Microtonality in the Conditions of the Piano Duet Genre

Abstract

In the twentieth century, playing two pianos has become one of the leading forms of joint ensemble performance – many duet compositions have appeared all over the world, and the creation of works for such a composition is a separate branch of compositional creativity. The authors, representatives of different artistic trends, preaching various techniques and manners of writing, paid close attention to the piano duet. A special branch of the development of the genre at this time is represented by compositions in which quaternary is used as a unique, original method of creating compositions, suggesting special searches in the field of musical acoustics and aesthetics. They – the opuses of I. Vyshnegradsky, C. Ives, M. Cooper, S. Reich, V. Ekimovsky – for the first time in musicology became the main object of contextual analysis. The importance of such music for the heyday of the piano duet in the twentieth century can hardly be overestimated: it was she who brought into the genre a completely unknown acoustic imbalance of instruments, a dialogue of two personalized parts. The piano duet of the twentieth century is determined not only by its own artistic values expressed by specific duet works, but also by the significant contribution of the genre in question to the overall development of musical art – both composing and performing practice.