As its subtitle indicates, this book is limited to music originally written for one piano, four hands. Arrangements or adaptations from other media are excluded except in rare cases where the composers themselves have made the transcriptions or where such adaptations have long been considered part of the standard four-hand repertoire.
The piano duet repertoire is listed alphabetically by composer. Some or all of the following data are included:
1. Composer’s surname followed by given name; birth and death dates; nationality; and, in some cases, a biographical note.
2. Full title of composition, followed in parentheses by titles of shorter pieces included under the main heading: e.g., Three Easy Pieces (March; Valse; Polka). Foreign titles, except those in French, German, or Italian, are given both in the original language and in their English translation; Russian titles are also transliterated.
3. Key signature. Major keys are given in capital letters (A♭), minor keys in lower case (a♭).
4. Opus number and date of composition. Opus numbers and series of pieces within a given opus are separated by a slash (/).
5. Place of publication, publisher’s name, and date of publication. If a piece is available as both a sheet and in a collection, the sheet publication data is listed first, followed by the collection publication data.
6. Descriptive comment, critical evaluation, or other annotation. Approximate grade is indicated in parentheses by the following abbreviations: A—Advanced; E—Elementary; I—Intermediate; L—Lower; U—Upper. Examples: (LE)—Lower Elementary; (UI)—Upper Intermediate; (UE–LI)—Upper Elementary to Lower Intermediate; (LA)—Lower Advanced. A single notation, e.g., (E) or (LI), indicates that both the secondo and primo parts are at the same level of difficulty (in this case Elementary and Lower Intermediate). A difference in grade level between the two parts is designated by a slash (/): e.g., (I/E) means that the secondo part is Intermediate and the primo is Elementary.
Works in which one or both parts are restricted to a five-finger position are denoted by “5” added to the grade level: e.g., (I/E-5) is interpreted as secondo at the Intermediate level, while primo is Elementary and limited to five-finger span in both hands. (I/E-5) is also used to indicate those works, usually consisting of a series of short pieces, in which the easier part appears sometimes in the primo and sometimes in the secondo. The notation (E-5), reduced from (E-5/E-5), denotes that both primo and secondo are in the five-finger position at the Elementary level.
Because the greatest portion of duet music was directed to a performing public of modest technical and musical resources, ungraded entries in this catalogue tend to lie within the Upper Elementary (UE) to Upper Intermediate (UI) range of difficulty. Titles themselves frequently offer a clue to the approximate difficulty of a work: Grande sonate, Grand duo, Fantaisie brillante, and similar descriptive names suggest music of greater technical demands than Sonatina, Duettino, and Pièce caractéristique.
A grade level, especially if it follows an entry without an accompanying annotation, is often the one given in the publisher’s catalogue from which the citation was taken.
The terms conservative and traditional refer to the common-practice harmonic style cultivated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and still very much in use today.
Instructional or pedagogical music—sometimes called teaching pieces—can be roughly divided into three general, often overlapping categories: etudes and technical exercises; pieces written for two performers at different levels, either teacher and pupil, or a beginning and a more advanced pupil; and teaching or recreational pieces for two students of equal proficiency.
The first category, etudes and technical exercises, is familiar to all piano students and is sparingly represented in four-hand literature by Carl Czerny, Henry Köhler, and Heinrich Wohlfahrt, the major contributors to the genre. Well known for their solo piano studies and exercises, these three pedagogues composed a corresponding, though smaller, body of instructional music designed as an aid in mastering some of the technical difficulties peculiar to piano duet playing. These works, together with similar efforts by other nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers, constitute a modest collection of exercises and short studies that serve a useful purpose in developing musicianship and a feeling for ensemble playing.
Greater in volume and certainly more absorbing musically than the preceding is the popular repertoire of duets written for teacher and pupil, featuring one easy and one more difficult part. Many variations in the distribution and difficulty of the individual parts occur throughout duet literature, but the arrangement most frequently encountered is that in which the primo plays the easier part within the restricted range of five notes in each hand, while the secondo part is given to the teacher or a more advanced pupil. A number of composers, intrigued by the architectural strictures of the five-note form, have lavished some of their finest and most imaginative efforts on this popular and effective genre, which seems to have been first developed, if not invented, by Antonio Diabelli.
The third category, teaching or recreational pieces for two students of equal proficiency, is by far the largest and has consistently maintained its appeal up to the present time. The best of these teaching pieces are well written, melodious, and attractively set in a variety of styles—traditional through contemporary. The individual parts are well distributed, and they are intended to divert as they instruct.
The term salon describes a familiar type of second-rate music popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shallow, predictable, and mawkish at its worst, it is abundantly represented in four-hand as well as solo piano literature. Because of its dubious musical quality and because the bulk of it is material arranged from original two-hand versions, works of this type have been omitted from this listing. On the other hand, many of the lesser-known composers, as well as some of the more familiar figures of the period, have contributed duets of substance and considerable interest, solidly crafted in polished, elegant salon style, and these works are included in this volume.
SAMPLE ENTRY (FICTITIOUS) WITH EXPLANATIONS
Schmidt, Johann (1799–1860), Germany
2 Sonatinas (C, d♭), Op. 102 (1801)
Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, ca. 1802; New Edition, 1903.
Instructional use.
Level: UE–LI/E-5
The two Sonatinas are in the keys of C major and D♭ minor, written in 1801, and published in Leipzig by Breitkopf & Härtel circa 1802; a new edition by the same publisher was issued in 1903. Both Sonatinas are teaching pieces with the secondo part written at the Upper Elementary level of difficulty while the less difficult primo part is set at the Elementary level in the five-finger position for both hands.