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Horowitz
the Composer & Transcriber
Horowitz always wanted to become a composer, and even in his
last years - with one of the most successful careers as a pianist in musical
history behind him - he still felt frustrated he hadn't dedicated more of his
life to composing. Horowitz's only known original compositions stem from his
early years in Russia, but he kept toying with others music and made
transcriptions and paraphrases all his life. This section is indended to throw
some light on Horowitz's legacy as a pianist/composer.
I have made an attempt to devide Horowitz's
works in to seven categories, namely:
- Original Compositions
- Variations & Paraphrases
- Extensive Reworkings
- Works Edited by Horowitz
- Cadenzas & Codas
- Transcriptions
- Simple Arrangements
But it should be pointed out that there's no clear line to separate them from
eachother. To decide what should be included in each category isn't too
obvious either as Horowitz did at least SOMETHING with nearly every work he
ever played, but I have decided only to include works that are so different
in Horowitz's performances that one can easily hear the difference from the
original without any detailed studying of the score.
The original composer's score, that is. Apart from the early
original compositions and one of the Carmens, Horowitz never notated any of
his works himself. I know most of them only through recordings, although some
enthusiastic amateurs with sensitive ears and LARGE erasers have notated them
on paper by listening to the recordings over and over and over and over and
over and over and over again. One such enthusiast is pianist Dennis Gustafsson
who has become something of an expert on Horowitz's transcriptions. Dennis has
supervised my work with this section, and I owe him for a lot of valuable
suggestions as well as insight in how these works were conceived and all the
pianistic ingeniousness they contain.
The reason Horowitz didn't notate any of them was probably in most cases that
he didn't want anyone else to perform them. The first person we know to have
attempted to notate one of Horowitz's works was the pianist Jan Holcman.
Horowitz heard about Holcman's attempts, and was anything but flattered.
Reportedly, he sent his lawyer to Holcman who offered him exactly $34 if he
never published or showed the manuscript to anyone. If he did, Horowitz would
use his legal right to sue Holcman as a the copyrightholder of his works.
Holcman did not take either Horowitz's offer or threat seriously, but for one
reason or another nothing ever came of the threat to sue.
Known Original Compositions
All surviving original compositions by
Horowitz we have stem from his student years in Russia. Horowitz is said to have
composed copiously between ca 1911 and 1919, but very little seems to have
survived for posterity. Horowitz kept some of the manuscripts to his early
compositions in his private collection his entire life, but he was not proud of
them and when he was asked in an interview towards the end of his life whether
he would like to have them published he quickly replied "No. [long pause]
They are modest". None of them were ever published in Russia either as far
as I know, and the indication of opus numbers for instance on the manuscripts
is probably Horowitz's own.
It should also be mentioned that the list below is not complete - Horowitz composed many more piano works, a
violin sonata, several songs, etc - but these below are currently all
manuscripts Dennis and me know have survived.
Danse Excentrique (a.k.a
Moment Exotique)
This is a colourful little morceau Horowitz must have composed somewhere
in the early or mid 1920s before leaving Russia. He made a piano roll of
it for Welte & Sons almost the first thing he did when he came to Europe,
and he also recorded it for RCA a couple of years later, in New York 1930. The
work differs only very slightly between the roll from 1926 and the recording
dating from four years later, but the manuscript - if there ever was any - is
lost as far as we know.
There are some disputes whether this work is actually a transcription, or if
Horowitz perhaps composed it together with a friend. One of the original RCA
Victor releases was labeled as "Demeny/Horowitz: Danse Excentrique".
Who this Demeny fellow was or how his name came in to the picture nobody seems
to have been able to figure out however, and both the other RCA release and
the piano roll lists only Horowitz as composer. Demeny could of course have
been a pseudonym used by Horowitz, just as Hofmann used to call himself
Dvorsky, and the work is also rather "Horowitzian"
in style, so I believe it would be motivated enough to call it an original
work. Until someone can prove the opposite, at least.
Etude-Fantaisie in E-flat
major, Op.4 (Les Vagues)
[...]
Une Conte, Op.14
Fragment Doloreux, Op.14
Prelude in F major, Op.9
(Presto)
Tableau Musical
Not much is known about these.... They were most likely composed in the years before Horowitz's
graduation from the conservatory in 1920, and they were
kept in Horowitz's private collection until Wanda gave them away to a friend
shortly after Horowitz's death. This is the only reason I know about their
existence at all really.
Waltz in F minor
[...]
Horowitz's hands
Variations & Paraphrases
In these works, Horowitz has only used a
theme or a couple of ideas to create a work of his own. In terms of pianistic
understanding and ingeniousness these works are among the most interesting to
have been written since the days of Franz Liszt, and in their day they were
pioneering in their exploration of the piano's tonal as well as technical
capabilities.
They all seem to have stemmed from improvisations, and it is possible that a
certain element of improvisation were kept in them throughout Horowitz's career.
He never performed any of them exactly the same way twice, and even in
recordings made just a couple of days from eachother the music is somewhat
different here and there.
They were all great recital favourites of Horowitz, who usually placed them as
the final encore to excite his audience. There was even a time when Horowitz
almost litterally was not allowed to leave the stage before he had played one of
them, usually Carmen or his transcription The Stars & Stripes Forever (which
can be found listed under "Transcriptions"). The only exception in
this groupd is the small but effective Tea for Two which has the charachter of a
small party piece rather than a large technical warhorse, and which Horowitz
only played for friends at home or at parties.
Mendelssohn/Liszt: Wedding March & Variations
[...]
