Piano Music for Four Hands Vol. 2

Abstract

The middle months of 1824 were the second of two summers spent by Franz Schubert teaching music to the daughters of the Count of Esterházy at his home in Zseliz. In neither of these two extended stays away from his beloved Vienna and the company of his dear friends was Schubert very happy, but, characteristically, he hardly allowed his discontentedness to keep him from his work. The bulk of music composed during the summer of 1824 is for piano two-hands (an ideal format if one is teaching); perhaps the most striking of these four-hand piano works is the Divertissement à la hongroise in G minor, D. 818, begun during the summer but not finished until after returning home to Vienna, that was eventually published—during Schubert's lifetime, for a change—as Op. 54.

The Divertissement à la hongroise, as its name would imply, has a distinct Hungarian flavor (as a school-trained Austrian composer might absorb it)—not at all surprising considering the folk and gypsy music that Schubert was introduced to during his stay in Zseliz. The first of its three movements, Andante, is a kind of rondo that pits a melancholy, modal melody against a quicker, foot-stomping dance.

The central movement, Andante con moto, is a march with some attractive superficial Hungarian qualities (the syncopated accompaniment, very much like some of Liszt's Hungarian music backgrounds, the peculiar stop-and-go of the tune).

The Allegro third movement is again a rondo. This time the refrain material is the same colorful, repetitive Magyar dance-music found in Schubert's Hungarian Melody, D. 817.