Dear Mr. Chappell:

How do you feel about changing the notes of a piano piece that was written in the time period when the keyboard had fewer than 88 keys, i.e. adding notes that didn’t exist on the smaller keyboards when the composers wrote their pieces, using the octave above or below, or rewriting a passage that is a repeat in a different key of corresponding material?

— Arranger

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Dear Arranger:

I have a divided perspective on this issue. My training tells me to give one answer, but my personal outlook allows a different answer.

I studied at the Curtis Institute of Music during the time when Rudolf Serkin, one of the 20th century’s greatest pianists, was its director. Serkin was one of the pioneers in music scholarship, particularly research into a composer’s intentions as reflected in that composer’s handwritten manuscript.

Before the 1920s, the mission of a music editor was to immortalize his own interpretation of a piece of music by adding indications for dynamics, articulation, pedaling, fingering, hand distribution, and tempo, even including changing, adding to, or subtracting notes. This could be helpful for student musicians who needed ideas and direction, but it presented the problem of not knowing what, for example, Beethoven wrote versus what Hans von Bulow added to it. And who was Hans von Bulow when compared to Beethoven, after all? At any rate, the innocent performer might represent the editor instead of the composer.

After the 1920s (approximately), the revised mission of an editor was to deliver exactly what the composer put on paper with no interference. Now, if performers altered the text, they were at least doing it with full knowledge. And the performer could also choose to adhere to what was given with confidence that it would represent the composer.

These editions that were faithful to the composer were called “urtext” editions. At Curtis Institute, we were trained to use only urtext editions and to regard with disdain any other types of editions.

Furthermore, Mr. Serkin would never allow any changing of the text, not even altering hand distribution to facilitate a difficult passage. “Beethoven was a pianist,” he would say, “and he knew what he was asking for. It would change the actual sound of this arpeggio if it were played with two hands instead of one.” On the question of adding the obvious missing notes that, if only our current 88-note keyboard had been available to him, the composer would have written, Mr. Serkin was adamant. We would play only the notes as written. That’s what the composer played. End of story.

Furthermore, Serkin said to me that the Godowsky transcriptions of the Chopin etudes were “monstrosities.” Personally, I find them fascinating, inventive, brilliant, and amazing. (Incidentally, I also have Godowsky connections in my own training, since Godowsky taught Paul Van Katwyk who taught my teacher Jane Allen, and Godowsky taught David Saperton who taught my teacher Eleanor Sokoloff.)

My personal outlook is that the only rule in music is to do what sounds good. I have come some distance from my strict training, partly because of my functioning as a composer and improviser — expressions of musicality that were sidelined by my training in favor of interpreting music only. I am always open and willing to consider options. There are many cases where it is obvious that a composer would have continued a pattern into a low or high register that didn’t exist on his keyboard, if it had existed. I play the low G# in pieces by Ravel — Jeux d’Eau, Scarbo — when I play the Bosendorfer piano; he writes a low A, but it is paired with the G# above that as if it were an octave. The G# octave certainly sounds better. I have reinforced low bass notes with octaves in the Chopin G Minor Ballade on occasion, inspired perhaps by Vladimir Horowitz. But I don’t change Beethoven, perhaps as an homage to Mr. Serkin.

Serkin told me an interesting story when I studied the Beethoven Sonata Opus 109 with him. He said that in the first variation in the last movement, Busoni had written a version where he doubled as an octave the single left-hand bass note on each first beat. He said that he liked the sound, but that he couldn’t allow himself to play it. So he used his thumb on the single bass note, stretching his fifth finger over the note an octave below — but without playing that lower note! This way he could have it both ways and be satisfied.

— J.C.