Piano duet. The existence of the genre in the nineteenth century

Petrov Vladislav Olegovich Doctor of Art History Professor at the Department of Theory and History of Music of Astrakhan State Conservatory 414000, Russia, Astrakhanskaya oblast', g. Astrakhan', ul. Sovetskaya, 23 petrovagk@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The genre of piano duet is one of the most popular musical genres associated with modern concert performance practice. Having originated in the XVIII century, having its own history in the context of time, the piano duo made a kind of transition from existence in the field of chamber music to a vivid embodiment in the field of concert variety. The most significant period in this evolution was the XIX century.

It should be noted that in the nineteenth century, when social life reached a higher level of its development, "house music," according to T. Adorno, "became pointless, became a private repetition of acts that, thanks to the social division of labor, others perform better and more meaningfully" ^{[1, p. 118]}. At this time, the chamber-instrumental sphere, which, of course, also included the piano duet, which became the main object of research in this article, is gradually emerging from the "shackles" of home music making and changes in the social and communicative relations between the main links - the composer, performers and listeners are observed within its framework. S. Grokhotov rightly writes that "by the beginning of the nineteenth century instrumental music had ceased to be the lowest step in the hierarchy of genres, a new attitude to instrumental performance, including piano problems, had been formed" ^{[2, p. 5]}. Due to the rapid spread of music playing on two pianos in society and the appeal to the genre of the majority of leading professional composers, the piano duet is promoted to a leading position among other duets ^[1] for two single-timbre instruments and there is a gradual transition of the genre into the concert sphere, to some extent, started by the Sonata D-dur V.A. Mozart, created at the end of the XVIII century. All this dictates a different semantic and stylistic appearance of the genre: there are changes in its content, forms of embodiment and language. In the nineteenth century, two lines of the piano duet interact on an equal footing – the chamber, which is still addressed to the principles of home music-making, and the concert, which opens up new prospects for the genre of development. Despite this, the specifics of evolution, which determines the genre of the piano duet in the XIX century, did not become the object of research by scientists, in view of which the relevance of the problem raised is obvious.

We would like to point out that an important role in the "expansion of the horizons" of the genre was played by the expansion of the boundaries of the existence of the piano duet in continental terms. Playing two instruments became a practice of American, English performers; for the first time the genre was also loved by the Russian public. However, the specifics of the existence of the piano duet in the life of Russian society were strikingly different from the pan-European one. One can refer to S. Volkov's thought that musical life in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the second "concentrated around several aristocratic salons and artistic circles, since public concerts until 1859 were allowed only during Lent, when theaters were closed, that is, six weeks a year" ^{[3, p. 105]}. For this reason, and also in view of the widespread absence in Russia until the middle of the nineteenth century of professional music centers (conservatories, colleges, even schools), many concert genres in their essence, including the piano duet, had a chamber environment, which predetermined the composer's orientation (addressing) to such a small secular audience ^[2]. Indeed, the Russian piano duet of the first half of the nineteenth century, unlike the Western one, where already at the beginning of the century a huge number of concert compositions written for professional performers-ensembles appeared, was mainly chamber, which, in turn, caused the short-lived existence of the created works in the pan-European history of the genre. Many duet compositions by Russian composers, designed for a "circle" audience, were distinguished by the "chamber" content, the uniformity of the components of the musical language and the ways of developing figurative material with the "similarity" of all duet opuses, using only synchronous ensemble playing. These numerous works are now almost forgotten ^[3]. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the genre enjoyed incredible popularity among the Russian public, as evidenced by numerous duet concerts held in various cities ^[4]. The formation of the Russian national performing school, which coincided with the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth century, predetermined the appearance of the piano duet on the concert stage and the appearance of major works that rightfully belong to the concert line of the genre of this era (opuses by A. Rubinstein, S. Rachmaninoff and A. Arensky).

In the nineteenth century, few people play music themselves, arrange concerts at home, while the first professional duet compositions appear in salons. This significant step in the evolution of the genre was facilitated by the extraordinary flourishing of salon music at the beginning of the nineteenth century, on the one hand, not quite concert music, but on the other hand, it is no longer at home, and therefore in the field of piano duet there is a departure from the iconic gallantry and chamber performance for the XVIII century.

