To clarify credit for Moszkowski paraphrases.

[olmsted]

It appears that IMSLP now possesses the complete, collected Moszkowski piano transcriptions and paraphrases of other composers' works, including intermediate-level pieces that were published only in The Etude Magazine.*
http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Moszkowski,_Moritz
http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_compositi ... Moszkowski

Compare Christof Keymer, Moritz Moszkowski Sämtliche Klaviertranskriptionen, http://amazon.com/o/asin/B002I573NC.

I notice several transcriptions or paraphrases for which Moszkowski is credited here as composer rather than as arranger:

Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman (Moszkowski, Moritz)
Fantasy after Bizet's 'Carmen' (Moszkowski, Moritz)
Isoldens Liebestod (Moszkowski, Moritz)
Paraphrase of the Venusberg Bacchanale from Tannhauser (Moszkowski, Moritz).

Such credit results in the pieces not being locatable under the Offenbach, Bizet, or Wagner categories. That is not entirely fair to those composers, and not optimally helpful to IMSLP users.

If these four pieces are to be credited to Moszkowski (I don't know what standard of originality you wish to apply), I suggest the insertion of some sort of of cross-referencing on the Offenbach, Bizet, and Wagner pages. Thanks.


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*Assenov's dissertation, at p. 461, suggests that three additional transcriptions were prepared:

Czerny, Carl: Étude
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Jupiter-Symphonie
Saint-Saëns, Camille: Havanaise.

But he does not indicate when or where Moszkowski may have published them.
http://opus.kobv.de/tuberlin/volltexte/ ... _bojan.pdf

[steltz]

From the titles, it seems to me that the Fantasy (Carmen) and the Paraphrase (Tannhauser) would probably contain additional original material that would disqualify the piece as a straight arrangement.

Frequently this sort of thing needs to be downloaded in order to ascertain whether it is a straight arrangement, in which case it doesn't get a page of its own.

Do you know the four works in question -- or if not, does anyone else?

Any mistakes that have been made will be corrected, provided someone who knows the works can tell us something about the originality of it. If Moskowski took themes and made variations, or other additions/alterations, then the work should have its own page, with a link between the two. If a work is a straight arrangement, e.g. only orchestration is altered, then it stays on the'original composer's page with Moskowski listed as an arranger.

[KGill]

OK, I have now looked at all four of the transcriptions mentioned and attempted to evaluate whether they actually deserve their own pages. The result, by my reckoning, was that the first two deviated sufficiently from the original to qualify, while the last two could be moved to the pages for the original works and listed as arrangements (which I have done). (The first two now also contain links to the page for the original works.) Please let me know if there is any disagreement with this.

[steltz]

Since I haven't looked at them myself, I'm not sure, but paraphrases are usually done in the style of the arranger, and have added material (e.g. Liszt?) Are you sure about that one being a straight arrangement? ~~~~

[KGill]

I'm not sure what you mean by "straight arrangement" (it's a rare published arrangement that reproduces the original as exactly as possible using the new medium), but I looked at them to see whether they followed the basic thread of whatever the original was or deviated significantly from it. By this (admittedly vague) criterion, the last two both qualified as arrangements rather than paraphrases, in my opinion. Which one were you referring to?

[steltz]

Paraphrase of the Venusberg Bacchanale from Tannhauser (Moszkowski, Moritz).

Given that the definition of a paraphrase is to restate something using a different form or different words (i.e. ones own words), there is an implied change or personal "take" on the original material.

[pml]

To be honest, when I looked at this thread earlier today, I couldn’t see any justification for the OP’s point of concern, except that perhaps the normal procedures for arrangements/transcriptions hadn’t been followed for this one particular composer. We already have it well-established that:

* if the work doesn’t diverge significantly from the original composition (i.e. steltz’s phrase of a “straight arrangement”), then it appears on the composer’s own work page – but the citation format for the arranger also allows for the page to appear under the “Arrangements by” heading on the arranger’s category page. Thus, the work is accessible via the original composer and the arranger.

* if the work is sufficiently original to be a new composition, then it is accessible from the ‘paraphrasing’ composer’s page – but the original composer’s work page has a cross-reference listed under the “Arrangements and Transcriptions” section of the page. Thus, the work is accessible via the original composer and the paraphraser.

Cheers, PML

[KGill]

the original composer’s work page has a cross-reference listed under the “Arrangements and Transcriptions” section of the page. Thus, the work is accessible via the original composer and the paraphraser.

This was not the case here before I saw this thread and added the references to each page

Paraphrase of the Venusberg Bacchanale from Tannhauser (Moszkowski, Moritz).

Given that the definition of a paraphrase is to restate something using a different form or different words (i.e. ones own words), there is an implied change or personal "take" on the original material.

IIRC the score did not actually state 'Paraphrase' on it - the work page was just titled that way for some reason. (Unfortunately, I cannot check this at the moment as I am using a network with an automatic block on certain IPs, one of which is a major server for IMSLP that happens to contain that file ) Anyway, I suppose one would really have to look at the actual arrangement or paraphrase to determine how far it deviated from the original - which is not that far in this case, in my recollection.

[olmsted]

KGill - Yes - thank you for adding the cross-references. I wasn't so concerned with how they should be classified - just that they can be found.

Olmsted