# Transcribing The Nutcracker Suite, how to represent the pizzicato?



## caters (Aug 2, 2018)

So I have been transcribing The Nutcracker Suite, going from the original orchestral score to a piano duet score, starting with the Overture. Here is an image of one of the pages with highlights showing the voices. It is the first full orchestra moment of the piece:









The upper voice of the flutes and clarinets became the top staff of the first piano. And I didn't realize until I started mentally doing the transposition from Bb to concert pitch, that the flute and clarinet were in octaves. The lower voice of the flute and clarinets turned out to be obsolete. The 2 oboes became the lower staff of the first piano. The staccato voice became the upper staff of the second piano. And the bassoons became the lower staff of the second piano. The rhythm of the triangle and the harmony were completely obsolete, no way I could fit that into 2 piano staves along with everything else.

I am about to reach a second full orchestra moment. I will look for those same relationships that I was looking for with the first full orchestra moment(same voice but at a different pitch and different voice). But I am a bit stuck at the part of the overture with the pizzicato harmony over a bowed melody.

How am I supposed to get the pizzicato across on the piano? Staccato? I have used a lot of that already for notes that are marked staccato in the original score, so it might get a bit confusing as to which notes were originally staccato and which ones were original pizzicato. Stacatissimo? That I think gets closer to the sound of pizzicato. Non-legato? That is the way I have it marked right now(or rather not marked because I haven't put any markings there). Here is the link to the score of the Overture that I am using:

http://ks.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/6/66/IMSLP01087-Tchaikovsky_-_Nutcracker_Suite_I.pdf

You will find that pizzicato harmony and bowed melody that I am talking about on page 6 of the PDF. I know how to represent the bowed melody on the piano. That would be legato. But I am not sure how to represent the pizzicato in my transcription for piano duet.

Here is what I have of the piano duet transcription currently:

View attachment The Nutcracker Suite.pdf


You will see that I have it all in treble clef. That is because there is no real bass in the overture. Even the bassoons stay in their tenor register. So what I really have is high tenor, alto, and soprano in terms of the voices and their registers. Since there is no bass, it makes no sense to use the bass clef. And while I could take the viola notes down an octave if I wanted to have the bass clef there, I figured that having a bass instead of a tenor might kind of ruin the feel of the overture so I left the notes in their original octave unlike in say my Pathetique Sonata orchestration where I had to make some octave changes. Here I don't have to change from the original octave so why do it?

Anyway, do you have any advice on how to represent the pizzicato on the piano in my transcription of The Nutcracker Suite?


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## infracave (May 14, 2019)

Yes, mark it staccato.
I don't see an alternative. Or maybe instruct the pianist to stand up and reach into the piano to pinch the strings with his nails.

Have you looked at other piano transcriptions on IMSLP to see what others have done ?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Don't worry about it. Pizz is more of an effect and it's short by nature. When making a transcription to another instrument what you have to do is stop trying to emulate the orchestra and instead answer the question "how to I make this a good sounding, playable work for piano?" Have you studied the transcriptions made for one piano by both Tchaikovsky and Taneyev? They're really good (and really, really hard) but to see how the composer solved the problems is very instructive.


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