There is a transformation of some previously dominant genre features. The medium of existence (context-application) of the piano duet at the time in question, indeed, was the salon (in Russia - the "circle" or the same salon), which expanded the circle of "initiates" into the duet "action". The main reason for this trend was the fascination of nineteenth-century society with mass concerts. Going to the salon was considered one of the favorite forms of spending free time in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, England, France, Russia and other countries. The piano duet in these conditions already performed an entertaining function, and therefore there was a change in one of the main previously existing genre features – the unity of only two musicians in space and time. But there were also features of the ritualization of the genre, although at a slightly different level: duet concerts were held in a specific place on a certain day of the week (for example, on Wednesday - in one house, on Sunday - in another). Communication "face to face" with amateur music-making in the XVIII century, turned in the XIX century into a hobby (both sound and, mainly, visual) by the public playing professional duetants ^[5]. At this time, the procedural type of perception of duet compositions by listeners is gradually being replaced by the ascertaining type, since complicity in the performance of people who came to the salon becomes a rare phenomenon. Whatever the content of the work, listeners, first of all, came to the salon to relax and be surprised by the technical talent of the performers. That is why in the salons, in most cases, grand pianos were placed in the middle of the common space, and listeners and spectators in one person were placed around them. In this case, professional performers adhered to the principle of "everything to the public". This is how the "salon chronotope" of the piano duet of the nineteenth century was formed. The composer, who was creating at this time, addresses his duet work, albeit to a small, but already to society or a certain social stratum.

The nineteenth century is the era of romanticism. She brought two important trends to the field of piano duet: the tendency to virtuosity and the tendency to subjectivization of the genre, which radically influenced changes in the semantic and stylistic thesaurus of the genre. It is difficult not to agree with K. Lopushansky's opinion that "Romanticism has led to an unprecedented flourishing of virtuoso performance. Bright emotionality, passion, striving for the utmost expressiveness of performance were sometimes combined with excesses, exaggerations, affectation. The brilliance of the virtuoso-romantic performance attracted the audience of these years so much that a certain superficiality of the content was often not noticed" ^{[4, p. 8]}. For the first time in its history, the genre has become openly virtuosic (performing, technical level). Thus, there was a change in another genre feature. The subjectivization of the piano duet manifested itself in a special emotional fullness of the genre, in which images that were not characteristic of it earlier, such as drama (works by F. Chopin, F. Liszt) and subjective lyrics (works by R. Schumann, E. Grieg) appeared more and more vividly. In the era of Romanticism, the vocalization of instrumental music took place, which brought song intonations and a vocal beginning to the genre of the piano duet. An example of this can be "Three Romances" for two pianos by I.N. Hummel. Virtuosity, imaginative subjectivity and the presence of a vocal element in the thematism of duet compositions are the main features of the semantic and stylistic thesaurus of the piano duet of the nineteenth century. From this point of view, this genre, like many others related to ensemble performance, has become a representative of the aesthetic positions of Romanticism.

Consideration of the specifics and environment of the existence of the piano duet in the nineteenth century, its main stylistic patterns allows us to state that the iconic quality of the duet in the nineteenth century is the parallelism of the existence of its chamber and concert lines, not characteristic of the genre earlier, largely violated its many genre features already in this century.

Chamber compositions that have preserved the basic norms of the semantic and stylistic thesaurus of the piano duet of the XVIII century, addressed, rather, to lovers of home music making (which at that time continued to exist), are distinguished by the use of small forms embodied in the form of independent pieces or combined into a cycle. As before, the form prevailed over the content - this is the role relationship of these aspects of the musical process in the chamber duet of the century. The composer more often chose a specific small form and its "grid" contained a certain figurative and thematic material with a minimum of musical fabric development. Such an embodiment could be emphasized by the predominance of an uncomplicated homophonic texture of smooth movement in combination with the most elementary harmonic sequences (S. Geller's "Tarantella"), clearly distributed vertically, the absence of polyphonic writing techniques, in some cases - a mediocre attitude to the general dynamic development of the material (E. Grieg's "Play"). In parallel with the simplified vision of the constituent elements of the musical language, insufficient attention was paid to the acoustic-spatial factor of duet performance, which becomes the leading one in the works of the concert plan. At the same time, there was a preservation of the main genre features that existed earlier at the level of the ratio of form and content.

