Arrangement vs. Alternate version

[pierre.chepelov]

Let's say you have some 19th c. dance music piece, which cover states that it was originally published as both
No.1: Piano solo version
and No.2: Piano 4-hands version.

I have seen in such case the 4-hands version moved under the header 'Arrangements and Transcriptions', 'For Piano 4 hands'.
My humble opinion tends to be that the 4 hands version is as original as the 2 hands one, and that therefore it could be considered more as an 'Alternate version' than as an 'Arrangement', although it might be argued that the composer did at first work with his own 2 hands rather than with 4 hands!

What do you mean? What is the official policy on that issue?

[pml]

Or, just to be different, as piano 4 hands usually allows harmonies and textures (both homophonic and contrapuntal) to be filled in to a greater extent, I’d be inclined to think the composer’s 4-hands arrangement should perhaps have precedence over piano 2-hands…

There’s also the inter-related issues that:
(a) composers may view various instrumentations for the same work as “equivalent” expressions of the same musical idea;
(b) composers often have to work to a commission or for an occasion which may constrain their “preferred” choice of instrumentation (if they have one);
(c) composers may view a particular version (if several are extant) as being the most “perfect” version without any justification other than their own artistic judgement.

Similarly, a suggestion that the first version of a piece would be the “original” version and all later revisions are “arrangements”, would have strange results for quite a number of vocal works: a piano-vocal score for a new work often preceded a full orchestral realisation of the same music owing to performance exigencies — to the extent that singers were given more time to learn music than orchestral players time to rehearse from.

Cheers, PML

[daphnis]

Publishers often issue pieces that advertise alternate versions. The best way to determine how they should be arranged is to refer to Grove or some other thematic catalogue to determine what is the 'original' version.

[Carolus]

It's not always easy to tell which is the original version, so if you happen to know that the piano duet score was actually the original, let one of us know and we'll move the piano solo score to the arrangements section and the piano duet to the top. I remember back when the hierarchy system was being set up we discussed this quite a bit because of the very thing mentioned above: publishers often issued the original version and several arrangements at the same time - sometimes literally on the same day. It's often pure guesswork as to which actually came first. The whole underlying purpose of having one instrumentation designated as the original version and all the others (even if made by the composer) as "arrangements and transcriptions" is that it enables the CW to pick up all the different available instrumentations present on a single page.