Orchestrating the Beethoven Sonatas: Challenge Accepted
I have thought of doing this for quite a while and I have multiple orchestral drafts of a few Beethoven sonata arrangements, which I am not satisfied with. This will amount to my second attempt at the Moonlight Sonata, third attempt at the Appassionata Sonata, and fourth attempt at the Pathetique Sonata. The thing that sparked the idea, well, it was a failure at composing for orchestra combined with my love of Beethoven. And it’s from the attempts to orchestrate the Pathetique and Appassionata Sonatas that I learned a great deal about writing for the orchestra in general. But for a long time, I only thought of arranging the big sonatas, the ones with a dense texture equal to that of the orchestra for an orchestra. This includes the likes of the Pathetique and Appassionata Sonatas.
As I became a better composer though and got more comfortable with composing orchestral works, I realized that I could take any of the sonatas and arrange it for orchestra. However, since I hadn’t heard all the sonatas at the time, I didn’t start orchestrating the Beethoven Sonatas as an entire set right away. I instead shied away from it as I didn’t want to fail miserably at the sonatas out of unfamiliarity. Even the sonatas that I was super familiar with and arranged in the past, I still shied away from the whole thing. I had to become more familiar with all the Beethoven Sonatas before I could be confident that I can do it. It took about a year and a half to get to where I feel confident that I can arrange all the sonatas for an orchestra.
Now, why did I go for the orchestra over all other ensembles? There’s multiple reasons for that. First off, there’s just no way I could get a satisfactory arrangement of say the Appassionata Sonata for a string quartet. It’s a literal impossibility. Second, I love composing and arranging for ensembles with significant tone color contrast, orchestra included. And third, I have heard multiple people remark that Beethoven’s piano sonatas are symphonic in scope and I personally agree with this. Beethoven definitely brings that orchestral sound into the solo piano. And his writing tends to be dense like how an orchestra is dense. Not just harmonically, but rhythmically and melodically as well.
Fourth and finally, I can’t find previous orchestrations for most of these sonatas and with the exception of the Pathetique Sonata, the "orchestral arrangements" I find are disappointing in how little they actually use the orchestra. Moonlight Sonata especially suffers from this being a piano solo with an orchestra pad instead of a true orchestration. And the arrangements I do find that use the orchestra more are incomplete. Like it will be 1 movement of the sonata or even less than that which has been arranged for orchestra(Bruckner only getting as far as the exposition of the first movement of the Pathetique Sonata for example). So I decided to take on the challenge of arranging the Beethoven Sonatas for orchestra myself, all 32 of them.
And it’s going pretty well so far, I’m almost done orchestrating the first movement of Piano Sonata no. 1 in F minor after just 3 days. Considering the fact that I have taken as long as 5 months for a full Beethoven arrangement in the past, this sheer speed more typical of my Mozart arrangements is pretty impressive to me. I have a question though. Should I go in sonata order, i.e. arrange Piano Sonata no. 2 second, no. 3 third and so forth or should I just do it in whatever order I want to, even if that means that the Appassionata Sonata is like the fifth one I arrange for an orchestra or some other small number?
As I became a better composer though and got more comfortable with composing orchestral works, I realized that I could take any of the sonatas and arrange it for orchestra. However, since I hadn’t heard all the sonatas at the time, I didn’t start orchestrating the Beethoven Sonatas as an entire set right away. I instead shied away from it as I didn’t want to fail miserably at the sonatas out of unfamiliarity. Even the sonatas that I was super familiar with and arranged in the past, I still shied away from the whole thing. I had to become more familiar with all the Beethoven Sonatas before I could be confident that I can do it. It took about a year and a half to get to where I feel confident that I can arrange all the sonatas for an orchestra.
Now, why did I go for the orchestra over all other ensembles? There’s multiple reasons for that. First off, there’s just no way I could get a satisfactory arrangement of say the Appassionata Sonata for a string quartet. It’s a literal impossibility. Second, I love composing and arranging for ensembles with significant tone color contrast, orchestra included. And third, I have heard multiple people remark that Beethoven’s piano sonatas are symphonic in scope and I personally agree with this. Beethoven definitely brings that orchestral sound into the solo piano. And his writing tends to be dense like how an orchestra is dense. Not just harmonically, but rhythmically and melodically as well.
Fourth and finally, I can’t find previous orchestrations for most of these sonatas and with the exception of the Pathetique Sonata, the "orchestral arrangements" I find are disappointing in how little they actually use the orchestra. Moonlight Sonata especially suffers from this being a piano solo with an orchestra pad instead of a true orchestration. And the arrangements I do find that use the orchestra more are incomplete. Like it will be 1 movement of the sonata or even less than that which has been arranged for orchestra(Bruckner only getting as far as the exposition of the first movement of the Pathetique Sonata for example). So I decided to take on the challenge of arranging the Beethoven Sonatas for orchestra myself, all 32 of them.
And it’s going pretty well so far, I’m almost done orchestrating the first movement of Piano Sonata no. 1 in F minor after just 3 days. Considering the fact that I have taken as long as 5 months for a full Beethoven arrangement in the past, this sheer speed more typical of my Mozart arrangements is pretty impressive to me. I have a question though. Should I go in sonata order, i.e. arrange Piano Sonata no. 2 second, no. 3 third and so forth or should I just do it in whatever order I want to, even if that means that the Appassionata Sonata is like the fifth one I arrange for an orchestra or some other small number?
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