Four-handed piano: how the fashion for the four-handed piano started and why it’s popular for its romantic possibilities

Heng before the 18th century, when composers first began writing music for two players seated at the same piano, fellow students and amateur keyboardists had helped each other, filling in challenging passages where two hands were stretched to their physical limits.

Therefore, one might expect early attempts at piano duet composition to enjoy the enhanced virtuoso opportunities available for four hands working simultaneously on a single instrument, or to take advantage of the richer sonority and texture potential.

But the initial impetus for composing for a four-handed piano was not the creative potential of the medium, but the wonderful opportunity it presents to enjoy the closeness of one’s playing partner at a time when such things are not desirable.

Who started playing first four-handed piano?

The first major composer to show a special interest in the medium was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His inspiration came from playing a duet with his sister Nannerl while on tour, and in London with Johann Christian Bach, with whom at the age of eight he studied for several months in 1764. Dating from around this time was a possibly fake duet Sonata in C K19d, featuring a rondo final. where’s the festive based on players (located on the left and traditionally male) play an episode with their right hand over the left first player (female). Assuming it was his work, Mozart’s childhood imagination clearly knew no bounds.

In 1777, Charles Burney (better known as a music historian) composed a set of four duet sonatas, which are generally considered the first to appear in print. Also around this time, JC Bach composed three dazzling duet sonatas and Muzio Clementi produced two sets of threes (from Op. 3 and Op. 14). But it was Mozart’s music for piano duets that put the budding genre on the music map, including the two teenage sonatas Kk358 and 381 – bursting with the brilliance of the Italian sunshine – but especially sonatas Kk497 and 521, the latter of which is dedicated to two talented young sisters, Babette and Nanette Natorp, for whom Mozart specially designed this beautiful gem.

Also not Haydn neither is it Beethoven composed something important to this genre’s friendliest – the former perhaps due to his social isolation based at the Esterházy Palace in Hungary, the latter perhaps due to his sense of personal alienation due to violent deaf attacks. But in Schubert, original music for four hands found its greatest champion – indeed the first work listed in Otto Erich Deutsch’s breakthrough catalog of Austrian composers’ music was Fantasy in G for a piano duet, composed in 1810, when Schubert was an early teenager.

Schubert produced over 30 works for piano duets, spanning his entire (if brief) creative life. These range from dance collections, marches and lndlers, to openings, rondos, and series of variations. Yet for sheer scale of vision, two works stand out: the Hungarian Entertainment D818, inspired by his student, 18-year-old Countess Caroline Esterházy, but dedicated (presumably to prevent gossip) to married singer Katharina von Lászny; and especially the later Fantasy in F minor D940, dedicated to Countess Caroline, who is now a more acceptable 22 years old. The Fantasy, one of Schubert’s most intense creations, was the first genuine a masterpiece for piano duets, and remains the unequaled pinnacle of the genre.

When Romantic music converges – expressively, temporally, harmoniously, and sonicly – the relative intimacy of a piano duet struggles to find a natural sound. Also not Schuman, Mendelssohn, Chopin neither is it Liszt produced something of great impact for the four hands, and while Nationalism inspired dance sets and occasional character pieces in Russia, central Europe and Slavic and Nordic countries (especially Grieg), only two works actually achieved classic status: brahm‘S Hungarian dance and Dvořák‘S Slavic dance… and even these achieve musical immortality in the guise of their orchestra.

When did the four-handed piano become popular in society?

The flip side of the relative scarcity of original music for four-handed pianos during the mid-19th century was the growing demand for orchestral score-setting. This was the golden era of educated families who embraced the piano as the ideal salon instrument, and it was through the piano that many people became acquainted with the orchestral and chamber repertoire. This is where the four hands truly manifest themselves, revealing the contrapuntal, harmonic, and textural complexities of multi-instrumental music with clarity and precision that often surpasses the original.

In the late 19th century, solo and duet piano versions of the latest symphonic masterpieces consistently sold more than the original scores. Many composers, especially Brahms, made their own arrangements, while others relied on transcriptionists or students. Some settings are very literal, others are more impressionistic, using special pianistic and rhetorical devices to help convey the expressive flavor of the original.

