The piano duet: a medium for today.

The history of the piano duet is as old as that of the piano solo and almost as rich. That may be a startling idea, but let us begin to explain. The earliest composers of piano solos were Mozart, Haydn and Clementi, and these were also the earliest duet composers. Many years ago we were invited by the late musicologist Alexander Weinmann to spend an afternoon in his Vienna apartment to discuss some of his findings in this regard. Earlier, he and his brother Ignaz had studied the publishing plates of all of the music publishers in Vienna between 1760 and 1860. The compositions were listed in chronological order, and they had compared the number of published piano solos with the number of piano duets. Of course, one cannot equate a 16-measure Landler with a sonata, but it appears that there were almost as many piano duets published as there were piano solos during that period.

It could be said that the history of the four-hand recital began on May 13, 1765 in Hickford's Great Room in London. That was when and where 9-year-old Wolfgang Mozart and his sister, Maria Anna (affectionately known as "Nannerl") played together on a two-manual harpsichord built by Tchudi for Frederick the Great. Mozart's first duet, a four-hand Sonata in C (K. 19d) was probably written for this occasion. This was the first public duet recital on record and precedes by three years the first piano solo recital, which Johann Christian Bach presented in 1768.

Mozart loved piano duets; he composed, taught and performed them throughout his life. His partners included Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Marianne Martinez and Ignaz Von Beecke. It was with Beecke that he performed one of his last public recitals in Frankfurt in 1790, a program comprised primarily of duets. Shortly after Mozart's well-publicized duet performances, four-hand music began to grow in popularity throughout Europe and the United States. According to historian Charles Burney, composer Georg Wagenseil performed several duets with one of his students in 1772. Mozart wrote to his father in 1777 that he had heard Abbe Johann Sterkel play duets at Mannheim, and by 1779 Muzio Clementi had begun to involve himself in recitals of four-hand music. In Vienna, Vanhall and Kozeluh were prolific duet composers. All of this piano duet activity made it easy for Johann Cramer and Johann Dussek, in 1791, to persuade piano builder John Broadwood to extend the piano's range from five to six octaves. Since pianos were built by hand, the range and other aspects of the instruments were not yet standardized. By 1794 six-octave pianos were common, and in 1803, Broadwood made slightly wider instruments (6 1/2 octaves), which were known as "duet range" keyboards. By 1850 they were seven octaves and, finally, by 1870 pianos had the now standard 88 keys. There is a strong implication here that piano duets played a significant role in the early expansion of the piano's range. Duettists were striving for a richer, fuller sound and, incidentally yet importantly, they found it much more practical and comfortable for two people to play side by side at the wider keyboard!

The first piano duets ever published were those of Charles Burney, Four Sonatas or Due, for Two Performers on One Piano Forte or Harpsichord, in London in 1777. Even though this music is of minor importance, Burney's preface influenced the development of the piano duet. He wrote that duets are more practical than two-piano works because two pianos seldom stay in tune together and because one rarely finds a living room large enough to accommodate two pianos. He also wrote of the numerous musical benefits derived from playing ...