Piano Music for Four Hands Vol. 1

Abstract

An enormous amount of Schubert's lifetime musical outpouring was simple music designed to be performed in the home by family, friends, and amateur musicians. Especially satisfying are the works for two persons to play at a single piano, and high on the list of these is the D major rondo. Lively and brilliant, the piece is not quite childlike but is simple nonetheless and charming. It is equally difficult in both parts, obviously intended for amateurs but not beginners. The style is not so much contrapuntal as an alternating series of theme and accompaniment passages. Composed in January of 1818, the work comes of a happy time in Schubert's life. He had moved into the home of his lifelong friend Franz von Schober, where he had access to a piano and began to produce fine piano sonatas, his four violin sonatas, and a continuing number of songs. Access to the piano and the more or less constant presence of friends and acquaintances led to frequent musical evenings for which Schubert would compose works for himself and his friends to play. The single theme, played in the higher part, repeats many times and is echoed at the other end of the keyboard. The work thus seems at several points to take on the form of a theme and variations, although it is not strictly speaking thus ordered. As with much of Schubert's music, particularly the earlier works, the piece is deceptively simple but with richly melodic lines and creative harmonic and rhythmic turns. A large, more challenging and chromatically complex coda brings the work to its conclusion. As with much of Schubert's work, the D major rondo was not published during his life but seven years after his death. The publisher Diabelli added a subtitle which finds no suggestion nor justification in Schubert's writings: "Our friendship is constant." It has been suggested that the composer may have been indicating friendship between the performers by causing them to cross hands at several points near the end of the piece.