Music history, like Alice’s Wonderland, is full of unexpected and often extraordinary curiosities—subplots of the principal story, byproducts of major developments—which assume identities and purposes of their own. One of the most fascinating of these phenomena, which made its appearance in the cultural world of the late eighteenth century, was the rapid rise of the piano duet.
The astonishing growth and development of one piano, four hands, as an independent form of music making, its enormous popularity and consolidation as a social institution by a growing middle class, its flowering and expansion in the nineteenth century, and its current revival all attest to the tremendous appeal of this genre as a vital medium of musical expression. Yet the varied literature it has inspired has been largely neglected and, even to musicians, remains almost unknown.
The piano duet medium is unique because it is the only kind of musical encounter in which two people, using the full resources of a single instrument, effectively perform music originally written or especially arranged for that combination. In addition, it possesses a surprisingly abundant repertoire of remarkable diversity in both scope and function. As a purely pedagogical tool it is of unparalleled value in providing training in musicianship and ensemble playing, in sight reading, and in rhythmic control. And for serious study as well as for delightful diversion, it offers a distinctive literature of first-rate music at every level of technical proficiency.
The earliest examples of music written for two people at one keyboard, A Verse for Two to Play, by Nicholas Carlton, and A Fancy for Two to Play, by Thomas Tomkins, date from the early to mid-seventeenth century and belong to the tradition of the Elizabethan virginalist school. Written for the small harpsichord of the period with its range of only five and a half octaves, these pieces are amazingly effective, considering the restricted compass of their activity. But they stand as charming, unexplained isolates of the late English Renaissance, separated stylistically and spiritually from the next appearance of four-hand writing by an unaccountable gap of more than a century.
The second emergence of the four-hand medium occurred during the last forty years of the eighteenth century, with the appearance of Niccolò Jomelli’s Sonata, Joseph Haydn’s The Teacher and the Pupil, and the little Sonata (C), K.19d, by Mozart. Impetus was given to the movement somewhat later by the publication of Charles Burney’s Two Sonatas or Duets for Two Performers on One Piano-Forte or Harpsichord, which appeared in 1777, and, in response to apparent popularity, a sequel of two more sonatas in 1778. With the publication of Burney’s works the art of four-hand writing was elevated to respectability: it had received the imprimatur of a well-known and highly esteemed musician and scholar and was thus no longer a novel curiosity.
The preface to Dr. Burney’s 1777 work is worth quoting in its entirety for some of the insights it provides into four-hand playing and into the performance of music in general:
As the following pieces are the first that have appeared in print it may be necessary to say something concerning their utility, and the manner of performing them.
That great and varied effects may be produced by Duets upon Two keyed-Instruments, has been proven by several ingenious compositions, some of which have been published in Germany; but the inconvenience of having two Harpsichords, or two Piano-Fortes, in the same room, and the short time they remain exactly in tune together, have prevented frequent trials, and even the cultivation of this species of music, notwithstanding all the advantages which, in other respects, it offers to musical students. The playing Duets by two persons upon One instrument, is, however, attended with nearly as many advantages, without the inconvenience of crowding a room, or of frequent or double tunings; and so extensive is the compass of keyed-instruments, that the most full and elaborate compositions must, if played by one person, leave many parts of the scale unemployed; which, perhaps, first suggested the idea of applying Pedals to the Organ. And though, at first, the near approach of the hands of the different performers may seem aukward [sic] and embarrassing, a little use and contrivance with respect to the manner of placing them, and the choice of fingers, will soon remove that difficulty.
Indeed, it frequently happens, that when there are two students upon the same keyed-instrument, in one house, they are in each other’s way; however, by compositions of the following kind, they become reciprocally useful, and necessary companions in their musical exercises.
Besides the Amusement which such experiments will afford, they may be made subservient to two very useful purposes of improvement, as they will require a particular attention to Time, and to that clair-obscure which is produced by different degrees of Piano and Forte. Errors committed in the Measure, by either of the performers of these pieces, who may accelerate, retard, or otherwise break its proportions, will be sooner discovered, and consequently attended with more disagreeable effects, than if such errors were committed by a single player, unless the other give way, and conform to the mistakes that are made. And with respect to the Pianos and Fortes, each Performer should try to discover when he has the Principal Melody given to him, or when he is only to accompany that Melody; in order, either to make it more conspicuous, or merely to enrich its harmony. There is no fault in accompanying, so destructive of good melody, taste, and expression, as the vanity with which young and ignorant Performers are too frequently possessed, of becoming Principals, when they are only Subalterns; and of being heard, when they have nothing to say that merits particular attention. If the part which would afford the greatest pleasure to the hearer be suffocated, and rendered inaudible, by too full, and too loud an accompaniment, it is like throwing the capital figure of a piece into the back-ground, or degrading the master into a servant.
It is hoped, however, that the great strides which the executive part of Music, at least, makes toward perfection, in this metropolis, abounding at present in a greater number of capital performers, of almost every kind, than any other in Europe, will soon render such remarks as these useless; and that something analogous to Perspective, Transparency, and Contrast in painting, will be generally adopted in music, and be thought of nearly as much importance, and make as great a progress among its students, as they have lately done in the other art.
