Ravel and Debussy often made arrangements of their own compositions but we’re not entirely sure why? A number of thoughts and arguments can be advanced to explain why an arranger (often the composer himself) should rewrite a piece for other instruments.

Ferruccio Busoni tried to put into perspective the difference between the “original” and an “arrangement”. He suggested that the original composition idea set down on paper is as “a portrait compared to the living model”, and can therefore already be regarded as a sort of transcription. In the same way, the writing down of a musical idea can be seen as “an arrangement of the original”, according to Busoni.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, by far the best known and most used transcriptions are the piano arrangements of orchestral music and operas. In the days before radio and television and concert attendance was not always possible so another motive for transcription might be that the composer hopes that in this way his music will be played more often.