Music

Piano Transcriptions of Bach's Music

📖 "It is impossible to know exactly when the first transcriptions were made; in a sense a prehistoric tune played on a primitive pipe was a transcription from the human voice. Transcriptions are a natural evolutionary process. As new instruments were invented and developed, composers naturally took advantage of their new colours and ranges, readapting their works and those of others. With the modern piano being the single most versatile instrument in Western European music, it is understandable that we probably have more transcriptions for it than for any other instrument.
Transcription is a time-honoured art. Its tradition flourished under J. S Bach, continued with Liszt, Busoni, and Ravel, and even lives today. There was never a recital by a great virtuoso that did not feature some transcriptions, especially of Bach … . In fact, earlier in this century, and especially in the nineteenth century, important artists performed transcriptions of all sorts on their programs, and critics and the public unquestioningly accepted the practice. The piano transcription contributed a great deal to the musical life of the Romantic era and has been a significant factor in developing the full potential of the piano."
Maurice Hinson The Pianist's Guide to Transcriptions, Arrangements, and Paraphrases (1990)

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Bach Transcriptions - Some Recordings

Bach-Busoni Chaconne D Minor
Ferruccio Busoni, piano

Bach-Busoni Choralvorspiel (Choral Prelude) Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein (recorded in 1922)
Ferruccio Busoni, piano

Toccata and Fugue In D Minor, BWV 538 (transcribed)
Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, piano

Bach-Busoni Chaconne D Minor
Michelangeli plays live in Warsaw 1955

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