Arrangement (music)

In Music, the arrangement is an additional activity with the musical Composition, as a agrementation of a topic given by the use of a wider instrumentation - Orchestration - or of a refitting of an original piece within another framework.

A arranger is the name of the person specialized in the creation of arrangements. In the majority of the cases, a type-setter " classique" is also its own arranger. However, it can happen that the type-setter delegates arrangements: Debussy sometimes called upon Charles Koechlin, Chopin, type-setter exclusively pianistic made orchestrate the instrumental parts of its two concertos for piano. Nowadays, the type-setters of varieties create the melody but seldom have the technical skill which an arrangement claims. However, with the development of the Home studio, they can outline some ideas, a color to be given to a piece. But final arrangement, very technical, will have to be entrusted to the arranger.

That it is into traditional, in jazz, in varieties, for advertizing jingles or film musics, one can coarsely divide arrangements into two principal categories:

purely musical arrangement: the melody is carried out by one or more soloists; a group of instruments in Tutti which the remainder of the orchestra answers or which this remainder of the orchestra accompanies; all the orchestra playing in phrased of mass; or all that.
accompaniment of song: the orchestra (often not complete) accompanies a singer (euse) or a group by singers (euses) in order to help it and to support it.

There is habit to group this work under the name of “arrangement (S)”, after the composition is finished with its or its harmonic progressions. However, it is necessary to make a distinction between “arrangement”, “the instrumentation” and “the orchestration”:

Arrangement would be rather a draft, a driver, which will be useful for the orchestration; this draft is essential and comprises several shutters. He is written most of the time in C. He includes/understands melody cuttings and sometimes their modifications (composed measurements, additions or possible suppressions of measurements), to make these melodies more logical; he comprises the harmonic modifications or enrichments, ideas of counter-melody under the principal song, ideas rhythmic, atmospheres caused by effects, etc This draft can comprise one, two, three or four ranges according to the needs.

The instrumentation is copied on the arrangement of the driver and consists rather in the choice of the instruments or the singers (euses) and their vocal possibilities (Tessiture), their own difficulties and their impossibilities.

The orchestration will lay out all these instruments or singers (euses) so that they sound. One of the difficulties with which the arranger is confronted, will be to assemble with taste the various desks and to proportion the interventions of them, so that everyone does not play all the time.

It will thus be advisable to consider the style, the climate, the choice of the stamps, the harmonic diagrams.

Styles

Each arranger, type-setter or orchestra being supposed to have his own style, it are difficult to organize subdivisions. However, one can distinguish four big families all the same: the Classical music, music of Jazz, the variety and the electronic musics.

Whatever the style, it is appropriate to take into account different the Tempo S. It is excluded to play of the quadruple eighth notes on fast tempos. One should not neglect the resistance of the lips for the instruments for mouth (trumpets, horns, trombones and even flutes). It is necessary to envisage - according to the tempos and of the nuances - breathings for all the singers or “blowers” (wood, sheers, coppers).

Large arrangers

Whatever the style, there exists of " grands" arrangers which are also often of large pedagogs: into traditional, Charles Koechlin, which published the famous treaty of orchestration in four volumes, Arnold Schoenberg, true virtuoso of the orchestra and his monumental Traité of harmony and, nearer to us, Ivan Julien, affirmed colourist, author of a Traité arrangement in eight volumes which gathers all the styles of the musical arrangement.

In jazz, it is necessary to quote inter alia Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Carla Bley, Gil Evans, Quincy Jones.

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