Piano four hands
Piano four hands (French: À quatre mains, German: Zu vier Händen, Vierhändig, Italian: a quattro mani) is a type of piano duet involving two players playing the same piano simultaneously.[1] A duet with the players playing separate instruments is generally referred to as a piano duo.[2]
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 arrangements of orchestral and vocal compositions and of quartets 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
Among the best-known composers,
Among the German Romantic composers, the four-hand works of
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, 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. [citation needed]
See also
Notes
- ISBN 0028647874.
- ^ Bellingham, Jane. "piano duet", The Oxford Companion to Music, Ed. Alison Latham, Oxford Music Online, accessed 31 March 2012 (subscription required)
- ^ "4 Sonatas for Keyboard 4-Hands (Burney, Charles)". International Music Score Library Project. Retrieved May 30, 2023.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the A Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan and Company.