Verdi Transcriptions (Finnissy)

The 36 Verdi Transcriptions for piano by the British composer Michael Finnissy were composed between 1972 and 2005. They are based on the works of Giuseppe Verdi.

The Transcriptions, in the words of the composer, "are ...not simply about Verdi. They form a critique of a musical culture which is over-saturated in its past...by dissection, analysis, parody, and by self-dramatised intent." In four books of nine pieces each, they include in chronological sequence at least one transcription from each of Verdi's operas, together with one transcription drawn from his string quartet, and conclude with a transcription of the first section of his Requiem.

In creating the Transcriptions Finnissy was influenced by the concepts of Ferruccio Busoni, who believed that musical notation "is itself the transcription of an abstract idea. The moment that the pen takes possession of it, the thought loses its original form". The implication is that all composition is a form of transcription, and in this light Finnissy's often very substantial diversions from the originals may be viewed as re-creations of the original 'abstract ideas' which prompted Verdi himself. The influence of Busoni can be felt throughout the Transcriptions in the form of quotations from or allusions to Busoni's own compositions; the pianist Ian Pace considers the work to be a 'Homage to Busoni'.

In an interview the composer has stated: "I was trying to work out how to write my own music with Verdi's material, not obviously quoting from it. Indeed the series of pieces start off being completely unlike Verdi and only (with number 36) sounding at all like the originals." Concerning his transcription of the aria Me pellegrina ed orfano from La forza del destino (now no. XXVI of the complete sequence), he has written

I... generally increas[ed] the harmonic ambiguity, eliding the original phrases, re-voicing Verdi's (orchestral) texture, creating a kind of production of the scene in my imagination... like a film in which the actor has been entirely subsumed into the soundtrack, and the visible transcended.

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