However, it was the concert works of the nineteenth century that became significant for the evolution of the piano duet, the transformation of its genre features and semantic-stylistic thesaurus. The role relationship "form - content" in them is the opposite of chamber compositions: such compositions abounded with innovative solutions with a preponderance of the content factor over the structural one. In concert compositions, at the level of content, there is a gradual departure from the lyricism and intimacy of the genre that were characteristic of it earlier. At the level of form, there are also many new features: for the first time in the history of the development of a piano duet, works of a large form, mostly unknown to the genre, appear in huge quantities. Among them are multi-part duet sonatas, large-scale cycles of variations, suites (previously the composition for two one-timbre keyboard instruments was only part of the suite - as, for example, the famous Allemande from Suite No. 9 for F. Couperin's clavier), free forms (capriccio, fantasy). The appearance on the performing Olympus of such virtuosos representing the romantic pianistic tradition with impeccable mastery of the instrument and filigree technique as F. Mendelssohn, F. Liszt, F. Chopin, A. Rubinstein, N. Rubinstein, D. Field, G. Bulov and R. Schumann, who from time to time united in a piano duet with some other performer^[6] for playing together, undoubtedly, entailed a change in the constant features of the piano duet, that is, its previously existing genre features and the duet's general desire for concertina. Moreover, focusing on their own technical and emotional capabilities, many of them composed duet works themselves.

The change in historical time of many features of the semantic and stylistic thesaurus of the genre in question has led to the fact that for the first time in its history, the piano duet of the nineteenth century is approaching other concert genres, finally transforming some of its previously significant genre features. Thus, the points of contact of the duet with the concert for soloist and orchestra, which is dialogical in its specifics, are interesting: in both genres, the dramatic content is manifested at this time, both in the concert and in the duet, the dialogic principle operates - in the concert between the soloist and the orchestra, in the duet - between the participants voicing two parts (more chamber level), although still rare, but in the duet, the orchestrality of the sound perceived from the concert (in the works of the concert line) and the playing principle between the two parties are already noticeable (in the concert, this technique is observed between the soloist and the orchestra). The increased role of dialogue is characteristic, for example, for the "Great Overture" by J. Vorishek, the "Pathetic Concert" by F. Liszt, the "Dialogic Fantasy" by L. Boelman, duet compositions by K. Saint-Saens^[7]. Thanks to this, the acoustic-spatial boundaries of the piano duet expanded and its main feature was the presence of an external effect, manifested in the introduction of various kinds of performing passages, rehearsal techniques, canonical roll calls and long-term dynamic waves into the genre. The abundance of piano techniques can be seen in the "Variations on a theme of Beethoven" by C. Saint-Saens. The main feature of duet works focused on the concert genre also becomes the use of the entire register space of two instruments. The latter trend is evident in L.M. Gottschalk's composition entitled "Grand Tarantella" - one of the works representing the atmosphere of the American salon of the nineteenth century. In such compositions, there is a change in another of the previously dominant genre features – the use of only the middle registers of two pianos, characteristic of the XVIII century. However, in all these cases, the rapprochement with the concert genre is manifested, rather, only by external signs, and the internal qualities of the concert presentation will become specific for the piano duet only in the twentieth century. All the differences between the chamber and concert lines of the duo in the nineteenth century can be brought into a single scheme:

