# Apologies to Gustav Mahler...



## Crudblud

...and Deryck Cooke/any of those _legitimate_ musicologists who've taken a stab at rendering Mahler's 10th.

This isn't a complete arrangement of the entire symphony, but of the first scherzo alone. I'd been intrigued by the movement when listening to the various completions on offer, and recently the idea got into my head to try and arrange it my way, which is to say with complete disregard for taste and common decency. To that end, I have adapted it freely for the following instruments: harpsichord, violin, oboe, bassoon, soprano saxophone, cimbasso, and halo drum.

I recently upgraded my operating system, so my FTP client is not yet set up, which means the usual .zip downloads are not currently available, but for the time being you can enjoy (hey, it's not outside the realm of possibility) this music on your choice of two (count 'em) streaming services:

bandcamp

soundcloud

I hope you enjoy it!


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## Pugg

Crudblud said:


> ...and Deryck Cooke/any of those _legitimate_ musicologists who've taken a stab at rendering Mahler's 10th.
> 
> This isn't a complete arrangement of the entire symphony, but of the first scherzo alone. I'd been intrigued by the movement when listening to the various completions on offer, and recently the idea got into my head to try and arrange it my way, which is to say with complete disregard for taste and common decency. To that end, I have adapted it freely for the following instruments: harpsichord, violin, oboe, bassoon, soprano saxophone, cimbasso, and halo drum.
> 
> I recently upgraded my operating system, so my FTP client is not yet set up, which means the usual .zip downloads are not currently available, but for the time being you can enjoy (hey, it's not outside the realm of possibility) this music on your choice of two (count 'em) streaming services:
> 
> bandcamp
> 
> soundcloud
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!


I always admire people with this kind of guts, well done.


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## dzc4627

Interesting! I'd prefer it a tad quicker myself. Glad you did this.


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## Crudblud

dzc4627 said:


> Interesting! I'd prefer it a tad quicker myself. Glad you did this.


Thanks!

Yes, my tempi are quite a bit slower than is typical, my guess would be a base of around 160bpm in most performances of the piece in context of the full symphony, whereas mine, out of context, has a base of roughly 135bpm. Aside from gut instinct, there are a couple of reasons why I chose to do it that way. One of them has a lot to do with looking at the scherzo in and out of context. In context, as a symphonic movement, part of a much larger balance in a five-part symmetrical structure, the scherzo is proportionate and congruous with its surroundings and joins them to form a complete work. Once you take it out of its surroundings and look at it as a standalone piece, it is obviously missing something, not structurally or compositionally, but in terms of weight, because it was originally designed as part of something much larger.

The other reason, and really the initial deciding factor, was that I have grown quite used to the idiosyncrasies of the sound libraries I commonly use, and I knew that it would be a logistical nightmare trying to get them to play cleanly at much faster speeds (this version gets up to 150bpm at very fastest). Sometimes muddiness is desirable, in my original compositions I like to play with the limitations of the instruments and sometimes even break them completely in order to achieve certain effects, but in this instance it would have just sounded amateurish and ugly in a bad way. I did do some things that I would do elsewhere, such as breaking the violin down into multiple articulations and having them operate both in tandem and as separate instruments depending on the situation, but in general I took a much less overt approach to effects and mostly achieved them using simple and straightforward means. It's just a question of what's appropriate based on all the different factors: the composition, the instrumentation, the context - in this case they pointed me towards broader tempi.

That's a bit longer of an answer than was probably necessary, but these things all have a tendency to tie themselves together.

Edit: Thanks, Pugg!


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## Crudblud

Now on YouTube!


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## Crudblud

Hi everyone, this is just a quick update to let (non)curious parties know that the mp3 and FLAC downloads are now available, complete with liner notes, so you can now ignore two new formats of this release!


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## Heliogabo

In fact it sounds like a Frank Zappesque arrangement. Very nice and well done.


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## Pugg

Crudblud said:


> Hi everyone, this is just a quick update to let (non)curious parties know that the mp3 and FLAC downloads are now available, complete with liner notes, so you can now ignore two new formats of this release!


Many thanks for this.


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## Crudblud

Heliogabo said:


> In fact it sounds like a Frank Zappesque arrangement. Very nice and well done.


Thanks for listening! I feel like a Zappa arrangement would be larger and have much more percussion.


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## James Mann

I like this arrangement Crudblud!


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