How the French composer used a four-handed piano

But there is one country whose natural inclination toward excitement, subtly alluring and understated, combined with sparkling finesse, makes it a natural home for piano duets: France. Formerly Georges Bizet who led in 1871 with his 12-movement Children’s games (‘Children’s Games’ – he selected five highlights for the popular orchestral series). As one unforgettable miniature follows another, one can only marvel at the fruitfulness of Bizet’s invention, of the immortal cell phone sizzling from ‘La toupie’ (The Spinning Top) and mild insouciance from ‘Les bulles de savon’ (Soap Bubbles) to Schumannesque, the hearth warmth of ‘Petit mari, petite femme’ (Little Husband, Little Wife).

chairman Souvenirs from Munich (an 1887 quadrille on a favorite theme from Wagner Tristan and Isolde!) and full‘S Three pear-shaped pieces (‘Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear’, 1903), Unpleasant view (‘Unpleasant Glance’, 1908-12) and In a horse dress (‘In Riding Gear’, 1911) are all famous for their Gallic intelligence (at least in the title), but that Debussy who scores the next four-handed bullseye with his four moves Small Suite (1886-9). Although hardly innovative in terms of, say, In white and black (1915) for two pianos, the Small Suite has the charm of melodies and the luxury of harmonic la Very charming Massenet.

Another classic of the French piano duet repertoire is Faure‘S Doll, a series of six moves composed between 1893 and 1896. Unusually for this most elegant and refined French composer, Fauré gives each movement a generic or evocative title, opening with the most beguiling ceuses and ending in Chabrier style. ‘Le pas espagnol’. Charm shines from every page and the reason is not hard to understand – it was written for Régina-Hélène Bardac, the petite daughter of Fauré Emma Bardac’s long-term mistress (who would marry Debussy in 1908).

It was Fauré’s most famous student, Maurice Ravel, which produced the last popular classics of the piano duet genre: My mother is a goose (‘Mother Goose’, 1908-10), a five-part series arranged and expanded in 1911 to create a half-hour ballet score. Like Debussy Small Suite and Faure’s Doll, Ravel distills her creative essence into a dazzling series of miniatures filled with charm and compassion.

Although several French composers (including Françaix and Milhaud) later changed their hands to write works with four hands, it is only Poulenc’s 1918 Sonata – a very distinct type of ‘adult’ work, but with a special charm – that can boast a regular place in the repertoire of performances. .

What about Russia?

Of all the countries that might be expected to produce a large amount of original, high-quality piano duet music during the Romantic era, Russia is perhaps the most notable omission. Apart from the atypical early Sonata in C by Musorgsky, NS Kitchen (‘The Five’) nationalists show no interest in the genre (even the multi-generic Glazunov), or clerk, Tchaikovsky and the Moscow school, or the three great peaks of the post-Romantic generation: Stravinsky (except for two small sets Easy part), Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Occasionally, a set of salonesque miniatures may appear, such as Rachmaninov’s Six Morceaux, Op. 11 (1894) and 12 Pieces of Arensky, Op. 66 (1908), but this is an exception to the general rule. It seems that Russians are instinctively so drawn to the all-encompassing solo heroism that sharing the spoils of music feels like diluting fireworks.

Why is the four-handed piano declining in popularity?

Not surprisingly, the magical essence, warm hospitality and childhood innocence that have become such an integral part of the piano duet repertoire proves to be almost impossible to replicate after the horrors. First World War. Consequently, the last hundred years can best be characterized as a series of musical flashpoints for four-handed music, often from unexpected sources. For example, the original version of Peter Warlock’s Capriol Room (1926) was for a piano duet, not the stringed orchestra version we always hear today. But perhaps the biggest surprise is that the simple piano duet has caught the attention of several recent composers, including Berio (Touch and Little song, both 1991), Kurtág (game [‘Games’], Books IV and VIII, 1979/2010) and Schnittke (Sonatina, 1995).

And keeping us up to date is the prolific Argentine pianist-composer Juan María Solare (born 1966), whose most recent work on the four-handed piano is the refreshing ‘furious tango’. skidding (2020). That the intertwined legs associated with this most sensuous form of dance must somehow be represented by two pairs of hands crossed on one keyboard seems somehow fitting – and entirely in keeping with the origins of the four-handed piano itself, one might say.