Our choir are doing this at the moment. I don't suppose there are any versions specifically for organ accompaniment? Failing this, any advice? I'm currently grappling with a Novello edition...

Deleted - rendered irrelevant by Philip's subsequent post.

http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/e/e0/JB45...eblich_sind.pdf

We did this about two years ago and I printed this off I think which is quite helpful.

When I accompanied it I'm sure there were plenty of notes missing, but I'm not entirely sure it matters - orchestral reductions like this can be a nightmare (I have similar issues with 'The heavens are telling') and I'm sure much of the rest of the Requiem is even harder. Get the basics there and it should be OK. The accompaniment isn't massively prominent in this piece - mostly quiet and getting a bit louder here and there (and even those you probably wouldn't want to be hugely loud). Perhaps this isn't a purist's response but it is my own practical one.

Great piece though, well worth the time spent on it. I particularly love the fugal bits at the end.

Malcolm Archer's version (on 3 staves) is published as an RSCM Classics edition. If you have the time and the inclination, getting a recording of Brahms' Requiem and listening to the movement in its original choral/orchestral form and annotating your Novello copy is very educative. I certainly found it so, and tend to do this if faced with a transcription.

The suggestion that the original orchestral accompaniment of the Brahms anthem be studied while preparing the organ reduction is a quite excellent one. There are a number of pieces in the “standard” repertoire that started life with orchestral accompaniment or acquired it later. Parry’s “I was glad”, Ireland’s “Greater Love” and a whole host of Stanford numbers, especially the canticles, make for fascinating listening in the orchestral versions, with subtle and not so subtle differences. Other examples will, doubtless, occur to forum members.

The opening of “Greater Love” is subtly different to the organ version and the start of the last section has a lead from the horns, I think, which absolves the altos from the tedious business of having to find the note out of the air. Those Stanford canticles which have alternative orchestral accompaniments are very well worth studying; an arrangement of the B flat evening canticles has been made by Adrian Lucas for the Worcester Cathedral Choir and broadcast not so long ago.

Of course, there will be those who feel that the organ parts in these pieces should be played exactly as the composer gave them to us; fine, of course; it’s a free country. For myself, I find that the orchestral versions, where practical, frequently offer accompaniments which are tuppence coloured as opposed to penny plain, especially as far as Stanford is concerned.

David Harrison

It was a matter of Christ Church (Oxford) folklore in the 1970s that Sidney Watson always accompanied Stanford in A from the orchestral score.

Many thanks everyone - most helpful.
In my travels, I came across a version by The Sixteen accompanied by piano duet as well!

Nice idea. I could imagine Brahms arranging that himself.

Brahms sometimes composed in the first instance for piano duet, orchestrating later.