-
RCA studio
- Shorter encore version with structural changes performed live
Variations on a theme from
Bizet's opera Carmen
[...]
- (1926?)
[...]
- 1928 (roll)
[...]
- 1928 (recording)
[...]
- 1942-1950
[...]
- 1956-1957
[...]
- 1967-1968
[...]
- 1977-1978
[...]
Youmans: Tea for Two
[...]
Extensive Reworkings
Horowitz altered something in nearly
every work he ever played to suit his taste and pianism. These touch-ups are
everything from minor textual changes which can only be noticed by a sharp ear,
up to huge large-scale reworkings where Horowitz more or less uses the original
work as a mere skeleton to make his own composition. The works in this category
belong to these heavily edited works, where the result is just as much
Horowitz's as the original composer's.
Liszt: Hungarian
Rhapsody No.2
[...]
Liszt: Hungarian
Rhapsody No.15 (Rákóczy March)
[...]
- 1949 (Unreleased studio)
- 1949 (Unreleased live)
- 1951 (Released studio)
Liszt: Hungarian
Rhapsody No.19
[...]
Liszt/Busoni: Mephisto
Waltz No.1
[...]
- October 8, 1978
- 1978/1979
Mussorgsky: Pictures at
an Exhibition
[...]
Saint-Saëns/Liszt: Danse Macabre
[...]
Horowitz at the piano, 1940s
Works Edited by Horowitz
In contrast to the extensive reworkings
in the category above, these are works which Horowitz only
"touched-up" one way or another, and the textual changes are almost
always few and modest. In most cases with the works in this category Horowitz
was displeased with their pianistic writing and his changes are only a
pianistical improvement, and rather invisible musically. Horowitz's goal with
these can be said to create something which is easier to play, AND sounds
better.
Furthermore it should be mentioned that it hasn't been the easiest thing to
decide which works that should gain a place in this category - as stated above,
Horowitz changed SOMETHING in nearly every work he ever performed. I have
decided only to include works where Horowitz's changes are apparent enough to be
easily detected by anyone familiar with the original work just by listening.
Balakirev: Islamey
(Oriental Fantasy)
[...]
Brahms: Variations on a
theme by Paganini, Op.35
[...]
Chopin: Etude in C
minor, Op.25 No.12
[...]
Liszt: Hungarian
Rhapsody No.6
[...]
Liszt: Hungarian
Rhapsody No.13
[...]
Liszt: Impromptu
(Nocturne) in F-sharp major
[...]
Liszt: Jadis (from the
Weinachtsbaum suite)
[...]
Liszt: Legend No.2
"St. Francois de Paule marchant sur les flots"
[...]
Liszt: Paganini-Etude
No.5 in E major
[...]
Liszt: Scherzo &
March
[...]
Liszt: Vallée
d'Obermann
[...]
Rachmaninoff: Piano
Sonata No.2 in B-flat minor, Op.36
[...]
- 1968 revision
- 1979/1980 & 1982 revision
Schubert/Tausig: Marche
Militaire
[...]
- 1942
- 1985
Stravinsky: Danse Russe
(from Pétrouchka)
[...]
Cadenzas & Codas
A rather self-explaining group this I
believe. Instead of arranging or "touching up" these works, Horowitz
was satisfied by inserting a Cadenza somewhere in the piece, or to write a coda
of his own, usually far more effective than the original. The rest of the works
are left more or less untouched.
Cadenza for the second
movement of Clementi's Sonata in C major, Op.33 No.3
[...]
Cadenza for the first
movement of Clementi's Sonata in B-flat major, Op.47 No.2
[...]
Coda to Moszkowski's
Etude in A-flat major, Op.72 No.11
[...]
- 1950s
- 1965
Coda to Moszkowski's
Etude in F major, Op.72 No.6
[...]
Coda to Moszkowski's
Etincelles, Op.36 No.6
[...]
Coda to Mendelssohn's
Etude in A minor, Op.104b No.3
[...]
Coda to Schubert/Liszt's
Soirée de Vienne No.6 (Valse Caprice)
[...]
Horowitz at the piano, mid
1980s
Transcriptions
In the works in this category, Horowitz
has remained faithful to the original text and only transferred the music from
it's original ensemble to the piano, without further embelishments.
The art of transcribing can be seen as the musical equivalent to the translation
of a text from one language to another. In the hands of a poor interpreter the
original often looses much of it's spirit, while if done by a skilled
interpreter it makes no difference in which language the text is being read.
Judging by the few transcriptions Horowitz left us (none written out), Horowitz
had a remarkable skill in translating orchestral sounds to the piano, and his
achievements in the art may be among the greatest to have been made since Liszt
and Alkan dropped their pens. From the quiet and introvert song by Mussorgsky to
the explodingly virtuosic Stars & Stripes transcription, Horowitz shows
himself capable of both recreating and producing any kind of sound on the piano
with a glowing conviction.
Mussorgsky: By the
Water
[...]
Sousa: The Stars &
Stripes Forever
[...]
Simple Arrangements
While these works still are
transcriptions in the technical sense of the word, I have decided to put them in
a group of their own anyway as these small arrangements are nowhere near the
seriousness of the other works in this category. It should be noticed that both
are national anthems, and Horowitz simply sought to play them on the piano,
without any attempts to transcend them. All he did was really to harmonize the
melody.
Anonymous: God Save the
Queen
[...]
Smith: The Star
Spangled Banner
[...]
- As performed during the second world war
- As performed at the White House in 1978
Copyright
© 2003 Christian Johansson