Piano four-hands
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Piano four hands (french: À quatre mains, german: Zu vier Händen, Vierhändig, it, a quattro mani) is a type of
piano duet According to the ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', there are two kinds of piano duet: "those for two players at one instrument, and those in which each of the two pianists has an instrument to themself." In American usage the former is ...
involving two players playing the same piano simultaneously. A duet with the players playing separate instruments is generally referred to as a '' piano duo''.Bellingham, Jane
"piano duet"
''The Oxford Companion to Music'', Ed. Alison Latham, Oxford Music Online, accessed 31 March 2012
Music written for piano four hands is usually printed so that left-hand pages contain only the part for the pianist sitting on the left, while right-hand pages contain only the part for the pianist sitting on the right. The upper part (right) is called ''primo'' while the lower part (left) is called ''secondo''.


Repertoire


Arrangements

By far the greater proportion of music "à quatre mains" consists of
arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...
s of orchestral and
vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production i ...
compositions and of
quartets In music, a quartet or quartette (, , , , ) is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices and instruments. Classical String quartet In classical music, one of the most common combinations o ...
and other groups for stringed instruments. Indeed, scarcely any composition of importance for any combination of instruments exists which has not been arranged and published in this form, which on account of its comparative facility of performance is calculated to reproduce the characteristic effects of such works more readily and faithfully than arrangements for piano solo. Sometimes, organ works and works for piano two hands with advanced difficulty have also been arranged for piano four hands, in order to make them accessible to amateurs. Such arrangements were especially popular before the development of recording technology, as the vast majority of the time there would be no other way to hear many of the best-known works of music.


Original works

However, the increase of power and variety obtainable by two performers instead of one offers a legitimate inducement to composers to write original music in this form, and the opportunity has been by no means neglected, although cultivated to a less extent than might have been expected. The earliest known printed works for the pianoforte à quatre mains were published in London in January, 1777, when
Charles Burney Charles Burney (7 April 1726 – 12 April 1814) was an English music historian, composer and musician. He was the father of the writers Frances Burney and Sarah Burney, of the explorer James Burney, and of Charles Burney, a classicist a ...
printed four duets for four-hand piano, with a preface explaining this unusual practice. Another early exemplar followed in
Dessau Dessau is a town and former municipality in Germany at the confluence of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the '' Bundesland'' (Federal State) of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it has been part of the newly created municipality of Dessau-Roßlau ...
about 1782, under the title ''Drey Sonaten füre Clavier als Doppelstücke fur zwey Personen mit vier Handen von C. H. Müller''. However, before this,
Ernst Wilhelm Wolf Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (baptised 25 February 1735 – 29 or 30 November 1792) was a German composer. Life Wolf was born in Grossen Behringen in Thuringia, today part of the Hörselberg-Hainich municipality. His elder brother Ernst Friedrich was a co ...
, the musical director at Weimar in 1761, had written one or more
sonata Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...
s for two performers, which were published after his death. The young
Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
, too, wrote four-hand pieces for himself and his sister to play; K.381 in D Major dates from 1772.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sonatas_by_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart So far as is known these were the first compositions of their kind, although the idea of the employment of two performers (but not on one instrument) may have originated with Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote three concertos for two
harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
s, three for three, and one for four, all with accompaniment of stringed instruments. But the short compass of the keyboard, which in Bach's time and indeed until about 1770 never exceeded five octaves, was ill-adapted to the association of two performers on the same instrument, and it is doubtless on this account that the earlier composers have left so little music of the kind. Haydn and Beethoven appear to have had but little inclination for this description of composition. According to Fétis, Haydn wrote but one piece 'à quatre mains,' a divertissement, which was never published (two other sonatas published under his name, op. 81 and 86, are spurious). Beethoven left but one sonata, op. 6, three marches, op. 45, and two sets of variations, none of which are of any great importance. The work of Mozart in this field is more significant. Of the nine pianoforte duets by Mozart two, the Adagio and Allegro in F minor and the Fantasia in F minor, were originally written for a mechanical organ or musical clock in a Vienna exhibition, and were afterwards arranged for piano by an unknown hand; among the others, the sonatas KV 497 and KV 521 from the Vienna years stand out. Among the best-known composers, Schubert made the fullest use of the original effects possible to music "à quatre mains." His compositions include the Sonata in C major for piano four-hands, D 812, the ''Divertissement à la hongroise'', D 818, and Fantasia in F minor for piano four-hands, D 940. In addition to these he wrote fourteen marches, six polonaises, four sets of variations, three rondos, one sonata, one set of dances, and four separate pieces. Among the German Romantic composers, the four-hand works of Schumann and Brahms are the most interesting.
Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositi ...
wrote only one original work of the kind, although he himself arranged some of his orchestral works and also his Octet, and the Variations in B-flat major for piano, op. 83, in this form. Besides writing a number of small pieces for two performers, Schumann made a very novel and successful experiment in his ''Spanische Liebeslieder'' (op. 138), which consist of ten pieces for four voices, being songs, duets, and a quartet, with piano four-hand accompaniment. An analogous idea was later carried out by Brahms, who wrote two sets of waltzes for four hands and four voices ('' Liebeslieder Walzer'', Op. 52, and ''Neue Liebeslieder'', Op 65). Among his instrumental four-hands pieces, the best-known is 16 Waltzes, Op 39. A well-known piece by a French Romantic composer is the ''
Dolly Suite Dolly may refer to: Tools *Dolly (tool), a portable anvil * A posser, also known as a dolly, used for laundering * A variety of wheeled tools, including: **Dolly (trailer), for towing behind a vehicle **Boat dolly or launching dolly, a device fo ...
'' by Fauré.


Organ four hands

Organ music for four hands is very rare, although the experiment has been made by Hesse, Höpner, and especially by
Julius André The gens Julia (''gēns Iūlia'', ) was one of the most prominent patrician families in ancient Rome. Members of the gens attained the highest dignities of the state in the earliest times of the Republic. The first of the family to obtain the ...
, who has written twenty-four pieces for two performers on the organ; but no increased effect appears to be obtainable from such an arrangement which can at all compensate for its practical inconvenience.


See also

* :Compositions for piano four-hands *
Piano six hands Music described as piano six hands is for three pianists at one piano. More rarely the neologism 'Triet' is used, by analogy with the duo/duet distinction sometimes made between 2 pianos and piano four hands (and also because piano trio is an alr ...
* Piano reduction


Notes


References

* {{Musical ensembles Duets Articles containing video clips Piano