Instrumental Duet Instrumental Duet,Piano - Level 5 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.534483

Composed by Germaine Tailleferre. 20th Century,Concert,Standards. Score and parts. 65 pages. Musik Fabrik Music Publishing #3534799. Published by Musik Fabrik Music Publishing (A0.534483).

This work was written in the first months of 1942 while Tailleferre was living in Grasse, in the socolled
« Free Zone » of occupied France during the Second World War and was completed just as
Tailleferre was forced to flee France with her daughter. As the wife of Jean Lageat, who had been the
secretary of the French socialist Léon Blum during the « Front Populaire » period just before the War
and who was at that time in the US working against the Vichy Government, and as someone who was
not unvocal about her political views, this could not have been a comfortable situation. Tailleferre left a
record of what she experienced during this period in an article written for the American music journal «
Modern Music » which she wrote shortly after arriving in America in the Spring of 1942 :
« Notwithstanding their staunch spirit of resistence, the people under German rule today are
increasingly bowed down under their burdens. By achieving the physical decline of the French, the
Nazis hope that spiritual collapse will ensue. However, after two years of quasi-famine, France remains
pround and great, although the necessity of liberation grows daily more urgent.....For an artist to work
under these conditions is almost impossible. The mere effort of subsisting wastes time and absorbs
energy ; The means to work are also lacking.....Musical composition is made practically impossible
through lack of music paper. For more than a year, I sought in vain to find paper in Lyon, Marseilles
and Nice on which to copy an orchestral score...Two years of experience under German rule have
taught me that all expressions of pride, dignity, spirit , aspiration of the human will can be made only
claudestinely. It is a historical truth that the human mind makes its greatest progress under freedom ».
Under such circumstances, it is a miracle that this work exists at all. The three movement work was
dedicated to the famous Marguerite Long, for whom Tailleferre had already written several short works
for piano solo, and François Lang, a pianist who was closely linked with the Group des Six and who
had performed in the première of the 1934 Concerto Grosso for Two Pianos, 8 Solo Voices, Saxophone
Quartet and Orchestra and for whom Tailleferre wrote two cadenzas for concerti by Mozart and Haydn.
The work opens with sunny, optimistism in a mood similar to the opening movement of the Concerto
Grosso, but quickly the mood changes to more dramatic themes. The second movement seems to
subjectively express a rupture with the past and a tragic melancholy. The final third movement is
extremely dramatic and almost frightening with it’s force.
When Tailleferre left France in the Spring of 1942, having been warned by a neighbor that she was
going to be arrested if she didn’t leave immediately, she left the score in a two-piano version, probably
due to the fact that there was no music paper to be had to copy the score. When she returned to France
in 1946, she learned that François Lang had been deported to Auschwitz where he died. Musical life in
France had been completely changed by the War years. Tailleferre put the work aside and forgot about
it, perhaps wanting to forget the hardships that she had lived through and the loss of many of her friends
associated with these years.
Tailleferre's version for two pianos is published by Musik Fabrik and the work may be performed in
that version. It is clear however, that the work was intended to be orchestrated and the editors hope that
the present orchestration will allow the work to finally be presented as Tailleferre conceived during
some of the darkest years of the Twentieth century.

2 Pianos,4 Hands,Piano Duet - Level 5 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1074261

Composed by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Arranged by Richard Simm. Classical,Romantic Period. Score. 14 pages. Richard Simm #678551. Published by Richard Simm (A0.1074261).

In this well-loved waltz by Tchaikovsky, the composer once again brings life, magic and colour to a famous fairy tale. It is a grand, bright and optimistic item, coming near the beginning of the ballet and before the dramatic conflict with the forces of evil at the heart of the story. As usual, Richard Simm's arrangement for 2 pianos is intended for concert performance by advanced pianists, but the delightful results will certainly repay the practice involved.

2 Pianos,4 Hands,Piano Duet - Level 4 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.972673

Composed by James Siddons. Contemporary,Folk,Jazz,Spiritual. Score. 25 pages. James Siddons Music and Writings #6698569. Published by James Siddons Music and Writings (A0.972673).

Performance Note

Sonata Hymnica No. 6 is scored for two pianos and three performers. One  performer (or player) sits at Piano I and may also serve as the conductor. At Piano II, Performer 1 plays from the treble  staff and Performer 2 plays from the bass staff. There are possible variations in this, such as having four pianos (two pianos  doubling the other two), or having two performers at Piano I, with Performer 2 playing only the bass-staff rhythmic pattern that  begins in measure 37. A standing conductor (not playing piano) may be desired.

 Although repetitive, the music in this sonata rarely repeats itself  exactly; hence, further minor improvisations by the performers are appropriate, keeping with the improvisatory nature of oral  tradition.

Program Note (for use in concert programs)
by James Siddons

 The Sonata Hymnica series by James Siddons consists of piano solos that explore the world of American hymns and  vernacular religious songs in the 1880-1920 era, when rural and small-town churches relied on pianos for music, and, in an age before microphones and amplification, the acoustics of wooden floors, walls, and high ceilings. These sonatas are not hymn arrangements but explorations of the sounds that can be created by a piano in a reverberant environment, all the while keeping in mind the essential message of the familiar words  sung to the various hymn tunes. Sonata Hymnica No. 6 is the first in the series to be for piano ensemble, and the second (after No. 3) to be based on the worship music of the 19th-century African American church. This sixth sonata also explores the singing world of the black congregation and choir as well as the piano. Their singing was shaped  by the sounds and intonations of the piano and the heritage of European music behind it, as well as the contours and cadences of the religious folk songs known as Spirituals. But the black congregations also sang hymns and choruses from the Classical tradition, and the Spirituals became the basis of many adaptations by white arrangers. Thus, we may speak  of  standardized adaptations of Spirituals as white black music, and black performance styles of Classical works as black white music. Piano ragtime music is a non-religious example of white music (the military march) made into black white music by the blending in of the syncopated rag rhythm. Sonata Hymnica No. 6 explores the intermingling of these two strains of American music as heard in the 19th-century black church.

In his classic book The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), W. E. B. Du Bois confesses to not being a musician but nonetheless finding himself enthralled by the music of the Southern 19th-century African Americans. He refers to their singing as the Frenzy or ‘Shouting,’ when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and seizing the  devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy . . . stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro and waving of arms,  the weeping and laughing, the vision and the trance (p. 116). On another page, Du Bois speaks of . . . the songs of my fathers . . . swelling with song, instinct for life, tremendous treble and darkening bass (p. 163).

Sonata Hymnica No. 6 uses the African call and response form as well  as percussive polyrhythms.