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In the same way mere tone-color is not the substance of a musical composition. Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is just as great a work, in all its essentials, in a four-hand piano arrangement as in the original score. Every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there; one can trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind; every step in the working out of the materials is just as plain.
The same equilibrium is maintained in his piano and violin sonatas and his other concerted chamber music, amid all their persuasive and eloquent discourse. His charming four-hand and double piano pieces, written for himself and his gifted sister Marianne, and his solo clavier sonatas would prove his wealth of musical invention had he not written another note.
After a long four-hand reel, my friend, who was dressed in homespun, danced a jig to the whistling of a young man with great energy and spirit. Then he sat down beside me in the corner, and we talked about spring trawling and the price of nets. I told him about the ways of Aran and Connemara; and then he told me about the French trawlers who come to this neighbourhood in April and May.
The only thing that can be done with the four-hand arrangement is to ask Klindworth to make some corrections in accordance with your instructions, and to have some of the plates newly engraved without mentioning Klindworth's name on the title-page.
Another time it would be a practical thing to send in the four-hand arrangement together with the score, and to come to terms with the publisher about it. The attitude of the Hartels towards us is naturally always a little reserved. I, for my part, cannot complain of them, and they have always treated me in a decent and gentlemanly manner.
"Play as you feel," was his motto, a rather dangerous precept for beginners. He gave to his pupils the concertos and sonatas all carefully graded of Mozart, Scarlatti, Field, Dussek, Hummel, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber and Hiller and, of Schubert, the four-hand pieces and dances. Liszt he did not favor, which is natural, Liszt having written nothing but brilliant paraphrases in those days.
It all disturbs Cherokee, who's a nervous sharp; an' when he sees how greedy the avaricious gent is for what he deems to be a shore thing, he concloodes to drop him plenty hard. "It's four-hand poker now, an' the game wags on for a dozen hands.
He also made such good progress at school that at Easter 1820 he was able to enter the Zwickau Academy. The love for music grew with each day. With a boy of his own age, as devoted as himself to music, four-hand works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, as well as pieces by Weber, Hummel and Czerny, were played almost daily.
I have spoken to Meser at Dresden and warmly recommended to him H. as the most suitable musician to entrust with the four-hand pianoforte arrangement of "Tannhauser." If Meser should write to you about it, be good enough to propose H. to him for this work in preference to other arrangers and derangers. Give my best remembrances to G., and abide with me. Your CARLSBAD, August 7th, 1853.
In the last, however, the cheery majesty that realizes Heine's likening of Death to a cool night after the sultry day of Life, is superb. Then there are some four-hand pieces, two collections, that leave no excuse for clinging to the hackneyed classics or modern trash. They are not at all difficult, and the second player has something to employ his mind besides accompanying chords.
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