Abstract
This study shows why and how transcriptions were made in the decades around 1900 for salon orchestras and its variants, which had become a separate musical genre in the course of the invention of tourism. Provided below as examples are the analyses of three transcriptions for salon orchestra of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s operas, made by composer Oscar Fetrás from Hamburg, known for the Gebrauchsmusik genre: the transcriptions of the operas The Prophet, The Huguenots, and The African Woman, attributed by their author to the “opera fantasy” genre. After a few reflections on this musical genre and some parallels to other titles, such as Erinnerung (memory), Souvenir, Remembrance, Recollection, Réminescence or Mosaic and their appearances in other musical genres apart from the music for salon orchestra, a thorough survey of Fetrás’s technique follows starting from his transcription Erinnerung an Meyerbeer’s “Prophet” [Remembrance of Meyerbeer’s “Prophet”]. Also discussed are the selection and ordering of the numbers, the choice of the instrumentation and the changes in the characters of the instruments, illustrated by an excerpt from the beggar woman’s ballad (“O gebt!” – “Donnez!”), in which the trumpet was invested, already by Meyerbeer, and perhaps for the first time in the history of opera, with noble feelings, prayers and lamentations. The shrinkage of the opera orchestra into a salon orchestra probably became a model for the sound of typical avant-garde ensemble, without its origin in entertainment music ever being revealed.

Keywords: salon orchestra, opera fantasy, transcription, arrangement, Giacomo Meyerbeer.

About the author
Gesine Schröder is Professor of Music Theory at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Barthold” in Leipzig. She is also professor emeritus at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She has taught part-time at the Shanghai Conservatory and has been a guest lecturer in Paris, Santiago de Chile and Zürich. Advisory board member of the periodical Musik & Ästhetik, the journal of the Russian Society for Music Theory (OTM) and a book series of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. President of the Society for Music Theory between 2012-2016. Fields of work: orchestration and musical arrangement in theory and practice, counterpoint around 1600, history of musical interpretation, gender studies, contemporary music and the transfer in music theory.

DOI: 10.47809/MP.2024.39.01.02

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