St. Martin’s-street, Jan. 1777
If Dr. Burney’s contributions to early piano duet literature are somewhat lacking in musical inventiveness and excitement, they at least show the composer’s sensitivity to some of the problems of four-hand writing in matters of textural variety and balance between the parts.
Mozart’s youthful essay, the Sonata (C), K. 19d, mentioned above, shows a highly musical if rather experimental approach to the keyboard duet, but his mature works reveal him to be one of the great masters of the four-hand art. His Sonata (F), K. 497, is not only one of the finest masterpieces in piano literature but also one of Mozart’s most profound and moving works.
Another of the early duet composers was Johann Christian Bach, the so-called London Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian. His three sonatas (1778–1780) are elegant, refined, controlled pieces very much in the early style of his young friend and admirer, Wolfgang Mozart.
By the closing years of the eighteenth century, piano four-hand music had become so well established that it was able to attract among its enthusiastic contributors such diverse composers as Muzio Clementi, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Ignace Pleyel, Giovanni Tommaso, and Giuseppe Giordani, Leopold Koželuh, and Beethoven. They, and other composers writing before 1800, were careful to indicate in their titles optional use of harpsichord or piano, even though the piano seemed to be the preferred instrument of many of them. But by 1800 the word “harpsichord” had all but disappeared from such titles, just as the instrument itself had vanished from the musical scene.
The nineteenth century was witness to a number of developments that exerted a strong influence on the style and the function of piano four-hand music. Through a series of improvements and alterations, which included the extension of the keyboard to seven octaves and beyond and the expansion of its resonating capabilities by increasing the size and tension of the strings, the early nineteenth-century piano was gradually transformed into a full-toned instrument capable of responding expressively to every shade of dynamic subtlety and virtuosity demanded of it. Thus reinforced, strengthened, and amplified, it established itself firmly as the preeminent musical instrument of the nineteenth century—a Romantic instrument that both inspired and helped interpret the Romantic movement.
Coincidental with these gradual changes in the musical scene were parallel developments in the character, quality, and structure of early nineteenth-century society. One of the most significant of these was the rise and consolidation of a growing and prosperous middle class, eager for the cultivation of all the arts, but especially for participating in home music making. Just as the piano became the popular instrument of the era, piano duet playing came to be the favorite social and musical pastime in every affluent parlor.
For the reasons suggested by Dr. Burney in his preface—limited space and the need for frequent tunings—the one-piano, four-hand medium was obviously more popular for home entertainment than two-piano playing, even as early as 1780, with the result that the piano duet inclined toward the development of a chamber-music quality, but more intimate and less spectacular than its sister art. This is not to suggest that the piano four-hand repertoire is lacking in music of virtuosity and brilliance; on the contrary, there is a significant body of works originally written for the medium that makes great technical demands on both performers. An examination of the four-hand works of Schubert, for instance, the most prolific of all duet composers, reveals a surprisingly broad variety of musical styles, from the thin-textured intimacy of some of the Polonaises to the “orchestrated” brilliance of Lebensstürme, requiring great technical security and dynamic control to bring off a successful performance.
In response to the steadily increasing and seemingly insatiable public demand for piano duets, nineteenth-century publishers flooded the market with vast quantities of music that took advantage of the piano’s expanded resources for sonorities, color, and dynamic effects, without measurably increasing the demands made upon the individual performers. A large part of this output appeared in the form of arrangements of music, either originally written for or associated with other media: marches, popular songs, dances, operatic arias, and the like, issued under a variety of titles such as “duettino,” “rondino,” “fantasia,” “nocturne,” and “pot-pourri.”
Furthermore, there is an extensive body of piano four-hand literature, well known to piano students and music lovers, consisting of arrangements of Classical and Romantic compositions: symphonies and chamber music of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms; complete operas of Wagner and Verdi—all of them valuable sources of instruction and pleasure to the music amateur of pre-phonograph and pre-radio days. Many a young nineteenth-century musician first became acquainted with the great works of music literature through just such transcriptions. A quick glance at current publishers’ catalogues indicates that a surprisingly large proportion of these works is still available in four-hand reductions, along with a healthy number of arrangements of twentieth-century orchestral works by Debussy, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Schoenberg, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Hindemith.
It is interesting to note the lengths to which some tasteless merchants have been willing to go in order to take full advantage of the lucrative four-hand market. Since all music was fair game and every composition, great or small, was potentially marketable in some format, over-eager publishers occasionally pushed their enterprise to ludicrous extremes by issuing oddities such as piano-duet adaptations of some of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (including Op. 57 in F minor, the Appassionata), the Chopin Nocturnes, and even some of the latter’s Études.
However, beyond the reductions, arrangements, adaptations, and curiosities lies a body of first-class and little-known works. Consisting of dances, sonatas, variations, concertos, character pieces, suites, preludes and fugues, teaching pieces, studies, accompaniments to choral and/or instrumental pieces, and even a full-length Operetta without a Text, all these works were originally conceived for one piano, four hands. It is the purpose of this volume to present this repertoire to the increasing number of music students, teachers, and music lovers interested in broadening their knowledge of piano duet literature, and to the uninitiated, amateurs as well as professionals, to encourage them to join the ranks of those piano duettists who have already discovered this most amiable and rewarding way of making music.