The Pianist's Guide to Transcriptions, Arrangements, and Paraphrases. (Books).

The Pianist's Guide to Transcriptions, Arrangements, and Paraphrases, by Maurice Hinson. Indiana University Press, (601 N. Morton St., Bloomington, IN 47404), 1990 (paperback edition 2001). 192 pp., $19.95.

To any professional pianist the name Maurice Hinson calls forth a number of images: meticulous scholar, prolific editor and author, energizing and inspiring lecturer. Hinson has greatly enriched the piano teaching and performing professions with his guides to various genres of repertoire, his informative and extensively researched editions of music, and his workshops and videotapes.

In 1990, Indiana University Press published Hinson's book, The Pianist's Guide to Transcriptions, Arrangements, and Paraphrases. As he notes in the highly informative Preface, transcriptions are a time-honored art and have flourished for centuries. It was during several decades of the twentieth century, when the pendulum of taste swung heavily to the purist approach to performance, that the transcription/arrangement fell into disfavor with many performers, scholars and teachers. Some pianists, however--notably Earl Wild--continued to perform this genre, and as we begin the twenty-first century, this form of music has again returned to the concert hall.

Hinson delineates the difference between the three forms of this genre as a matter of how much the original music is altered. He considers the transcription to be the closest to a literal rendition of the original, the paraphrase the freest, and the arrangement as the middle of the road between the other two. His criteria for selection were:

* Published works only

* No pedagogically oriented pieces unless they were unusually musical and effective

* Generally, pieces by well-known composers only