The Joy of Piano Duets

Playing the piano is a great experience. You can be a whole orchestra all on your own, and don't need anyone else to be able to create a complete piece of music.

But solitude can get pretty boring after a while. Someone said that solitude is OK, as long as you have someone to talk with about it later.

Many pianists don't experience the joy of playing with others. But there is something you gain from playing piano duets which you don't get all on your own.

Today my wife, Joan and I have been playing Ulrich and Wittmann's piano duet arrangement of Beethoven's Septet. It was written for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass. You may recognise the third movement, because Beethoven also used it in his Piano Sonata, Op 49 No 2 in G Major. This pleasant performance is by musicians from the Verbier Festival Orchestra.



There is a free copy of the piano duet arrangement at the wonderful Petrucci Music Library site.

If you are not in the habit of playing piano duets, you might prefer to start with something easier. Wilhelm Aletter's Four Easy Piano Duets might be a better place to begin.

If you go to the main page of the completely free This is a link to piano duets at the site. Some are labelled as "easy" but "easy is in the fingers of the player" [or is that "mind?"]

I love the scene in Robin Williams' Millennium Man where the robot plays the Berceuse from Faure's Dolly Suite with the little girl.



Katia and Marielle Labèque are sisters who usually play two pianos. Here they are performing Leonard Bernstein's America, from Westside Story.



But perhaps the most enjoyable piano duet is this one from a student concert of the second movement (Andante con cozyta) from P.D.Q. Bach's Sonata Innamorata.

Britney Spears goes Baroque

Remember the Lady Gaga fugue? The very clever Giovanni Dettori has done it again: this time with his Baroque version of Britney Spears's songs Hit Me Baby One More Time and Oops, I Did It Again in his new composition called Counterpoint.

Mr Dettori has kindly made the sheet music available, too.

Counterpoint refers to the unique ability musicians have of saying two or more things at once and making sense! Lots of pieces of music have several tunes going at once, but this was developed to a high art in the Renaissance Period of Music (1450-1600 AD) and perfected by Johann Sebastian Bach in the Baroque Period (1600-1750).

The Naxos summary of periods in Music history is pretty well written and useful.

Giovanni Dettori teaches counterpoint via his Youtube website, which is well worth investigating.

I like the way you can listen to this piece and follow the scrolling score. Well done, Maestro Dettori!




Did I mention that Britney Spears is an anagram of Presbyterians?

Free sheet music

Stephen Watson, conducting his prize-winning entry in the composition competition

Does it surprise you to learn that our most popular post so far was the one about free sheet music? In that post, we told readers about the terrific Petrucci Music Library, which now contains 94,000 scores of music for orchestra, violin, piano, chamber ensemble, guitar and almost any instrument you could imagine.

If you are interested in playing music that is over 70 years old, this is a great site for you.

We also gave a link to a site where arranger, Richard Harris, has generously hosted oodles of pages of free copies of his arrangements of film music, popular classics, Christmas music and more.

If there is so much sheet music available free of charge (not forgetting the many illegal download sites), why would anyone visit a music store, whether physical or online, and pay for the stuff?

One good reason is that music stores sell books. Remember them? One great thing about a music book is that it probably contains music you weren't looking for, but which may be a great complement to the music you wanted.

For example, if your music teacher tells you to get a copy of Scarlatti's Sonata in C Major, L 252, you could download one from here. You'd get a readable copy and you'd have it almost instantly.

But if you decided to buy this book which contains that sonata, you'd get a modern edition, with fingering, information about the meaning of the signs on the music, advice on how to play the trills and ornaments, an introduction about Scarlatti, an article on how to paly ihs style of music and 13 other sonatas to have a play through.

You can't beat the price of a free download, but a book gives you a lot extra for only a few dollars.

A Lady Gaga Fugue?

As far as I know, Lady Gaga hasn't written any fugues. She may not even know what a fugue is... Do you?

Giovanni Dettori's Lady Gaga Fugue shows you what a fugue is and, if you read music, you can follow along as you listen. It is based on a part of the song Bad Romance



Do you notice how the tune from Bad Romance keeps coming back in different ways? It takes a lot of skill to write a fugue. Giovanni Dettori teaches people about counterpoint, which is the discipline of writing a piece of music that has several tunes going at the one time. Sometimes, as in a fugue, the tune is being harmonised with itself.

Composer, Giovanni Dettori has kindly published the sheet music for you to download and play as a free pdf file.