Magellan's Log: Transcriptions

Transcriptions
Great--and Less Than Great

Collected by the Staff of Magellan's Log

Transcription? Transfer? Reduction? Transposition? Cover? You take a piece of music written for one instrument (or group of instruments) and you move it over to another instrument (or group of instruments). It's been going on a long time. With, as usual, mixed results.

In a sense, every midi file is a transcription. Then when, for example, you get a midi file of one of Liszt's reductions of a Beethoven sympony to the piano, what you have is a transcription of a transcription. Again, with mixed results. With typical disregard for the limitations of genre, style, and era, we've gathered some winners, and some almost-winners:

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