The stated rationales for musical arrangement conceal economic and aesthetic falsity

Evidence

In the case of great orchestral works, it will reduce the cost, or the composers are accused of lacking technique in instrumentation. These reasons are lamentable pretexts. The argument of cheapness, which aesthetically condemns itself, is disposed of by reference to the superfluity of orchestral means at the disposal of precisely those who most eagerly carry on the practice of arrangement, and by the fact that very often, as in instrumental arrangements of piano pieces, the arrangements turn out substantially dearer than performance in the original form. And finally, the belief that older music needs a colouristic freshening up presupposes an accidental character in the relation between colour and line, such as could be assumed only as a result of the crudest ignorance of Vienna classicism and the so-eagerly arranged Schubert. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 86

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• XREF: Adorno’s technique of dismantling stated rationales to expose actual motive is a method the reader can replicate in testing modern culture-industry justifications.
• QUESTION: Worth checking whether Adorno’s dismissal of coloristic freshening holds against modern HIP (historically informed performance) practice, which revives rather than destroys original scoring.