Due to the increased role of virtuosity in the performance of the nineteenth century as a whole, in line with the piano duet, similar to other instrumental solo and ensemble genres, there are various kinds of processing, paraphrases, transcriptions of works written earlier (both past and present, both from their own compositional creativity, and others thematically). On the one hand, this trend is also perceived from the concert genre (starting, for example, with the work of J.S. Bach, who for many years composed concertos for various instruments, for example, on the themes of A. Marcello), on the other hand, the very specifics of the entertainment salon in its constant parameters required a combination of well-known, popular in society those with virtuoso and spectacular manifestations in performance. The last feature just provoked a "consensus" when playing in a duet: two participants - "double" virtuosity. Thus, one of the favorite forms of embodying compositions in both the chamber and concert lines of the piano duet of the time under consideration are various "Variations on the theme ...", distinguished by interesting figurative and thematic finds in the field of working with the source material, especially if we are talking about other primary sources. It is enough to cite as an example the joint "Big Bravura Variations on Bellini Themes" by S. Talberg and A. Hertz, "Variations on a theme of Haydn" by I. Brahms, the already mentioned "Variations on a theme of Beethoven" by C. Saint-Saens, "Old Norse Romance with Variations" by E. Grieg. There are even fewer original works created for piano duet in the nineteenth century than there are similar variations or treatments. If we take into account that at this time there is a parallel existence of chamber and concert lines of the duet genre, then in some cases the compositional orientation of one composition to both possible ways of reproduction – non-virtuoso and virtuoso - looks natural. It was in the nineteenth century that versions of the same work appeared, even sometimes written vertically in the score (line above line), as in the first part of K. Reinecke's "Improvisation".

In general, the existence of a piano duet in the atmosphere of the salon of the nineteenth century is distinguished by the disparity of duet compositions in artistic terms [for more information about this and about the history of the genre as a whole, see: 6, 7, 8, 9]. Many of them remained forgotten and did not gain a foothold in the rapidly evolving genre repertoire due to its cumulative function. The secondary importance of duet works in the work of a particular composer is also noticeable. All this led to the fact that a huge number of works created for two pianos in the nineteenth century are not known now. The fate of individual works was predetermined from the beginning: the fascination with external showiness or, conversely, excessive intimacy, provoked in many cases a lack of artistic significance. Due to these factors, they did not become widely known and did not enter the "golden fund" of the piano duo in general and the nineteenth century in particular.

^[1] The intensive spread of duet music making at the end of the XVIII century led to the fact that compositions for two single-timbre instruments began to be published. This greatly contributed to the evolutionary movement of the piano duet genre in the nineteenth century.  

^[2] The performance of duet compositions was a necessary attribute of the high-society Salon of Counts Matvey and Mikhail Vielgorsky, which Berlioz called "the little Ministry of Fine Arts" (information on: 3, p. 105), as well as in the house of A. Lvov, the director of the Court Chapel and a lover of music.

^[3] For example, works for two pianos by I. Melnikov or I. Kavos are not mentioned anywhere.

^[4] It is known that A. Rubinstein in the late 1870s, noting the popularity of the genre, asked K. Saint-Saens, who was supposed to come to Russia to participate in concerts of one of the seasons of the RMO, to bring his "Variations on the theme of Beethoven" for two pianos in order to perform them. It should be noted that after their first and successful performance, Saint-Saens' "Variations ..." lasted in the concert programs of the RMO for more than a decade and were performed over fifteen times, including by Rubinstein himself with other pianists.

^[5] The author's term. However, in the musicological literature there is a different definition of persons playing in piano duets – "duelists". 

^[6] For example, R. Schumann, during his tours with his wife Clara, gave a sufficient place in concert programs to duet playing. About this, in particular, O. Loseva writes ^[5].  The researcher presents a Chronograph of concert programs of the famous musical couple, in which a considerable place is given to duet compositions, including Schumann himself, for example, his "Andante and variations" for two pianos.

^[7] The compositions for two pianos written by C. Saint-Saens became one of the best in the field of genre in the nineteenth century, and in the composer's own work they occupy a significant place in quantitative terms. These include: "Variations on a theme of Beethoven" (Op. 35, 1874), "Polonaise" (Op. 77, 1886), "Scherzo" (Op. 87, 1887), "Arab Caprice" (Op. 96, 1894), "Heroic Caprice" (Op. 106, 1897).