Piano Music for Four Hands Vol. 4

Abstract

Save for a handful of works composed as a teenager and another handful written within the last year-and-a-half of his life, the bulk of Franz Schubert's music for piano four-hands dates from either the middle months of 1818 or the middle months of 1824—two periods spent providing music tutelage to the Count of Esterházy two daughter's at the Count's estate in Zseliz. It was during the latter of these two Hungarian trips that Schubert penned the Six Grand Marches, D. 819 published the following year (piano four-hand pieces were, along with Lieder, the only Schubert music that really caught on during his lifetime) as Op. 40. Schubert composed many military-style marches throughout the years—these are very probably the finest of them all.

Schubert was by 1824 not a well man, and it is interesting to note that he dedicated the Six Grand Marches to his personal physician, Dr. Josef Bernhardt. Each of the marches is written in strict da capo form (ABA, the second A section being a literal reprise of the first); the central portion, like that of a minuet or a scherzo, is called a trio.

No. 1 is an Allegro moderato in regal E flat major whose A flat major trio dispels much of the martial "snap" in favor of a deliciously self-assured tune in the primo part. No. 2 in G minor may be the most immediately persuasive of the bunch. The pent-up energy of its constant rhythmic imitation (primo then secundo) finally finds release in an electrifying chromatic climax. The trio is cast in the parallel major. No. 3 is a humorous Allegretto with a glassy B major trio. No. 4 opens in boisterous triumph, No. 5 in a subdued, even tragic, E flat minor—it was later orchestrated by Franz Liszt and called a Funeral March. The final march of the set is an Allegro con brio in vibrant E major whose trio-theme might be heard as two gentle piccolo trumpets.