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Double Pleasure: Music for Two Pianos
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11482 |
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THE ARTS
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10 / 1986 |
1,579 Words |
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Janice M. Arnold
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Soon after its invention in the 1700s, the piano gained a popularity challenged by few other instruments. The coincidence of its development and rise with the Classical and Romantic periods of music spawned a repertoire that reflects the concurrent influences of public taste, virtuosic stars, amateur players, and chamber music. The favoritism remains today, with many program managers relying on the high profile of concert pianists to be a sure draw for their concert and recital series.
For a large part of the piano-loving audience, two pianos will be that much better than one. For some people, piano duets may bring back pleasant memories of childhood lessons, when the one-note primo part suddenly sounded like a symphony as the teacher added the chords and rhythm of the secondo part. For the glory-seeking element of the audience, the drama of piano performance doubles when the two performers coordinate their four hands, feet, breathing, and body language in brilliant display. The joining of technical skills and interpretive ideas into one musical experience is the secret of the pleasure of duets.
Piano music for two performers covers three broad but distinct types of compositions. Today, with our easy access to recorded performances, arrangements and transcriptions for piano duet are somewhat discredited, but these allowed earlier audiences access to compositions at times when performers were not available to perform the works as written. At the height of this practice, even pieces written specifically for one piano but considered too challenging for those of lesser ability were arranged for two performers; Chopin's works were subjected to this less-than-effective treatment. Most piano concertos, as for other instruments, have had the orchestral part arranged for piano, though these two-piano works are not duets in the usual meaning of the word. Many composers have arranged their own or others' works for piano duet with mixed success.
The first duets written for piano were for two performers at one keyboard. Most of Mozart's duets were for one piano, four hands; only two of his compositions were for two pianos. The chamber setting of the nineteenth century had a particular influence on piano duets for one piano, four hands. Playing duets was a social process: some duets written in this time exhibit hand-crossings that are not always musically justified, and memoirs of the period frequently mention parlor recitals and courtships conducted around keyboards. Ladies in the era of hoopskirts and crinolines sometimes found their fashions limiting their ability to play duets. While larger halls might have had two pianos readily available, home parlors usually had only one, and to meet the needs of the amateur players composers wrote for one keyboard.
The use of only one keyboard has an obvious effect on the character of the music: each player is primarily responsible for only a particular range of the keyboard. Hand crossings must be carefully coordinated and worked out, and the sound is an extension of what one player is capable of producing.
Music for two pianos, four hands is the true duet: both players have access to a complete range of the keyboard and the composer is free to combine the two parts in unison or to write arpeggios or scale passages for both players with one ascending and one descending and eventually crossing. The two performers can duplicate one musical idea more closely by playing in the same
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