Hello -- I am not a big arranger, but I have arranged a handful of
tunes for the Raffin 20er crank organ. (But I have not ever heard most
of them except on the computer, because I do not yet own an organ.)
Actually, I _love_ to arrange for this micro-scale of 20 notes. Coming
from the full-scale piano and with a jazzy and classical-chromatic
background, I only learned with the 20er scale what tricks you can
play. (Quite certainly, I found only a few of them up to now.) Of
course, at times you have to "straighten out" things, but still,
e.g. playing a "complete C scale" with a missing B (-natural) is fun.
(I do it by replacing the B with a G and having some other ascending
line that helps the listener "go up").
And regarding a much smaller scale:: On and off, I listen to
MIDI transcriptions of classical music by Ramon Pajares
(http://nil.es/rpajares/). In August, he posted the overture to
Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, and, as I usually do, I listened
to any errors that might be in the transcription. There was one:
In measure 63, the timpani are definitely one tone too low. It
should be D, not C... Really??
After looking through the complete score, I found that this was
(almost) the only place where a D would be necessary. Having a third
timpani only for a few measures is out of the question, so Rossini used
the C (which is part of D7 chord). There are a few other places where
Rossini arranged "around the missing D":
m.118..127 organ point
m.131/135 D is simply left out
m.174/175 replacement chord for quint
(I think this was/is called a "Neapolitanic", at least in German;
any musician out there who wants to correct me?)
And in m.166..173 one can see/hear how this single C can be "attached"
to four different harmonic contexts.
So much for a _very_ small scale. The moral? There are certainly
many, but three worth mentioning are:
(1) Not only organ arrangers have to cope with limited resources.
(2) Also a small scale can be used creatively.
(3) I'll never be a Rossini ...
Regards
Harald M. Mueller
[ Well, then you might be a fine tympanist! My little Dictionary
[ of Musical Terms, of 1895, says: "Neapolitan sixth -- a chord of
[ the sixth on the sub-dominant in minor, with minor sixth." My, my!
[ A "fifth of Scotch" is more entertaining! :) -- Robbie
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