"Time was when the art of arrangement" -- the creative reinterpretation of songs -- "occupied an honored place in musical composition."
"Bach, Mozart, Liszt and Ravel," writes Liszt biographer Alan Walker in the New York Times, "were among the many composers who lavished their talents on this important activity, fitting out their own works or those of others for different forces, usually larger or smaller."
. . . The most familiar criticism of arrangements is that they harm the originals. An analogy is sometimes drawn with painting. If you put a mustache on the "Mona Lisa," it is argued, a masterpiece has been destroyed. Likewise with music. Tamper with the original, and something has been lost forever. But this analogy is surely false. If you deface a canvas, something has indeed been destroyed. But a musical arrangement destroys nothing; it merely creates an alternative. The original is still there, unharmed, waiting to be played. . . .
. . . But what of the moral argument? Isn't a composer's music his or her personal property? And isn't it a form of theft to appropriate it? If that were the case, many of the greatest composers in history would be guilty of grand larceny. And as for those artful dodgers Bach and Handel, we would have to dismiss them as musical kleptomaniacs. They and others never took the slightest interest in the "moral" point of view. Music, for them, was there to be recycled, time and again if necessary. For the rest, since all good arrangers put in more than they take out, and since nothing is destroyed, the whole of music benefits. What kind of kleptomaniac gives more than he takes?
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Yes, that's all relevant. What bums me out the most is when I hear yet another boring version of one of my songs recorded by some guitar player. It is one thing to record one of my songs without getting a license - it is another to copy the arrangement and adding *nothing* new to the pot. Have a little pride, at least create a unique arrangement of my melody. If you don't write the melody, you can still try to put it into a new context...I have always wanted to hear a reggae version of Barcelona Nights for example.....
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